What are the most underrated things in AoE3?

I'm curious what people's thoughts are here - what are the most underrated things in Age of Empires 3? I think there are two big things:

1. Native Settlements
2. Livestock

Native settlements provide some OP level stuff - first off they can provide a unit that your civ doesn't have, and second they have buffs like cav training time, extra villagers, and shipment level increases to attack and hitpoints. Oh and their units don't take up pop space!

Livestock gather so fast it's crazy. Sure it's somewhat micro intensive and takes a while to get going but you wind up having 20 vills on food and 80 on gold, it's that crazy fast. I've had treaty games where I out-gathered superior late game civs simply by building a few livestock pens.

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So what are your most underrated things in Age of Empires 3? What should we take a second look at implementing into our strategies?

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So there's no confusion here, I'm around 1250 elo in 1v1 maining the USA.