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You start with a town center and four workers. What you do in the first ten minutes decides the whole match, and it is roughly the same every time.

The first minute#

1. 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.
2. Start training more workers at your town center, and do not stop for a while. A worker pays for itself inside a minute.
3. Send your scout out. You want to know where the big veins are, where your opponent is, and where the forest boxes you in. Auto-scouting 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. Do not leave it too late: the Bronze Age brings the barracks, the archery range and your first real units. It is also where you pick your civilization.

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.

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.