Cree

The Cree are a minor civilization in Age of Empires III.

Overview
The Cree are available as allies on the Saguenay and Yukon maps. Once a trading post is built at their camp, a player can recruit Cree trackers, Cree coureur des bois and research available upgrades.

Units
While most other light infantry in the game have hitpoints that range from 95 (Longbowman) to 230 (Cherokee rifleman) Cree trackers boast an impressive 300 hit points. However, their ranged resistance is rather low along with their base damage and they fire slowly compared to some units (3.0 vs. 1.5 for longbowmen and some other natives).

They are merely average in combat against a similar number of more cost effective units, however they cost no population and in numbers can easily take on small groups of some cavalry and defensive buildings due their hitpoints. Civilizations which possess cards, or aura effects (Japanese Shogunate, Spanish unction, etc) augmenting the trackers will find more use with the unit than those which do not have any home city cards or aura effects improving them.

The Cree also field their own version of the coureur des bois. Although they are available only in small numbers per trading post (5) they work in the same manner as the French coureur des bois. This unit requires population, unlike most native units. The Cree coureur des bois costs the same as the French version (1).

Upgrades
Cree upgrades focus on boosting allied economies and the hit points of all infantry and cavalry warriors. The settlement also possesses the basic upgrades for Cree trackers, while a civilizations market and home city cards will possess upgrades for the Cree coureur des bois.

Cree Tanning (Discovery Age): Improves infantry and cavalry hit points by 5%.

Cost:,

Cree Kinship (Discovery Age): Increases Cree tracker build limit by 50%.

Cost: ,

Cree Textile Craftsmanship (Discovery Age): Reduces the wood cost of buildings by 25%.

Cost: ,

Cree Warrior Societies (Fortress Age): Cree attack and HP raised by 25%.

Cost: ,

Cree Champions (Industrial Age): Cree attack and hitpoints raised by 40%.

Cost: ,

Usefulness

 * Cree tanning is of questionable value due to the low number of hit points granted by the upgrade.
 * Cree kinship is a situational upgrade, used for native rushes or in Treaty games.
 * Cree textile craftsmanship is extremely useful for any civilization, but particularly those which have cards reducing a structures wood cost even further.
 * The "Advanced Trading Post" card available to all civilizations is particularly useful with this upgrade, lowering the cost of trading posts to a mere for European and Native American civilizations (whose card reduces cost by 40%), 137 for Asian civilizations (whose card reduces cost by 20%). Maps featured in The WarChiefs reduce the cost of trading posts to 200 wood instead of the usual 250, so they will be even cheaper on those maps.
 * All native tribes can only be upgraded to Legendary/Exalted status at the town center or capitol, they can be upgraded to Elite/Disciplined or Champion/Honored for free through some home city shipments.
 * Civilizations can remove the upgrade gold costs, or cut the upgrade costs in half depending on their home city cards.

In-game dialogue
The Cree language (also known in the most broad classification as Cree-Montagnais, Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi, to show the groups included within it) is the name for a group of closely related Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 117,000 people across Canada, from the Northwest Territories to Labrador.