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An opening is nothing more than an order you no longer have to think about while you are playing. Three of them are below. They are not gospel — the map type, what your scout finds and what your opponent does all weigh more than any plan.

The numbers worth knowing by heart#

One farm plot yields 350 food and costs 50 wood. Eight of them fit around your mill.

1. The wide opening — economy first#

The safest of the three, and the best one to start with. You keep building until you have thirty workers and only then advance to the Bronze Age.

1. All four workers on food. Berries if they are close; they pay back fastest.
2. Keep training workers. Not one, not three — never let the town center stand idle. A worker costs 50 food and earns it back within a minute.
3. Workers 5 and 6 on wood. No wood means no mill, no farms and no buildings.
4. Around worker 8: the mill, somewhere open near your town with room for farms around it.
5. Two or three farm plots as soon as the wood is in. Turn on replanting.
6. Lumber camp at the forest, mining camp at the first stone vein. Build them where you harvest, not where they look tidy — walking distance is half your yield.
7. Scout out, or auto-scouting on. You want to know the big veins and your neighbours.
8. Around 25–30 workers: mine the 100 stone for the Bronze Age and advance.

What this buys you: an economy that runs twice as hard after fifteen minutes as one belonging to someone who made soldiers too early. What it costs: you are vulnerable for those fifteen minutes.

2. The fast Bronze Age#

Everything you have goes towards 500 food, 300 wood and 100 stone, and nothing else. You reach the Bronze Age minutes ahead of the wide opening and get the barracks, archery range and better units first.

• Only train workers you put to work immediately on food, wood or stone.
• No barracks, no tower, no second expansion before you advance.
• Count on being unable to afford anything else for a minute and a half while you advance. Keep three or four spearmen around, or be certain nothing is coming.

This works well on map types where you are hard to reach — woodland boxes you in with forest, and that forest is a wall until someone cuts a path through it.

3. Early pressure#

Not to win the match outright, but to knock your opponent off his plan. After a short economic start you build a barracks or archery range and send four to six units to wherever his workers are standing.

• Spearmen (60 food, 20 wood) are cheapest in wood and hold off cavalry. Against workers they do fine.
• Archers (30 food, 50 wood) cost more wood, but they cut through infantry and can hit the worker who runs.
• Go for workers at a vein far from his town, not for the wall of his town center. Four workers not gathering for two minutes cost him more than the damage you do.
• Set your units to defensive before sending them, or they will chase the first scout they see.

The price: every unit you make now is a worker you do not make. If the pressure fails and you lose your army, you are behind.

What to do against each of them#

And after that?#

Past the Bronze Age things diverge and a plan stops being useful. What stays: keep making workers until about thirty, never let a building stand idle, and advance the moment you can afford it — with an army on the field.

Read on: the economy, what beats what and the ages.