-Keep making vilagers tell your have around 70.
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-Make sure your ressorces are always as close to 0 as possible by spending on the most usefull units and upgrades and only dont spend ressorces if saving for a tech or age advance.
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-Learn and use counter units. There are 2 types of counter units.

Soft Counters

Use infantry (hoplites, ulfsarks, spearmen) against cavalry(raiding cavalry, hippikons, prodomos, camels).

Use cavalry (raiding cavalry, hippikons, camels) against archers(toxotes, throwing axemen, slingers, chariot archers, peltast).

Use archers (toxotes, throwing axemen, chariot archers) against infantry(ulfsark, spearmen, axemen, throwing axemen, hoplites).

Those counter units win because of armor and other factors like speed but they do not necessarily get bonusses against them.

Hard Counters

All civs have special units that get bonusses against certain unit types but arent as good against others.

Greek get hard counters in heroic age from their 3 barrack types.

Each barrack type trains 1 base unit and 1 Hard counter unitex: Hoplite and Hypatist). The hard counter trained counters the same type of unit as the barrack type it comes out from (ex: hypatist gets bonus vs infantry).

Norse dont realy get hard counters except the huskarl which gets a bonus against archers (the only infantry that can kill archers). Their units become hard counters with upgrades althought like ulfsarks with swine array kill cavalry even faster with a bonus.

Egypt get a mix of hard counters and Soft counters in classical age and have a soft counter and hard counter for each unit type.

Against :

cavalry: soft counter = spearmen / hard counter =camels

infantry: soft counter = chariot archers / hard counter = axemen

archers: soft counter = camels / hard counter = slingers

Also its very important to have your heroes attacking myth units at all costs.
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-Make sure your buildings never go idle as long as you have ressorces. Never stop producing vilagers(see point above) from town centers and this also goes to your barracks which should be constently be producing your army tell you get max pop filling your population with the appropriate units (see counter units above).
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-Upgrades

Make sure you either get husbandry or hunting dogs depending on the map. If theres lots of hunting animals ( atleast 2 groups) get hunting dogs and if not then get husbandry.

When upgrading your army, remember that the quantity is more important than the quality, meaning a bigger army will beat a better upgraded army. Start upgrading units when you get around 15 of it (ex: medium cavalry when you get 15 raiding cavalry).

For the armory upgrades play by ear. If you are max population and have the important upgrades like medium units then its time to start upgrading your units armor. If you fighting near his towers, upgrade pierce with shield upgrades (3rd in order). If your fighting infantry or cavalry start upgrading hack armor with the plate upgrades (2nd in order). If you have your hack armor upgraded and still have food and gold then upgrade your weapons.
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-Learn the weaknesses and forces of your god, which gods hes good against and bad against and all his possible strategies (ex: if your odin, you need to know hes weak on water, good on heavy food, hill fort units bonus, possible strategies : raiding, fast heroic, containing, booming etc.
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-Population

Its important to watch your poppulation for numerous reasons. In archaic age always build a house 2 population before being maxed out (ex: build first house when pop is at 13/15). Once classical you should be building them as your eco allows even tho your still 10 pop from being maxed since with 3 or 4 barracks and town center population fills faster. Try to grab as many town centers as you can starting with the most advanced ones. They give you more population but mostly allow you to build vilagers faster.
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-Map Control

Having control of the map is one of the most important things in this game. The person who controls the most town centers and ressorces will most likely win. If you take control of all the gold mines, your opponent wont be able to make any soldiers without gold, craving your opponent of gold or other ressorces and town center is called containing.

Assuming map control can be done in various ways. Having los (line of sight) of an area is partly map control since you can monitor his movements. Having soldiers guarding an area is even more map control since you can defend the area and say its 'yours'. Having buildings guarding an imporant area is whats best, especially shooting buildings like forts, towers and town centers.

Difference between smart map control and useless map control.

The objective of map control is to claim important areas, usualy a concentration of gold mines or important pass inbetween your 2 bases.

Useless map control on the contrary is just putting your buildings anywhere you felt like without any use to that spot.

When you place your unit producing buildings (barracks and forts) make sure they are as close as possible to the battle field because the faster units join the battle as you die the more chances you have of winning it. Thats why fighting in someone elses base is harder because his units come out from his barracks straigh into the fight well yours have to cross half the map which gives him an advantage. If you start losing a fight, run back to your forward base(that you should of build somewhere smart) and if he follows you atleast youll have the advantage there. Well in the matter, dont fight losing battles. If you think your going to lose your army to his, then the smart thing to do is run and rebuild the lost units before continuing the attack. Also dont forgot that your units are probably damaged so heal if you can, might save you buying a new army.
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-Learn your maps

Knowing the caracteristics of the maps is important. You need to know which map usualy has hunting and where the gold and town centers are generally situated. Here are the principal caracteristics of each map gerated in random map.

Alfheim: The food varies from low to high, hunting to herdables. Be sure to scout well before making a choice in between husbandry and hunting dogs. Also there are cliffs a little all over which makes little gaps that are very easy to wall off.

Savana: Aggressive hunting animals, almost always get hunting dogs. Town centers are right next to your starting base so no aggressive town center grabs here. Very good for boomers(meaning small army and all out economy tell its huge).

Ghost lake: Very little gold is the principal factor of who wins and who loses on this map. Control the gold to win the game. Go for early trading if your opponent is getting more map control then you(remember the farther the market from the town center the more gold you get).

Anatolia: A lake on each side. Whats more important on this map if to take control of the center of the map, since you only start with 2 gold mines and the rest is all in the center. So whoever has the center wins.

Midgard: Water all around, but some times not many fish on 1 side but opponent still has lots (happens to me often). Be aware that the town centers are often in reach of siege ships so that could help you take down key town centers.

Watering hole: The best hunting map, always get hunting dogs. The water may not have any fish but when your opponent builds near it, he wont expect any ships firing at his units.

Mediteranean: The only water map where the water is almost a nessecity. Almost always try to get the water since fishing is a very add on to your food income.

Oasis: Almost no food most of the time. Get husbandry unless your lucky and get hunting. The map is very open so walls arent very effective.
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-Micromanegement(also called simply micro)

Microing is the act of controlling your units. There are 2 types of micro.

Economic Micro

Making sure you vilagers dont go idle. Try to always keep an eye on the icon telling you you have idle vilagers(vilagers that arent working). Vilagers should always be doing something or else they are just wasting your population. Keep them gathering in all cases.

Military Micro

Controlling units so they attack their target. Using units against what they counter(see counters higher up). Make you cavalry run around his army to kill the archers, well your archers are focus firing(all attacking 1 unit at a time) to kill his infantry before they kill your cavalry. If your micro is superior to your opponents you should win the battles unless he has way more units.

In water battles focus fire is what wins them. Select all your ships and tell them to shoot at 1 ship tell it breaks then the next ship that way you kill his ships faster. If you dont focus fire your ships he could end up with all his ships down to half hp but hardly any dead. Whats better half his ships or the same ammount of ships with less hp? If his ships are just weak but they aren't dead, they will just keep on killing yours and maybe wont die tell a while later.

Raiding is the hardest but the most effective micro, once you master it. Raiding is harrassing vilagers to stop them from gathering ressorces. It is best done with fast units, like cavalry, chariot archers and any fast myth unit.

Just sending 5 horses to attack your opponents hunting as soon as you get classical will hurt him alot, because he will have to retreat and wont be getting food for his army for a while, which can win you the game.

All civs have a principal ressorce. Greeks are very wood dependant so attacking his villagers gathering wood will hurt him alot, since he can neither make any buildings or any toxotes without wood. Eggypt need gold for [g]everything[/g] so attacking his miners will hurt him the most. Norse on the other hand need both gold and wood to keep their game going. All civs need food but once you push them off hunting, you can't really raid his farmers.

Once the game progresses, the opponent will have a pretty large base, so it also gets harder for him to be aware of everything thats going on. If your in the middle of a battle, its easy to send just 5 units to his gold miners and by the time he notices it will either be too late or he won't be able to replace his lost units.

When raiding, althought killing vilagers is a plus, the important is to stop them from gathering. If he sends units to defend his vilagers dont fight them, just run and since your cavalry are faster than his infantry its easy to do. Once he leaves the spot unprotected, just go right back.
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-Strategical thinking

With pratice, you will learn to guess your opponents next moves, which can help you conter them. If you could make him do what you want, it would be easy to win. Well good news, you might not be able to play for him but you force him into playing what you want him to. Guessing his next step is one thing, but deciding it is even better.

What if you send units to attack his far out gold miners, what is he most likely to do? Hes going to send them back to his nearest town center or defended area. So what would happen if you'd also have units on that path? He probably wont even notice since he'll just click near the closest town center on the minimap and then continue doing what he was doing and even if he does notice what would he do, send them half way accross the map, cause by the time they get there they are all dead anyway.

What if you attack on one side of his base with only half your army? He's going to send his to defend the area, but what he doens't know is that once he's going to get there all you have to do is run away that bunch and attack the other side with the other half of your army and just keep repeating. Also works with forward base, if you attack his main base, he'll send all he's got to defend it so once they get there just run and use that time to destroy his forward position.

At the beggining of the game, if you have more than 10 cavalry, group them in 2 groups (using ctrl+1 and ctrl+2).
Attack his wood operation with group #1, they will run and his army will be on its way over. Instead of wasting time doing nothing, he will send his vilagers to chop down the other forest, but he won't be expecting to have some cavalry waiting there and most likely won't have wood for a little while.

Be creative and invent your own strategies!
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Now all you have to do is apply all those tips and with practice and by wathcing expert players recorded games, you should get way better in no time. Happy improving!

41nT2L82Qu1T aka X2C_1mt0p_0_

Ps: I posted this in response to another topic asking for help improving. So I wrote this "guide" up and hopefully it might help other new players to. If you have anything I should add pls say so since I might of forgotten something important, from writting it in an hour.

[This message has been edited by X2C_41nT2L82Qu1T (edited 02-19-2005 @ 08:53 PM).]