Minuteman

The Minuteman is a quick-training Musketeer unit available to all the European civilizations in Age of Empires III. Native American and Asian civilizations have Warriors, Sentries, and Irregulars, respectively.

Overview
Minutemen are cheap and can be quickly trained from the Town Center in the Discovery Age, via the Levy research. This is a one-time only research per Town Center. Minutemen are not very useful for attacking the enemy because they lose hit points quickly over time.

They stop losing hit points when they have only one point remaining. Any damage taken after that will kill them, making them almost useless once this occurs; however, Minutemen are quite strong against enemy settlers. The Minutemen are also useful in temporary battles or to react quickly to an immediate crisis.

Additional Minutemen can be trained with a Home City Card named Colonial Militia, which allows the player to deploy a larger group of Minutemen. Like the first Levy, this is a one-time only research per Town Center.

Minutemen can only be trained once from each Town Center, but are a good tool for quickly defending the town center. They are also effective in large infantry armies due to their good attack and being protected by the numbers around them. This is especially true of the Portuguese because of their free multiple Town Centers.

Players can essentially create endless armies of Minutemen by having their Explorer continually build Town Centers and deploying Minutemen from them. However, given their health degeneration and the time it takes to build a Town Center (unless a Covered Wagon is assisting), it is not recommended to do so.

Shipments
{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%; margin-bottom:0px; margin-top:1px;" ! sab="1148"| Click for a list of Minutemen related home city cards
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Everybody

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History
"Minutemen were groups of irregular soldiers who vowed to be ready in a minute's notice to fight against British soldiers leading up to and during the American Revolutionary War. They had no formal training and used their own weapons as arms, relying on hunting skills for marksmanship and guerilla tactics learned from the Native Americans in the recent French and Indian War. These tactics made the farmers and tradesmen who took up arms against the British unpredictable and effective. Monuments stand at the North Bridge in Concord and Battle Green Square in Lexington to commemorate the first fighting of the American Revolution, fighting done by militia and Minutemen."