• Immediately create 4 villagers from the town center, depleting all 200 food. The default hotkeys are H for town center and C to create a villager (only after selecting the town center). Thus, the fastest way to do this is to press H and then press shift-C. The shift selects 5 at a time. This pattern is perhaps the most important hotkey pattern in the game.
• Have two villagers build two houses. This will temporarily increase the population to 15, allowing more villagers to be created. 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. 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).
• Select your scout and scout around what is currently visible to you. Finding the 4 initial sheep is critical in the Dark Age - the earlier they are sighted, the better. Occasionally, one of the sheep may already be visible in the fog. If this occurs, have the scout go to where the sheep is. 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.
• Have the other villager chop wood near the town center.

• You can set the difficulty level. Easiest is really easy, standard is like normal in some other games, moderate is pretty hard for some people, hard is extremely hard, and very hard is practically impossible (because the enemy uses cheats! If you set the speed to slow, it makes it easier so you can do more things in a less amount of time. However, it is slower than the normal time, so if you have plenty of time, go for it.
• MAKE SURE YOU SET THE SPEED ON 'FAST', or else you will be moving in slow motion the whole time, and that stinks...Also make sure your map is zoomed out as far as it can go, found in the top right corner under 'Options' I think.

1. There is a fun setting called Regicide where you start with a king, along with the usual stuff, it is easier this way because you only have to kill your enemies' kings and they only have to kill yours, but it's fun building things to protect him.

2. You can hotkey him, or any unit/ group of units by holding down crtl and a number. When you press the number, it will have them selected. If you still have that unit selected, but went somewhere else on the map, you can press the space bar and it will go back to him.

3. Check your enemies' civilizations before the game starts to see what you should pick as a civ, certain civilizations are better against others usually based on special units, which are built in the castle. If you have already started the game, you can check them at the top right. If they have the Persians, for example, build lots of Halberdiers because they take them down like swatting flies, they are also good against paladins. Another plus is that they are cheap.

4. A good civilization is the Saracens, their special camel unit will take down pretty much anything, just keep them at a distance from what they attack, like horse archers.

5. The Huns don't have to build houses, I guess because they are nomadic, but their special unit is only good against buildings for the most part.

6. Food is a very important resource that you can always find more of, unlike wood, gold, and stone, if it's used right. Build tons of farms as much as you can, and hotkey your mill so that when they need to be reseeded and you're busy, you can press #8 and then space and reseed them, while reseeding the ones already dead.

7. If you have an ally/allies, build your market as far away as possible from them, and have them build theirs far away from you, and build at least 20 trade carts. The farther your market is, the more resources you get.

8. When or if you play regicide, play at a black forest map, or islands. For islands, it may be time consuming, but try to wall off the entire island with the exception of a few gates, not even allowing enough room for a transport to land, because that is your greatest threat playing at that map. For Black Forest, have at least one siege onager (be sure to pick a civilization that has them because only 4 do, and the Saracens are one). Use this siege onager to blow out trees, either by telling it to attack the tree as it would a unit, or by telling it to attack ground, but change it every time you need to blow out an area. You can make trails through the woods and build a safe place for your king there, or you can blow out a trail to your enemies area. Built outposts in the trails until you find a place your enemy doesn't have much activity, and send in at least 5 trebuchets to blow the castle up fast, or use petards. Because a king is fast, you need archer or ranged units to kill him. - Also you don't always need units of every kind from every building to win, find something you like and can use well and go with it. Have other units if needed, but I mainly use cavalry because they are fast. 9. A useful thing to download for this Age of Empires is GameRanger, you can play people online and it's free. I prefer playing against friends and family at home connected to a private router, but if you have no one to play but computers, you may like GameRanger. If you can't beat a computer on medium or hard, you might not do well against online regulars (no lives), and if you do get beaten, remember if they are better than you, they have no life, and if you beat them they are a noob lol.

10. Also, there is an addition to the game that came out in December of lat year called Forgotten Empires, it has Italians and other new civilizations, units, and things in Map If you did spend time reading all this, good luck to you, and if you didn't, I would have most likely done the same