Build Orders
Build Orders is an Age of Empires III scenario in The Art of War (scenario 5). The player commands French French.
Scenario setting & objectives
The required goals are Ship 3 Coureurs des Bois from your Home City; Have 4 Coureurs des Bois hunt; Train 14 Coureurs des Bois in total; Have 14 Coureurs des Bois hunt; Advance to the Commerce Age; Build a House; Have 12 Coureurs des Bois cut wood; Drive animals towards your Town Center with 2 Coureurs des Bois; Build a Trading Post; Build a Market; Research Hunting Dogs, Placer Mines, and Great Coat; Have 9 Coureurs des Bois hunt; Have 5 Coureurs des Bois mine coin; Keep training Coureurs until you have 28 in total; Ship 4 Coureurs des Bois from your Home City; Research Steel Traps at the Market; Have at least 23 Coureurs des Bois hunt; Build a Barracks; Build 2 more Houses; Train 40 Musketeers; Ship Cords of 700 Wood from your Home City; Build a Stable; Build 5 more Houses; Ship Chests of 700 Gold from your Home City. Optional goals include Collect all Treasures.
Mission approach
Complete required construction early enough to establish the base or route, then defend the workers and new position. Reserve the required Age-up resources while keeping enough workers and defenses to meet the mission’s other goals. Take optional objectives when they add useful allies, routes, resources or reinforcements without putting the primary goal at risk.
Scenario sequence and economic checkpoints
Build Orders is the fifth Art of War lesson and uses France to teach a longer opening sequence. The Coureur des Bois objectives require a steady Town Center queue: first establish workers and hunting, then add woodcutting and Coin gathering when the objective asks for them. The scenario requires advancing to Commerce Age, building a House, Trading Post, Market and Barracks, researching Hunting Dogs, Placer Mines, Great Coat and Steel Traps, and reaching a total of 28 Coureurs des Bois before continuing worker production. Later tasks add a Stable, more Houses, 40 Musketeers, Home City shipments of Wood and Gold, and a minimum of 23 workers hunting. Two Coureurs must also drive animals toward the Town Center. This is a sequence of economic checkpoints rather than a single build order to memorize: watch the objective tracker and shift gatherers to the resource required by the next construction or research step. Keep the Town Center producing workers, reserve enough resources for the age-up and avoid spending on optional units before the required total is met. Collecting all Treasures is optional. The lesson rewards planning, worker distribution and correct shipment timing; replay it to improve transitions without sacrificing required objectives.
Gatherer management
The hunting objectives repeatedly change the number of Coureurs assigned to Food, so rebalance workers after each checkpoint instead of leaving every new worker on the same resource. The animal-driving objective requires two workers to push the herd toward the Town Center while the rest of the economy continues.
Shipment and expansion timing
Shipments of four Coureurs des Bois and later resource crates should arrive when the required worker or construction checkpoint can use them. Houses, Stable, Barracks and Trading Post all compete for worker time; build each in a protected area that supports the next objective.
Unit-production milestone
The final Musketeer target is part of the lesson’s military transition: complete it after the economy and core buildings are established, and use the resource shipments to support the required production rather than spending them early.
Follow the Coureur sequence without idling production
The Art of War build-order test lays out a detailed French opening around Coureurs des Bois. It asks the player to ship three Coureurs, keep them gathering Food, train a total of fourteen, advance to Commerce Age, add housing and shift groups between Food, Wood and Coin. Later steps include herding animals toward the Town Center, building a Trading Post and Market, researching Hunting Dogs, Placer Mines and Great Coat, then expanding to twenty-eight Coureurs before adding a Barracks and Stable. The final army task is to train forty Musketeers while further shipments supply Wood and Coin. Treat each step as a transition point: keep Coureur production active when resources allow, but move workers before a new building or Age-up is due. The optional Treasure collection can help the economy, yet should not derail the required worker allocation and shipment sequence.