Construction Information For Beginners (written by Auratus)

Construction

Well, if you queue up say 16 buildings for construction all at once, it'll be sometime before any are done. Some less important ones may even finish before certain others that were queued sooner. The trick is to find an order that also steady construction will other needed things are happening.

For example, grain farms take a little while to get started, so don't build it, the mill, water hut, and baker all at once. Let the farm get built first. Do other things, then come back to finish the grain industry. Don't get more than 5 or so buildings queued up at once. If you do, pause them until the proper time.

Build a few small towers, but don't go gun-ho on them until you have a solid wood and stone industry going. Lastly, if you have very few builders and diggers get more. 15 to 20 of each works well for me. Get more from loose hammers and shovels on the ground... or make more hammers and shovels at the proper time as implied below.

Anyway... I generally go about it like this (order is priority):

Lumber Industry: 1 saw mill, 2 choppers, 1 forester;

Stone: 2 stone collecting huts and/or 1 or 2 stone mines if food is available for the miners. A small or medium residence if the population starts low;

Lumber: another set (1 saw/ 2 choppers), plus 3 foresters;

Fish: two fishing huts if rods are available (queue fish distribution to all mines); a storage house (for loose tools to see what I have that might be hidden); a grain farm; an iron ore mine; a coal mine; an iron smith; a tool smith; a wind mill; a water hut; a bakery; another medium residence; a weapons smith if hunters are not available; two hunters; another grain farm;

Stone: check supply of it and build more stone collectors if needed; another bakery; a large residence; the list goes on.

Eventually I'll have 5 coal mines, 2 iron mines, 3 gold mines, 4 gold smiths, 4 iron smiths, 3 weapons smiths, 2 or 3 barracks, and two complete sets of eye-catchers.

Plus... build a mana economy depending on the scenario and need.

Now, of course the priority may need to be adjusted per the scenario or map circumstances. This build-out is what I generally go for on most maps. I increase it when it seems needed.

Many folks build much more! So don't hang your hat on it, but many of the scenarios can be won with it. Also, all my maps are designed around this build-out. It results in a fair game that doesn't require soldier numbers up into the thousands. I try to keep that from happening on my maps due to the slow-down effect on most people's computers from having so many soldiers around on either the player's side and/or the AI's side.