Disclaimer: I don’t know everything, but I’ve been playing on server one for a long time and have been through just about everything. I’m only posting this stuff as a guide. Believe me or not, it’s up to you.
City build – as you play, you’ll find that there are 3 things that are extremely important: resources, army and research. Overbuilding your farms, lumber mills, etc., early is a great way to ensure you always have resources to build whatever you need. In order to produce the army you will need, having several barracks is essential. Each barrack you have cuts build time by that number (ex - building in 1 barrack takes 200 min; 10 takes 20 min, get it?), so build a LOT. I’ve posted an example that I followed on server1 in another thread. Having a high level of each tech is a great advantage. If you examine the benefits closely, a high archery, compass, military science, can make a huge difference.
Scouting – when you scout anything, use as many scouts as you can and even include a high intelligence hero for an extra boost. Also, if you’re scouting a lvl3 npc, you should have at least lvl4 informatics to get good intel.
Troops
Early in the game the #1 advantage you can have is archers. ARCHERS RULE THIS GAME. They’re cheap, don’t eat too much and have great range. Naturally, cataphracts, ballistas, and catapults are better, but they’re way too expensive and they eat a ton of food per hour. It would be wise to have 1k scouts, 1k pike, swords, warriors, workers, and 10 k archers as soon as you can when your protection runs out. Anyone that sees this early probably won’t attack you, and you can win most battles with this many troops early on.
When you do launch an attack, be sure to use the ‘Darwin’ method. To show you the effect of this, go to your rally spot and exercise 2500 archers vs 10k warriors. Ugly right? Now, do the same thing with 2500 archers and 1 each warrior, sword, worker, pikeman, cavalry, and scout. Hey!! Big difference there and all you did was add 6 troops and you dominated.
