"Random Map Game: The key is speed. A 6:45 time to the castle age is good; a 6:30 time is extremely good and a 6:15 time is unbelievabely good. Anything under 8:30 is tolerable. If you get a castle up before the other person gets to you, until the Imperial Age, you are pretty much garranteed to survive, even if they rush you. If you think about it what can militia and Men at Arms do to a castle, even without murder holes?

If your really having trouble conquering someone try a multiple proint attack. Divide your forces in half (or more if you have enough) and attack from different directions. The biggest element of this is surprise so if your playing all revealed it really won't work very well. You will wnat ot hit the strongest place of his defences first, and then swing in with your other forces (being careful of castles) and slaughter villagers.

The Best civilization to do this with is the Byzantines( even if "experts" dod enjoy knowcking them around) because of their fast, strong, smart, over all powerful, unique unit.

As far as i'm concerned the Best civilization for beginers or experst is the Byzantines. Thier UU isprobably the most wellrounded unit in the game. The only two units that can beat them one on one are the Paladin and the War Elephant, and both of these are easily countered by the Byzantines cheap pikemen. (26 food, 15 wood) Their building bonus is absolutely amazing (castles get over 8000 hit points fully reaserched.) and all the building get it. Pikeman, Skirmisher, and Camel are all extremely cheap. They have the 3rd best monks in the game (Spanish and Aztecs have the best), and the Imperial Age research is only 667 Food and 536 gold.

If you enjoy archery, the Britons are by far the best civilization for this. Overall they come in 2nd (behind the Byzantines), but are mostly a defensive Civ. In order to launch a good offensive attack, you will have to get a lot of longbowmen (2 or 3 groups of 40 to be effective). To make the longbowmen even more effective intermix them with monks and cavaliers.

Here's our list of top ten civilizations in AOE. You may not agree, it depends a lot on your style of play. There are also a lot of counter civilizations, so this list will not always be accurate, for example: The Saracens counter the Franks extremely well (Mamalukes attack bonus vs. cavalry), but you wouldn't want to use them to counter the Britons because mamelukes are not good against archers or infantry. (We plan to post a counter list of civilizations soon) 1. Byzantines 2. Britons 3. Persians 4. Franks 5. Turks 6. Teutons 7. Mongols 8. Saracens 9. Celts 10 Japanese

Keep in Mind that everyone's style of play is different. A group of 6 of us just came up with this a guidline.

If you are a beginner and your geting frustrated with the gae, just be patient. If your lucky it will only take you a year or so to get good (it took me 4 or 5) Just keep playing. Try challenging games, but not to much over your skill level that you get beat up on. Get on the zone sometime to test your skill against others, or if you have any friends who play get together with them and play. Just keep playing and you will get it eventually." - Fatal