I'm one day into playing "with" the game.

[Wonton]

I'm about as green as they come and just slowly but surely trying to learn the basics. Yesterday I launched a single player game and before I knew it I was attacked in a swarm by an AI contingent and everything I had was destroyed. So I started a sandbox game for just me to familiarize myself with building and moving. Have watched most of the videos but there is a lot to learn.

So far, I'm totally impressed but would love to get pointed to other tools or support info, I'm a slow but steady wins the race kind of person and don't have a lot of time to invest but I plan to stick with it. At some point I would like to be able to put my toe in the water and try multi-player but I don't see that happening soon.

My next step, probably later this week will be to build another city with one AI. Any other suggestions are welcome. Thanks for having me.

W

[sanderd17]

I suggest you play the "starting economy walkthrough" map. Select "demo maps" in the map filter, you'll find it in that list.

Try this game (with the tutorial AI) a few times, until you get the hang of building up your economy.

If this is too difficult, you can also try the other tutorial map first "Introductory Tutorial", also under Demo maps.

Once you have your economy going, you still need to attack though. Currently the best way against the AI is to rush. Aegis won't attack until the 20th minute. So once you have your food and wood going, build some barracks, and produce ranged melee units as fast as you can (training in batches goes faster). When you have 10 units, run to the opposite side of the map to find the enemy (while you keep producing new units, if food production isn't fast enough to keep up, add a new field, if wood gathering isn't fast enough, add some workers there too). If you've found your enemy, try killing as much of his workers as you can, but try to keep out of range of the Civil Centre if possible. This way, the economy of the AI is completely broken, and he won't be able to keep up with you anymore.

Of course, this strategy will change in subsequent versions, when game statistics change, and the AI behaves different.

[greenknight32]

The main point is, food and wood early - you don't need to produce stone or metal until you've progressed beyond the village phase. Produce a mass of cheap troops at first, that's what the enemy does in the beginning.

It is possible to win by sitting back on defense and surviving the initial attack - but you have to produce troops like a maniac, and most of them will be wiped out in the first attack wave so you have to crank out more. You won't gain the upper hand until you can build towers to give you a defensive advantage. That's doing it the hard way.