Noteworthy civilisation features:

• villagers cost wood
  
• get 1 villager with each shipment
  
• Herdables gather Experience (XP)

Are good at:

• Prolonged age 2 fights because:
  
  • Only civ with goons and skirms in age 2 (Ghurka + Zamburak)
    
  • Strongest musketeers in the game (at least in early game)
  
  
• Taking map Control with the Agra fort, can take hunts/mines safer and easier
  
• You get one vill with each card. That means when you continue to fight and get xp, your economy grows in the background. India Eco for that reason is stronger than it would appear. Even when you are going for heavy pressure, you are not as all in as other civilisations.

Age 1:
Gather all ress.
Keep 5 on wood, rest on food (to keep constant villager Produktion)
Age up with agra fort and secure some ressources in the middle (i usually send 3 vills, some pros only use 1 villager to build fort though)
During Age up: DONT FORGET YOUR HOUSE!
during age up, continue to produce vills and send 3 of the new ones to gold. After that send the new ones to food

Souting:
Split your Elefants but also keep them close (so you can group them up for treasures)
If the map has Herdables, try to get as many as possible FIRST!
Then go treasure hunting:
Get xp treasure before first shipment (is essentially a wood treasure then), after you have enough xp for first shipment it s not so important anymore. Else focus on food/ wood. Herdables are also a valuable target for india.

Once in age 2:
Get one Batch sepoys out and send your 5 sepoys. Start attacking with your 12 Sepoys (Dont loose them, just use that as a scout). My second Age 2 card is usually 700 wood, so i can get market upgrades, houses, a stable and a consulate. You can also use the wood to get a tp
Wait with your european Allies until you sent your 300 export. Usually you'll take Otto (4 vills and hussar batches).
Depending on what the enemy is doing:
Keep making Sepoys and Add Ghurkas or Add sowars (4 sowar shipment is rlly good)...
OR You can also transition into ghurka zamburaks
You can also use the map control to get the trade routes

Advance to age 3 by sending the 700 (karni mata)
you are not forced to go age 3 early, since you have ghurkas and zamburaks. But i like to advance at a normal time to get urumis in the mix and also siege elefants to put pressure on the enemy.

Sometimes a good idea:
Go to industrial (Taj mahal), Send your urumis...advance and once you reach the enemy do the cease fire ability (Taj mahal) and send your army right onto his army. Urumis have age 4 stats and absolutely destroy everything except melee cav.

Mughal Architecture is debatable. Also most people send their foreign lodging earlier. That s just the Build Order i am most comfortable with and i m doing the least amount of mistakes.

Sepoy is a really strong unit, so sepoys is allmost never a bad choice. Mix that with sowars/ Ghurkas. Or in Age 3 add Urumis, siege elefants and Mahout.
You can also go for Ghurka/ Zamburak. Even starting in Age 2

most common army compositions:

• Sepoy + Sowar/ Mahout, Sepoy + Ghurka, Sepoy + Urumi
  
• Ghurka + Zamburak

Add Siege elefants if the other one has canons or you want to push (Ghurka + Zamburak especially need siege elefants at some point, because they dont have good siege attack)

Other Units:
Urumi: Basically melee Skirms with splash dmg. Good vs infantry and dragoons, bad vs melee Cav

Sometimes Mahouts/ Howda are good, they are very situational though
Dont make Flail elefants or Rajput

Video showcasing this Build and India:
https://youtu.be/9l8FdTRSKRE

This is just the way i play india, which is a bit noob friendlier and not as tight as the builds pros use. There is a good guide for india on ESOC by wickedcossack, which goes into detail way more.
https://eso-community.net/viewtopic.php?t=12083


Consider checking that out, especially if you plan on going to top 100 on the ladder. Then you'll probably need a tighter Build order. But for getting started my Build order should be fine and you can easily get to top 500 (I climbed to top 300 or something).


Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition© Microsoft Corporation. This Video was created under Microsoft's "Game Content Usage Rules" ( https://www.xbox.com/en-US/developers... ) using assets from Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition, and it is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft.

The Idea of this build is to go for a ff with india and produce Howdahs. It is a very strong, fun and micro intensive build and requires a very specific answer to beat. If you have any questions, just post them in the comments (I played this 5 times on ladder and only lost once, so it is also viable in competitive).

Howdahs: Basically the AOE 3 equivalent of a Tank. Medium Speed, hard to kill, puts out tons of damage, looks cool!

I got inspired by H2O, who did this build in a tournament once.

So the start is pretty regular. You'll send 5 to wood and the rest to food. Then go for a karna mata FF. Try to get 2 mines in the range of the karni mata.
During Age up: Send 2 new villagers to gold. All the other new villager get to food.

Once in Age 2:
Send 700 gold (ASAP)
Once that arrives, age up with the Agra fort (3-4 Vills). If the enemy is going aggressive, do it save at the front of your base. If he's going for ff, go in the middle.
Variant: Use taj mahal to age up (seen in this Video).
For me Aging up with fort works out better, because: You have something to fall back on and you are more safe. Also the Ghurkas complement your early age 3 really well.

Late Age 2 to early age 3:
Use the 700 wood to build:
Consulate, market, houses. You wont need a stable, since you can train in the agra fort (if you use taj mahal, build a stable). Your elefants cost much population, so keep that in mind and dont forget to regularly build houses.
Send all new vills to gold, retask some of food to gold (Keep 6 on food, still)
Get the british allies. Get the surgeons as soon as you have the export to get them (Should be able to get them at aroun 7 to 8 mins). Keep them save! British allies give your units more HP, so that s another really good bonus (British and India working together was also allways very strong!)

Once in Age 3: Start your howdah production. After that send your 2 howdas. Try to get out 3 howdas with first batch. Attack with those howdas. Trade and be annoying to the enemy, attack hunts, gold mines or other exposed stuff. DONT Loose them! Send them back when they are at 30 % HP (use surgeons or explorers to heal)! Dont commit on the TC YET! When your Siege elefants arrive, you can apply the real pressure. Siege elefants are your most important units, dont loose them.
in a nutshell: Attack -- low hp? -- send back and heal up -- attack again

Thoughts and how to counter this strategy.
This strategy is very fun to play and also very annoying to play against. Since it is so frustrating to not kill any Units.
How do you play against this strategy? I ve lost to mass pikes (If someone does that, send URUMIS first!), elefants cant kite the pikes like goons and so they loose hard to this.
Usually the best way is to get dragoons. Get a mass so that you can 2 shot elefants and finish them off when they are running back. You can also slow down the push immensly by sniping the siege elefants, as the howdas itself arent too good vs buildings.
Skirmisher is not the best choice, because you wont be able to finish of elefants.

Card Progression & Deck
Mercantilism , 700g, 700 wood, 2 howdah, elefant combat, 2 siege elefant, adapt (mahout, urumis, ghurka, second elefant card)
Core Cards: Mercantilism , 700g, 700 wood, 2 howdah, elefant combat, 2 siege elefant. Rest build as you feel like!

Video Showcasing the Build:
https://youtu.be/yCSsJo1-Flw