Well, for early game ship 3 vills, age up at 4:15-4:30 (depends on starting wood, always build 2 houses if you start with 300 or find a treasure) with 16-17 vills. Put a market up during age up and research hunting and chopping upgrades. Send 2 vills forward (yes, forward) in a spot that gives you access to at least 2 more groups of hunts and a large chunk of wood.
As soon as you age up, build a rax and ship 2 towers, putting your age up tower forward next to your rax. When the towers arrive, place them forward aswell, giving you 3 towers and a forward rax a few seconds after the time that they age up. The moment your rax is up start making longbows. Next shipment is 700 wood, which should be used on housing, lbows, and the second hunting upgrade. You should have a near even distribution of vills on wood/food.
You should have 15 lbows by the time he has 33 strelets. Combined with your towers, there should be no difficulty here. If he retreats, ship virginia company and start manor booming. If he tries to push, ship 6 lbows and fend off his attacks. You always want to send VC at some point, as it's one of the best deals in the game. Subsequent cards are usually 5 vills, 4 vills, fencing school, etc. Just keep spamming lbows, and if you dont wear them down in colonial head to fortress and get falcs. It's a tough game, but works out in the end.