Breakout

Breakout is the first level in Age of Empires III and the knight, Morgan Black must defend the island of Malta from the Ottoman Empire.

The Falcon Lands on Malta
In this cut scene it shows the Ottomans led by Sahin, invade Malta and a conversation between Morgan Black and Sahin.

The Level
In Breakout basicly you must defend your base from the invading Ottoman army. You have a decent supply of resources that keeps growing so you just need to first produce as much as you can.

You should train Pikemen and Crossbowmen in the front two of your barracks while you can upgrade your units from the back two.

While your soldiers are having their conflict locate Morgan Black and it is best if you have him exit your fort through the left gate and use your minimap to look for white X marks, which are treasures so he can collect them. Collecting all of the treasures will give you a bonus objecteve which could be helpful. After Morgan Black is done treasure hunting return him back to the base to help with the defense.

Your first milestone will be when you hear Morgan Black request that the Pikemen to combat the Ottoman Cavalry. When this happens choose one of your upper-left barracks and change its rally point to the top-left corner of the map. Then train about five to ten crossbowmen from your chosen barracks then when the soldiers appear they will exit out of the side gate and avoid the battle. You and your men will eventually be overwhelmed when the Ottomans bring their Great Bombards so Morgan Black will call for reinforcements, and a large torch will appear in the upper-left corner of the map. Then you must choose some settlers from the upper-right corner so they can collect the wood around the torch to light it. When the Ottomans see this they might send a small group of troops to kill the villagers so now with the crossbowmen you saved earlier, defend your settlers so they can complete their task in peace. After the torch is lit you may send crossbowmen back to the fort and to continue the defense.

After the signal flare is lit the settlers will return to their every day duties and after a few seconds, a large group of friendly Hussars will come from the top of the map led by commander of the Knights of St. John, Alain. When the cavalry units enter your fort they are in your control, so order the Hussars to destroy all of the Great Bombards and after the heavy artillery is crushed the win the battle.

Afterwards, you can visit your Home City, but sadly you can't do anything in it yet so for now just click the continue button to move on to the next level...

Player Notes

 * Easy, normal and hard: This mission can be beaten using only crossbowmen, take the crossbowmen upgrade at the barracks immediately and train as many crossbowmen as possible. Send Morgan Black off gathering treasures using shift and right click to setup gather waypoints for all of them. Drag select small groups (8-9) of crossbowmen and have them target seperate janissaries while hiding behind the fort walls. Push out when and if at all possible (easy, normal) to take pressure off the walls/gate and repair them. Move the crossbowmen to the left or the right of the gates, otherwise bombards will obliterate them as they primarily target the gate (splash damage kills the archers). Continuously train new crossbowmen from the four barracks (shift your villager setup, 4-5 more on food).
 * You will lose the gates, and possibly some buildings on normal and hard but as long as you've sent at least 8 settlers to light the torch you can get it burning before the Ottomans arrive to stop you (have Morgan present to protect them from the Ottoman cavalry on hard) and Alain will arrive before your command post has been destroyed (even though most of your units are dead). Also after Alain enters the map the Ottoman waves stop coming, leaving your enemy with no reinforcements and their AI focusing more on the two large guard towers and the wall fragments still standing.