The Ottoman Fort

The Ottoman Fort
Scenario information
Game	Age of Empires III
Campaign	Act I: Blood
Civilization	Knights of St. John
Color	Blue
Scenario no.	4
Previous	Pirates!
Next	Temples of the Aztec
Setting information
Year	1566
Map

“	Morgan catches up with Sahin in the jungles of Central America - but are the Ottomans too powerful to defeat?	”
—Scenario description

The Ottoman Fort is the fourth scenario of Act I: Blood in Age of Empires III. The knights arrive on the Yucatán Peninsula in search of Sahin The Falcon. It isn't long before they find the Ottoman command post.

Summary

The cutscene The New World shows the crew of Morgan's flagship make a few comments about never expecting to be in the Americas while the camera shows them standing on deck. It switches to the sight of a white Jaguar along the shoreline. Morgan warns them to be cautious, they can't be sure the wild beasts and Ottomans are the only dangers that lurk in the jungle.

This is the first scenario you may actually send for shipments from the Home City, and at the end of scenario, you may purchase additional Home City Cards.

Starting conditions

• Starting Age: Exploration Age
• Ending Age: Fortress Age
• Population limit: 200
• Starting units and technologies:
  • Morgan Black
  • 4 Pikemen
  • 2 Settlers
  • 1 Covered Wagon (setting up grants 7 Settlers and crates of 100 food, 100 coin)
  • 1 St. Elmo (Morgan's Flagship)
• Starting resources: 400 food, 300 wood, 200 coin

Objectives

Primary objectives

• Build a Town Center.
• Go to the Home City and send a Shipment.
• Find and ally with at least two local Natives.
• Find and destroy the Ottoman Command Post and Town Center.

Secondary objectives

• Destroy the Ottoman Fishing Dock. (500 XP)

Players

Player

• Morgan Black ( Knights of St. John) - The player starts in the Exploration Age, with Morgan's Flagship, a Covered Wagon, four Pikemen, two Settlers and Morgan Black himself.

Enemy

• Ottomans ( Ottomans) - Their base is sited on the westernmost part of the map, and includes a Town Center, a Barracks, a Stable, walls and special fortifications. They also have a Dock to the eastern part of the map, as well as Janissary patrols outside the base.

Treasures

There are 5 treasures on the map:

Click for a list of treasures and their guardians related to the "The Ottoman Fort" scenario

Treasure	Reward	Guardians	Location
A den of muskrats worth	25 coin	None	In the north of the map
Cassava (manioc) worth	40 food	1x Bandit Blowgunner	East of the player's base
A cache of mahogany worth	90 wood	2x Pirate	In the west of the map
Marigolds worth	80 XP	2x Wolf	In the south of the map
Some oak trees worth	75 wood	None	In the southeast of the map

The map

The map is based on the Yucatán random map. The player can fish in the sea and hunt Tapirs scattered across the map, but must defend the Fishing Boats and Settlers from enemy attacks by both sea and land.

Strategy

The strategy runs mostly on cutting off their fishing, which the game tells you to do anyway as an objective. Once that is complete keep them from rebuilding their docks by patrolling with the flagship until you can get some walls up to stop their villagers. Your ultimate goal is to destroy the small outpost they've built at the south western native trading post so you can put up your walls and towers in this area. This will choke the life out of their settlement, as you've cut them off from the largest source of resources on the map. This also transforms their withering colony into an experience mine as well.

Note: Difficulty - On the hard difficulty the native trading post is heavily defended, also any attack against the trading post will result in a heavy counterattack by the Ottomans. Make sure your walls are up to par before attacking the trading post. Also on Hard difficulty the Ottoman tactics will change, sometimes they will build plantations when they have exhausted their gold mines and begin sending mercenaries against you and age up to Fortress and produce falconets (which Rodeleros can quickly swarm).

Note: Natives - The natives on this map are the Maya (North), Carib (Middle) and Aztec (Southwest). The Aztec upgrade which ships chests of coin for every 2 minutes of game time is disabled and delivers no chests of coin. However it can still be purchased for 225 wood, be careful you do not waste resources on it. The Mayans and Carib are the best allies, both have upgrades boosting your infantry in combat.

Note: Fishing/Water - Always task 4 actual Fishing Boats on the single Whale on the map. Use Caravels and Canoes for fishing and watch out for Ottoman Galleys if they managed to get their docks rebuilt before the wall went up.

Trivia

• Sahin The Falcon, despite making an appearance in the introductory cutscene and being the enemy commander, does not physically appear in the scenario.
• This scenario and the campaign's previous scenario (Pirates!) refer to Hospitaller colonization of the Americas.

Gallery

An ill omen

Use Morgan as a damage sponge to soak up the towers attack (move him into range first) while your pikemen and Morgan attack it from the northwest corner (to avoid the range of the other outpost). Move Morgan's Flagship down the coast with an Attack Move command to automatically engage the Ottoman Galley and docks.

After retreating Morgan to let him heal a bit move a villager down to the natural chokepoint and begin constructing walls while Morgan and the pikemen move to destroy the second outpost. Be careful not to attack the trading post, it triggers a large counterattack by the Ottomans who will run right into your basic wall and severely hinder your progress.

Beginning the construction of several outposts, however Morgan and the Pikemen were left unattended and began automatically attacking the trading post. This soon triggered a large counterattack against the unfinished wall.

The Ottoman response to the trading post not being quickly destroyed, part of the wall was destroyed along with the construction villager and all defenders. The attack was halted and the trading post finally destroyed, though it had significantly slowed the momentum of the economy.

After a few minutes of fighting small, sporadic waves of enemies the walls were once again stripped of defenders and the villager driven away from finishing the construction. Avoid triggering the counterattack until the wall is better supported by units and outposts.

After a few more minutes the Ottoman attacks slow, this allows time to recover and start fortifying the wall more heavily which proves effective at preventing major losses of defenders and resources.

Most of the resources were spent on fortifications at this point and aging up to the Fortress Age to gain the Falconet and a second Town Center. Safe behind the wall economic development kicked into high gear.

Position mortars here to destroy the Ottoman town center.

You can fire from here to hit the Command Post.

Victory achieved in under half an hour, avoiding the mistake of attacking the trading post before the wall is better fortified will reduce the time by 7–10 minutes.