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Age II has four resources, and these four resources are more or less important as the ages progress. In the Dark Age, food is your most important resource because you need it to create food and advance to the Feudal Age. Wood is necessary because you need some to build two buildings for age advancement and several houses to support more villagers. In the Dark Age, you should have 75 percent of your villagers on food and 25 percent on wood. If you want to get a jump on gold to field a Feudal Age army, you might want to start changing that to 60 percent food, 30 percent wood, and 10 percent gold once you start advancement.
In the very early game, in the Dark Age, you must get most of your food from sheep, game, fish, and other sources. When first searching for food, sheep provide the fastest food, followed by fish and berry bushes. Boar and deer provide lots of food but in intermittent bursts, as villagers gather 35 food before returning to a mill or town center. Farming is good because it is absolutely reliable and also produces vast quantities of food. When first gathering food, setting five villagers apiece to hunting, sheep, and berry bushes is a good bet. When sheep and bushes run out, having a team of five hunters amidst your farming force is still a good idea, especially if you are the Mongols or Goths. In the Feudal Age, you need lots of wood to build farms and more buildings and because some technologies require it. Gold and stone also become important because troops require gold and defenses require stone. In addition, gold is needed for some technologies. Advancement to the Castle Age requires much more food and two hundred gold. Food still remains your primary resource, followed by wood, then gold, and then stone. If you want defenses, stone will become a higher priority. If you want to support troops and lots of research, gold becomes a higher priority. At this stage, you want to split your villagers so 50 percent are on food, 30 percent on wood, 10 on gold, and 10 on stone. One thing to note is that if you want to build a castle immediately upon hitting Castle Age, you must devote more villagers to stone mining, thus changing it so that 20 percent of your villagers are on stone. That way, when you get to Castle Age, you can have a castle right away. As always, consider what you are playing toward. If you want to go heavy on siege weapons to knock out your opponent early, you must stockpile lots of wood in anticipation of when you arrive in the Castle Age, so you might have 40 percent of your villagers on wood. If you want to go heavy on knights, you'll need as much gold as food. The key is to plan ahead and start gathering so you have a stockpile ready, rather than advancing first and then collecting the necessary resources. In the Castle Age, your gold requirements are much higher, so you'll now need about as much gold as you do wood. In addition, if you are going to build more castles, stone will be a big priority. Now is the time when your war machine will be cranking on all cylinders, so you need lots of food, wood, and gold. In this age, you probably need more food then gold, wood, and stone. You also must dynamically adjust your villager allocation as you see your stockpiles growing or shrinking in a particular area. When you have a large surplus of wood and want to crank out more troops, turn some lumberjacks to farmers. If you have lots of food but need gold, make some farmers turn to mining. In the Imperial Age, gold moves even higher up on your must-have list. Food remains a premium because many upgrades for super units, like paladins and heavy horse archers, require lots of food and gold. The resource priority remains the same as in the Castle Age: food, gold, wood, and stone. Of course, circumstances can change this priority. On water maps, wood is more important than food because you must field a large navy. If you are going for a wonder, stone is more important than gold, because you must build lots of walls, towers, and of course, the wonder. Remember that as far as the availability of resources, food is unlimited, while wood and gold are abundant. Stone, though, is in very short supply. |
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