Your first match
The first ten minutes: what to do with four workers, and why you are in a hurry.
You start with a town center and four workers, plus whatever your people brings along (more on that below). What you do in the first ten minutes decides the whole match, and it is roughly the same every time.
The first minute#
- Put all four workers to work. Right-click berries or the forest near your town. They gather, bring it home and go back on their own.
- Start training more workers at your town center, and do not stop for a while. A worker pays for itself inside a minute.
- Get a scout out. Train one at your town center (the Mongols start with two). You want to know where the big veins are, where your opponent is, and where the forest boxes you in. The Explore button does the work if you would rather not.
The first five minutes#
Berries run out. Before they do, put down a mill somewhere open near your town: it is the drop-off for food, and eight farm plots fit around it. Turn on replanting at the mill and those plots come back by themselves when they are exhausted.
A lumber camp at the forest and a mining camp at the first vein save you half a minute of walking on every trip. Build them where you are going to harvest, not where they look tidy.
To the Bronze Age#
Once you have 500 food, 300 wood and 100 stone you can advance at your town center. The barracks, the archery range and the stable are available from the start; the Bronze Age brings the university, the workshop, the market and better units — the swordsman, the composite archer, the chariot and the ram.
Expect to be unable to afford anything else while you advance. Being attacked at exactly that moment is a problem — so keep a few spearmen around and make sure your scout knows whether something is coming.
Your people#
Your civilization you already picked in the lobby. Its trait and bonuses count from the first minute, its unique unit shows up in the age it belongs to — and every people starts a little differently, misses something the others have, and has two technologies of its own.
| People | Starts with | Never gets | Own research |
|---|---|---|---|
| Franks | A watchtower by the town center; fort from the Bronze Age | Musketeer, line infantry, rifleman | Feudalism, Order of Knights |
| Norse | Three spearmen; barracks at half price | Fort | Strandhogg, Berserkergang |
| Greeks | Mill 40% cheaper; farms last three times as long | Cavalry after the knight | Olive Groves, Phalanx Drill |
| Mongols | Two scouts | Walls, gates, watchtowers, university | Yam, Mangudai |
| Arabs | Market already in the Stone Age | Infantry after the pikeman | Caravanserai, Siege Masters |
| Chinese | Two extra workers, but 100 less food | Cavalry after the cataphract | Great Wall, Gunpowder |
The game shows the same on the Civilizations screen and in the tooltip on your people's name at the top of the screen.
What you are going to get wrong#
- Too few workers. Keep making them until you have thirty. Almost everybody stops too early.
- Forgetting food. No food, no workers and no age. Farms are boring and essential.
- Building everything in one clump. You need room around your town: farms, walls, a place for the barracks.
- Not scouting. If you do not know the map, your army is standing in the wrong place.
Once the basics are in: on to the economy and to what beats what.