How to Make a Very Good Economy in Age of Empires 3

When the game starts, you will need at least one house and, if you can afford, a market (starting with 200-300 wood) getting Hunting dogs upgrade otherwise just build a house and make more villagers up to 15-18 (Depends on the civ. Example: British with 2 houses age up with 17 villas, 15+2 of the houses). Gold is unimportant at the start of the game because in a normal game, gold is not needed at the start besides 50 gold for hunting dogs upgrade. Collect food from animals, this is important: Try to collect food from animals first and don't build Mills, they use up too much wood. While Aging to the next era, you should balance your villagers between food, gold and maybe wood (depends on what kind of army are you going to make), Also build a market and buy all the upgrades on the market for food and the first for wood and gold, this way you will have a solid eco early game. .

In the second Age, try to make more houses, barracks and stables, a market if you don't have one. Buy the second upgrade for food, and If your food-collectors have now killed all the animals nearby you should start to search for hunts wich are scattered through the map (on good maps you will have plenty of food from hunts for a while in the game). Don't stop making villagers for any reason, make soldiers to defend your villagers and maybe cavalry to harass the oponnent's economy raiding their villagers.

Important: Think about some military too. Build 2 barracks or one barrack and Stable, make some Infantry just in case the enemy wants to disturb your economy and you can't afford that when the game started. So always have this in mind. Always look for upgrades from your home-town so your villagers can collect everything faster. The faster you get resources the faster you will have an army.

In the third age, you can focus on an attack or booming with villagers. For attack get the 2 Falconets Card (cannons) from your Home City among with a small army, and continue to make villagers within your Tower Center. If you are going to boom with villagers you'll have to build 2 more TCs (Tower Center) that will cost 1200 wood (you can collect it before while aging). Make some walls to defend your base and get some Archers or Skirmishers behind it to help defend your boom.Try having many villagers and it really pays off because you will get many resources fast. Upgrade your troops, this is important. Now you will need more gold. Plantation is good but not as fast as gold-mines and are too expensive. So you want to use the mines. (Tips on how to build good gold-outposts you can read in my other guide: "How to build good outposts for gold-mines in Age of Empires 3")

Try to make some troops and upgrade the units you use. Keep your economy running and keep making more villagers. If you need now it's the time to start building Mills and Farms wich can have 10 villagers collecting one each, so you won't get out of food. Try having just enough villagers collecting wood because it's the slowest resource to gather or if you need more wood buy the 3rd upgrade on the market sooner. For gold you can use about 10 to 15 villagers or more if your army is gold heavy on the cost.

The fourth age shouldn't be much about resources; it should be more about defense and offense. Try to build a real army and keep collecting all the resources. When you realize that there aren't gold-mines anymore, start to build plantation. It's slow but you can upgrade them to increase the gathering rate. If you have enough wood, use some villagers who are collecting wood to build a new plantation. Upgrade everything and build your army (Tips on how to build an army you can find in my guide: "How to build a good balanced army in Age of Empires 3").

In the fifth age, upgrade everything so you are fully equipped for a fight. Develop everything in the church and in the Arsenal because there are really good upgrades that will help your military, additionally you can get a card on your deck wich adds more upgrades on the Arsenal.

Now that you have upgraded everything, you should be ready for an attack. Mostly in the "war-time" you will have some gold problems because cannons and such cost so much gold. So focus on gold with plantation and factories. If you have enough food, try to use the villagers from the fields/mills to collect gold in plantations.