When your second Town Centre is finished, take five woodcutters and have them build (5) farms around this new Town Centre.

Build a university, a siege workshop and a castle.

Note that this is not particularly important in team games, because trade is a much more efficient source of gold, but make a huge difference in a 1 vs 1 match.

Build a monastery, and when finished, create monks to hunt down those relics.

Take your woodcutters and have them building a second Town Centre.

Create five more villagers and send them in wood.

You should be able to advance immediately. There is no need to exploit gold or stone at this point in the game, wait for Feudal Age. 1 scout, 14 farmers/hunters/gatherers and 20 woodcutters.

When your finished, you should have a population of 35 individuals.

At 30 population: Create 5 last villagers, and send them in woodcutting.

Be weary of depleting your sources of food, start creating farms around your Town Centre and Mill if you can.

At this point, the villagers you send will go into foraging/hunting.

Continue creating villagers, and you will soon reach 25 population.

Soon, you should have 100 wood, at this point, build a lumber camp close to a nearby forest.

When he's finished, send him back to woodcutting.

When you have enough wood (60), take a woodcutter and make him build three more houses.

Now you must continue creating villagers, that you will send in wood (10 total).

When you have ten population: At this point, you should have enough foragers/hunters to support continuously creating villagers.

Note that all new villagers will also go in food, until you have ten population (9 villagers + 1 scout) Right now we will ignore deer and boar, because deer take up too much time, and board will kill your villagers. Otherwise, in the advent sheep, bring them to your Town Centre. If that source is forage or fish, then build a mill next to it.

Now, our three starting villagers should be finished with real estate, and you should have found a nearby source of food (forage, sheep, fish, etc.).

Next, go to your Town Centre and queue up 4 villagers.

While this is being done, select your scout, and set concentric waypoints around your base, in order to find sources of food as quickly as possible.

The first thing you want to do is to select all you villagers and build three houses.

OK, so you start with 3 villagers - and a scout.

You shouldn't stay there more than fifteen minutes (based on the game's inbuilt clock) and should have 29 villagers before upgrading to Feudal.

You will want to build up the foundations of an efficient economy without taking up too much time. It's also the most important when it comes to economy. The dark age is probably the roughest part of the game, and the least fun.

Age of empires 2 won t start