Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition – Complete Achievement Guide

In this guide you can find list of all achievemenets and how to get it.

How to Obtain All Achievements

All credit goes to VeelYo!

Campaigns

Blood, Ice and Steel

• Complete the Blood, Ice and Steel campaign.
• Can be done on any difficulty.

Fire and Shadow

• Complete the Fire and Shadow campaign:
• The ‘this is too hard’ cheat can be used to breeze through all the campaigns.

The Asian Dynasties

• Complete the Asian Dynasties campaign:
• But there will be a special place in cheater hell for you.

Skirmish

Old fashioned

• Win game on Hardest difficulty without upgrading your Town Center:
• You cannot start the game any later than Age I and you cannot move to the next age.
• The difficulty referred is the one called “Hardest”, which ironically is not the hardest.

No Mains

• Win all Skirmish games with all Civilizations in Hardest difficulty:
• Win 1 Skirmish game on Hardest difficulty with every civ, you can use tuck tuck tuck.

Budget Cut

• Win a Skirmish game without requesting any Shipments:
• If struggling, play on lower difficulties for this achievement and the ones below.

Here comes the cavalry!

• Win a Skirmish game with only cavalry and artillery units:
• Do not use infantry or naval units. You can cheese it with the monster truck.

Whatever the price… I’ll beat it!

• Win a Skirmish game with only mercenaries units:
• Do not ever control any military units other than mercenaries trained at the Saloon.

Community

• Win either Skirmish or Multiplayer game and have 25 villagers working on the Community: refers to the former Fire Pits from Native civilizations.

Alliance

• Win either Skirmish or Multiplayer game and have formed alliances with all native villages: play on a map with few native villages to make it easier.

Trades Master

• Win either Skirmish or Multiplayer game and have occupied all trading posts on the map: play on a map with few trading posts to make it easier.

The Earth is flat!

• Explore an entire map in either Skirmish or Multiplayer game:
• Start a Deathmatch game to unlock the achievement automatically.

Multiplayer

Winning!

• Win your first multiplayer reward:
• Win an award from the post-game summary after a multiplayer game.

Raising Conquerors

• Win your first multiplayer game.
• For this and the achievement below, any game including scenarios counts.

Social Dominance

• Win 25 Multiplayer games.
• You can always use cheats against an AI if you dread playing against others so bad.

Shipments

You don’t need wings to fly

• Deploy an Advanced Balloon.
• Equip the above card from the European civs’ Trading Company and ship it.

The comforts of home

• Receive at least 100 shipments total from your home city in any mode

To the seas!

• Deploy ‘3 Galleys’ from your shipments as the Ottomans.
• Equip the above card from the Harbor in your deck and ship it at age III.

War Wagons

• Deploy ‘4 War Wagons + 4 Uhlans’ from your shipments as the Germans.
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Fierce Cavalrymen of Tartars

• Deploy ‘9 Cavalry Archery’ from your shipments as the Russians.
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Big Brothers

• Deploy ‘6 Cuirassier’ from your shipments as the French.
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Pike and Shot!

• Deploy ’24 Pikeman’ from your shipments as the Spanish.
• Equip the above card from the Torre del Oro in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Congreve Rockets

• Deploy ‘2 Rockets’ from your shipments as the British.
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Riders!

• Deploy ’17 Ruyters’ from your shipments as the Dutch.
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Ribauldequin

• Deploy ‘5 Organ Guns’ from your shipments as the Portuguese.
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Home City

What a beautiful city

• Customize any Home City.
• Level up a European home city once and head into Customize to unlock something.

See My Vest!

• Unlock all Cosmetics of any Civilization:
• Level up a European home city high enough either naturally or by farming XP.

The civilization with the least amount of purchasable cosmetics is the Spanish with only 55 levels required.

If you have no honor and don’t mind cheating, you can copy paste ‘nova & orion’ into the chat in order to cheat out 10 000 XP. Use it three times since the maximum XP limit in any game is 30 000 and resign. Repeat the same process as many times as needed to unlock all home city cosmetics. Note that you can only unlock cosmetics in European home cities (and not the Swedes), so leveling up other civilizations is completely useless.

If you wish to farm legit XP, here’s the quickest way to do it without using cheats:

• Play a Skirmish Deathmatch game. Deathmatch games start with 20 000 of every resource, allowing you to start building and training units without an early game.
• For the map I’d recommend Malaysia since it has only 2 trading posts that can both be easily snatched or Honshu but you’d need to get a boat first. Picking a map with more TPs will not grant you more XP because the XP rates of trading posts decrease with the number of TPs on the map.
• Start on Post-Imperial Age, aging up and buying upgrades does not give XP.
• Set Difficulty on Easy so that the AI doesn’t play too aggressively, with the handicap and boosted speed they will still develop fast.
• Give yourself and the AIs +100% handicap.
• Set Game Speed on Fast.
• At the start of the game, check your home city to calculate how much XP you will need to have obtained 30 000 XP in the game, unlike in the 2007 version it will not tell you once you reach the cap.
• First build trading posts everywhere you can for the bonus XP, then build an army of cannons to destroy enemy buildings easily, those give the most XP, and fire away at any army coming your way. You have a lot of resources so you can just keep sending canons after canons to get as much XP as possible. Once you hit the cap resign if there are still many AIs alive, the 2000 XP victory bonus is not worth the wasted time chasing every enemy settler down.
• If you didn’t check how much XP you started with, look how many shipments you’ve sent. With the Spanish, 30 000 XP is enough to send 23 shipments in total, with other civs it should be 21.

Note: Reloading saved games after finishing the games will not grant you any additional XP if your home city level is currently higher than it was when the game was saved.

Miscellaneous

Content Creator

• Make your first Scenario in the Scenario Editor:
• Head into the Scenario Editor from Tools, click on File at the top left, then Save.

The Tommynator

• Use the ‘tuck tuck tuck’ cheat:
• Press Enter and type tuck tuck tuck. You now know how to cheese all victory chievos.

Every moment I live… is agony

• Revive your fallen Explorer:
• Let your explorer die and heal to 100 HP, then walk to him with any unit to revive him.

Imperial Age

• Advance to the Imperial Age with any Civilization:
• Simply go to Age V.

Strike!

• Kill at least 10 enemy troops from a rolling cannonball:
• The easiest way to get this is as follows:
• Start a Deathmatch game with cheats enabled against one or more AIs. I recommend playing against the Chinese or the Russians since their armies tend to be more quantitative than qualitative.
• When the game starts, build a Capitol and research Spies quickly in order to be able to see the size and location of the enemy armies.
• Use the cheat code ‘speed always wins’ so that the AIs can train their armies a lot faster.
• Use the cheat code ‘ya gotta make do with what ya got’ to spawn the most powerful piece of artillery in the game.
• Send your so-called Mediocre Bombard towards the enemy and once you see a large chunk of enemies piled together, fire away at the frontline. It did it on my first try so if this doesn’t work for you just keep trying until you get the achievement.
• As of a recent update, Strike! is now obtainable in the Scenario Editor, so you could also try doing it there by placing a cannon and loads of enemy units to fire at.

My Hero

• Rescue 100 People in need of help:
• Kill guardians holding people hostage from the treasures scattered around every map.

They belong in a museum!

• Collect at least 100 treasure objects from maps in any mode:
• Collect treasures objects scattered around every map.

A Pirate’s Life for Me

• Destroy at least 100 ships in any mode:
• You can use the Scenario Editor to speed this one up.

Cathedral Assist

• Build an Advanced; Mill, Market, Arsenal, Dock, Trading Post and Estate in a single game: equip the required cards in your deck first, European civs only.

Wonders

• Build all 15 Wonders:
• Build each of the 5 Wonders from each Asian civ, you can only build 4 in one game.

Faith

• Convert 100 neutral or enemy units:
• Use the the Incas’ priestesses’ convert power 100 times.

Elephant in the Room

• Build 100 Elephant units in a single game:
• Play as the Indians in a Post-Imp Deathmatch game. You’ll start with 20k resources.

Shipments

You don’t need wings to fly

• Deploy an Advanced Balloon:
• Equip the above card from the European civs’ Trading Company and ship it.

The comforts of home

• Receive at least 100 shipments total from your home city in any mode
• Cumulative between games.

To the seas!

• Deploy ‘3 Galleys’ from your shipments as the Ottomans:
• Equip the above card from the Harbor in your deck and ship it at age III.

War Wagons

• Deploy ‘4 War Wagons + 4 Uhlans’ from your shipments as the Germans:
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Fierce Cavalrymen of Tartars

• Deploy ‘9 Cavalry Archery’ from your shipments as the Russians:
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Big Brothers

• Deploy ‘6 Cuirassier’ from your shipments as the French:
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Pike and Shot!

• Deploy ’24 Pikeman’ from your shipments as the Spanish:
• Equip the above card from the Torre del Oro in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Congreve Rockets

• Deploy ‘2 Rockets’ from your shipments as the British:
• This refers to the purple repeatable card from the Military Academy on age IV.

Riders!

• Deploy ’17 Ruyters’ from your shipments as the Dutch:
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Ribauldequin

• Deploy ‘5 Organ Guns’ from your shipments as the Portuguese:
• Equip the above card from the Military Academy in your deck and ship it at age IV.

Animals

Animal hunter

• Hunt all animal species:
• The description is wrong, you actually need to kill a total of 500 animals currently, this includes both those hunted for food by villagers and treasure guardians.
• If you want to go fast, head into the Scenario Editor and make a trigger with Unit Create Multi as its effect. Select the Alligator, player 2, type a high number in Count, and set the area where you want them to spawn. Place anything powerful like a Lil’ Bombard nearby as player 1 so you can kill them all instantly. Then test/play the scenario as player 1 to slay the beasts.
• Note that the weird 0/500 counter for this achievement will never progress. ‘We need more wood!’ also has the same broken counter for a reason I am clueless about.

Animal Whisperer

• Control all pets.

Use a War Chief to convert treasure guardians into pets, list of what you need:

Buttercup the Pet Cougar

• Found as a treasure guardian commonly on many maps.
• Ally with Tupi tribe (Amazonia, Pampas) and research Tupi Animal Lore.

Gentle Pete the Pet Bear

• Found on North American maps.

Honcho the Pet Grizzly Bear

• Found on North American maps (California, Great Plains).

Fang the Tame Coyote

• Found on NA maps (Rockies, Great Plains, Texas, Painted Desert, Sonora).
• Trained by Lakotas with the Smoke Signals HC card.

Buck the Tame Wolf

• Found in most North American maps.
• Deployed from the Lakota home city.
• Trained with the High Chief card from the Haudenosaunee home city.
• Not to be confused with the coyote above.

Janey the Pet Jaguar

• Found on tropical maps (Yucatan).
• Deployed from the Aztec home city.

Lhota the Pet Lion

• Found on Asian maps (Mongolia, Deccan, Yellow River, and Silk Road).
• Deployed from the Indian home city.

Randy the Pet Rhino

• Found in Asian maps (Borneo, Indochina).
• Deployed from the Indian home city.

Axehilt the Tame Tiger

• Found in nearly every Asian map.
• Deployed from the Indian home city.

Wagner the Pet White Tiger

• Research White Tiger Training from the Indian monastery.

Kermond the Pet Monitor Lizard

• Found on Asian maps (Indochina, Borneo) as a Komodo Dragon.
• Deployed from the Japanese home city.
• Rescued from treasures in Yellow River and Silk Road.

Old Doug the Orangutan

• Found on Asian maps (Borneo, Ceylon).
• Trained from Marathan Catamarans and Wokou Junks (Asian shipments).

Pete-Pete the the Pet Panda

• Found in Yellow River and Silk Road.

Big Jerome the Pet Polar Bear

• Found in Saguenay and Yukon.

Duber the Pet Monkey

• Rescued from treasures in Siberia.

Freitag the Pet Macaque

• Rescued from treasures in Indochina and the Himalayas.

Play on Deathmatch to have the entire map revealed to yourself right as your start and facilitate your search.

Once again if you have no honor and really wish to cheese this achievement instead of hunting every animal down, you can choose to head into the Scenario Editor, go to Objects, Place Object, Units category, and then scroll for all the units that start with ‘Pet’. Place them all on the map and you will obtain the achievement.

We Need More Wood!

We need more wood!

• Build every building:
• Doesn’t work in the Scenario Editor. Wonders required too.

Find the list of all required buildings below. This achievement is reportedly glitched but the cause has been found to be linked to certain Wonders not registering as being built. If you have built everything and cannot get the achievement to pop, build the 4th Chinese Wonder (Temple of Heaven) during the Exploration Age. If you still cannot get the achievement, trying going through everything a 2nd time or rebuilding all Wonders in a different order.