Lumber camps should also be built because forests will be cut down, and new lumber camps will decrease the walking time that is gradually being increased.

This is especially important in the castle age, as rushers will target lumberjacks that are normally found outside the town center vicinity (when you garrison, the lumberjacks will not head to the town center).

Unlike the mills, more lumber camps should be built.The town centers being created should prevent you from having to build another mill. Reseeding is important, as manually reseeding is annoying and, when you're micromanaging your military during rushes or simply all-out attacks, very frustrating. Keep expanding your civilization.Keep building more farms with your newly created villagers. New villagers should be allocated evenly to food, wood, and gold, but it is important to have about 8 villagers on stone. In order to continue with the steady flow of villager creation, you'll need to remember to frequently build houses with your lumberjacks. Create more villagers from your town center.In the Castle Age, you'll want to build 2 to 3 more town centers for optimal growth. If you need to, trade resources in the market. Town centers, along with the 275 wood, also cost 100 stone. Building more town centers is extremely important to your civilization as you can create more villagers using both town centers. If you do not have enough wood, make sure you stock up 275 wood, and then build the town center. Farms, ideally, should be located around the town center, as they can garrison, but if you run out of room, farms can be located around the mill.ДЄs with previous ages, there are a few things that should be done in very quick succession: Select three villagers from wood and create a town center in a strategic place, preferably next to a forest and a gold or stone mine (if all three are found next to each other, then that is ideal). Farms are based on wood, and you may even need to allocate food-gathering villagers to chopping wood. 60 wood is the requirement, and you'll need to create some farms because your deer and berries will be exhausted of food. Farms are the primary source of food later on, but can be made in the Dark Age.No more than 3 villagers should be allocated to gold. Some civilizations start out with -100 gold, and it is highly recommended to get a head-start on gold. While you don't need gold to advance to the Feudal Age, it is important to start in the Dark Age (or at least while researching Feudal) because you won't be in the Feudal Age for very long. Build a mining camp next to your gold pile located near your town center.You should have about 10-12 villagers on wood. Some new villagers should be allocated to wood, which is very important from the Feudal Age on. Keep building houses until you can support 35 population. Keep creating villagers until you get to 30 population. Have the other villager chop wood near the town center.The 4 sheep will be converted to your colors and you can continue scouting for the other 4 sheep (in pairs) that are farther away, the berries, two boars, deer (not available on some maps), gold mines, and stone mines. If this occurs, have the scout go to where the sheep is. Occasionally, one of the sheep may already be visible in the fog. Finding the 4 initial sheep is critical in the Dark Age - the earlier they are sighted, the better. Select your scout and scout around what is currently visible to you.Once the two houses are completed, have the two villagers build a lumber camp near a forest (your scout should have already found at least one by now). Do not have one villager build one house each - both villagers build one house at a time in order to keep the steady flow of villager creation. This will temporarily increase the population to 15, allowing more villagers to be created. This pattern is perhaps the most important hotkey pattern in the game. Thus, the fastest way to do this is to press H and then press shift-C. The default hotkeys are H for town center and C to create a villager (only after selecting the town center). Immediately create 4 villagers from the town center, depleting all 200 food.When the game begins, there are a few steps that must be done in very quick succession:

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