1. STANDARD DECK is your first step of your gameplay practice. Each card should serve you in long term for eco and military benefit.

2. CONSTANT VILLAGER TRAINING is the foundation of your economy. Never stop training villager, unless you are aging in Town Center with Europe and The WarChief civ. Asian civs still can produce villagers when they are aging with wonder. More villagers lead to more resource gathered=better economy. As soon as the game begins, collect your food crates quickly to queue the first villager and always keep enough villagers on food to queue villagers non-stop until you max your villager limit.

3. IDLE VILLAGER is bad for your eco. When they are not working, you are not gaining resource. Please use the idle villager hotkey and the shift key to manage idle villager.

4. CARD ORDER is crittical, having a good deck does not guarantee you a straight win. It’s very important to send cards in proper order (don’t just send them randomly). For economy, follow the boom guide, for military, send the most powerful cards first [training card, advanced arsenal] then send cards for unit you use the most.

5. EXPLORE around your base and later full map to see all available hunt/tree/mine. Use your explorer and scout unit to collect treasure [click to watch a treasure hunting video] and herdable [cow, yak, llama, buffalo] for your boom. Don't stop scouting the enemy to know his base layout/his first army. These are essential info to build your strategy.

6. HERD animal toward your town center will lessen the time they have to walk to gather food. Send a villager farther than the animal and shoot once to make them run toward your town center, repeat after 10 seconds [click to watch a herding video if you are still confused]

7. NATURAL RESOURCES like animal and mine should be utilized until Age V unless the map has little of them. Natural resources start with higher gather rate than of mill/plantation without improvements/upgrade cards. For example: food gather rate for animal hunting starts at 0.84 but for mill it's 0.67 plus you obviously have to cut extra 400 wood for that mill [wood is an expensive resource since gather rate for tree starts only at 0.5]. Also note that berry bush gather rate starts at 0.67 so it's slower than animal hunting [all civilizations but Japan can hunt].

8. MARKET UPGRADE as early as possible before sending villagers for that particular resource. Market upgrades costs little resources compared to mill/plantation upgrade but boosts the villagers a lot in gathering natural resources.

9. HOUSING needs to be kept optimal - more house than your population need is waste of woodcutting time, less house will halt your villager production [there is no need to spam all the houses right away except for Brits]. You always start with enough wood to build a house in Age I. After that, keep an eye on your population limit and build house as needed.

10. 2 EXTRA TOWN CENTERS is powerful tool in multiplying your villager production speed, you need to prepare wood while aging from Age II to Age III to build 2 extra Town Centers in Age III and start to pump out 3 villagers at a time until you max them.

11. RESOURCE RATIO should base on your need. Check your Age cost and gather resouce accordingly. If you are going Age IV that requires 2000 food 1200 gold, collecting 1000 extra wood is completely unnecessary. Don't chop more wood than you need!!! Particularly BEFORE Age V. You should have JUST enough wood to make Market/Upgrades/Town Centers and Houses...All wood must be cut as they are needed...Not in advance of 5-10 minutes and especially don't chop wood in Colonial Age that will be used for Mills in Imperial Age. After age V, check your main unit cost and gather resource accordingly [for example: German needs a lot of villagers on gold while China needs villagers on food/wood] - exception for this is some civs with different boom strategy [French/India/Iro food trade, Otto wood trade...]

12. IMPERIAL UPGRADES boost 50% gather rate and this is why going to Age V Imperial early gives you a much better score. But always try to send the upgrades for resource that most of your villagers are gathering (suppose 60-70 villagers on wood so try to research the Imperial wood upgrade first ).

13. FACTORY should be upgraded and put on wood [unless you are Ottoman with wood trade or you run out of other resource and need emergency food/gold supply]. For European civilization, wood has the lowest gather rate of all resources at the time you get factory and wood is usually the most limited resource [factory is your only wood supply on map with scarce tree]. The default gather rate for wood is 0.5 per villager per second, after all the market upgrades is 0.8. Therefore an upgraded factory is equivalent to more than 12 unupgraded settlers or about 9 upgraded settlers for wood generation.

14. UPGRADE MILL/PLANTATION before you send villagers to work on them, not 10 or 15 minutes after.

15. ARSENAL UPGRADE both the normal and advanced, makes your units much stronger. In an equally skilled player’s game this can be a key factor.

16. TRAINING FASTER CARDS for infantry/cavalry/artillery, will help a lot during the first stage of fighting because you can replace your unit faster and have better map control. Try to send at least 1 of them before the treaty ends. Also don't forget to upgrade fast training for infantry/cavalry in Church.

17. COMBO [mix] different units in your army. Spam one unit, even if that unit is your best one [gendarme, musketeer, mortar...] will make it easy for your enemy to counter/kill them. [For effective combo of each civ please check Civilization Guide]

18. UNIT UPGRADE only for the units you would use in your best combo [for example: Missionaries/Rod/Lancer/Skirm/Culverin/Horse Artillery/Mortar for Spain]. Don't waste your precious resource on upgrading useless archer or pike or cannon.

19. FIRST ARMY is very important. Scout and find out what your enemy has in store for you. For a powerful start, always try to make full army 200/200 THEN send church army and minuteman for overpop (>200 unit). Bring sufficient villagers to make forward base and wall. If there are native posts on map, keep your explorer near them to build fast.

20. UNIT COUNTER is your main way to victory. Because you obviously can't win if you think spamming more op archer would kill the enemy hussar. [for more info please check Unit Counter section]

21. USE ARTILLERY to show your proness ^^. Artillery delivers greater damage than normal unit. Protect your artillery well because they cost a lot of resource (100 wood and 500 gold for a piece of horse art). Put some anti-cav unit (dragoon/musk) in defense/stand ground mode around them, wall sides and front, always have 1 or 2 culverins ready to kill enemy's artillery. [For more info please check Artillery Guide]

22. FORWARD BASE AND WALL aggressively [barrack, stable, artillery foundry] to gain map control and encircle the enemy while make it more difficult for the enemy to attack you.

23. MAX VILLAGER through out the game all the time [except for German]. Queue up your villagers if they are killed when being out building base and wall or if the enemy sneaked into your eco.

24. MAX MILITARY through out the fight all the time, always 200/200. Queue up your military from different barracks/stables/artillery foundry. Use hotkey. The more the merrier ^^.

25. IDLE MILITARY is bad for your fight. Please use the idle military hotkey. It doesn't help if there are 10 hussars 15 skirms standing on the left while you are fighting on the right.

26. NATIVE is useful with their eco/military tech and no pop army. If there are native post on map, customize your deck for natives. Have the cards for cheap natives and use native hp and attack cards if available. Upgrade native hp/attack in Capitol and the native post itself. [For more info please check the Native Guide]

27. HOT KEY learning/customizing can give you more effective control of your economy and army.

28. ATTACK MOVE with small group of range infantry/ range cavalry can give you more kills, select your units and press Z + right click on the enemy's army (the Attack Move hotkey can be customized in Options/Hotkey/Command Hotkey) [click to watch attack move video]. It doesn't work with longbow man or large groups of hand cavalry, they just act weird or having pathing problem.

29. SHIFT CLICK to multi-task your unit: select your explorer, shift click around the map to explore many places, shift click 2 of your culverin on multiple cannons/mortars so they auto kill them all [click to watch shift click video].

30. HALBERDIER is rarely a good idea. Maybe sparingly with Dutch, but other than that they shouldn't be used. Musketeer mixed with dragoon/cav archer does a much better job against hand cavalry.

31. TRADING POST is an op source of xp [to send more card] or resource [after upgrade]. Best to occupy it fast for your benefit and prevent your enemy to take advantage of it.

32. UNIT TACTICS can be put in excellent use sometime. Ranged infantry [skirm, musk...] in stagger mode can avoid the splash damage when you are under heavy artillery fire. Japan Daimyo/Shogun or India Monk in Stand Ground mode won't run around like crazy and die too fast. Siege box [Russian Opri, French Gendarme, German Dop, Japan Hatamoto/Samurai, Aztecs Skull Knight, Sioux Dog Soldier] is made by putting [up to 49] hand infantry/cavalry heavy siege unit [Opri, Gendarme, Samurai...]  and 1 ranged infantry/cavalry [Cav Archer, Dragoon, Monk Explorer...] unit in defend mode and move them together. To break the box, kill the center unit.

33. SPIES in Capitol usually have high price tag that can hurt your eco. Avoid them in most case unless you have upper hand in the eco score and got cheap offer [like 5k/6k gold]. You can get your own "free" spies by scouting the map constantly, especially before the enemy starts walling to know their basic home base layout. After the treaty ends, your forward wall can offer extra line of sight so you know what is happening around the map.

34. TEAM TACTIC is something you can have tons of fun experiment with your friends. Take advantage of your teammate Furtrade card [French/India/Iroquois]...to save your plantation cards for military upgrade cards. If you are using China, an Ottoman partner with Sublime Porte card [food to wood trade], would take good care for your wood need and the Team Engineering card of China will make French/Portuguese/Ottoman even more powerful with their fastest artillery training.

35. TOWN CENTER

• It is never a good idea to delete your 1st Town Center. Your building limit is strictly bound to your first Town Center, you will not be able to build anything anymore before the treaty ends.

• The 1st Town Center creates an area radius around the Town Center in which the enemy cannot build ANY buildings. Which is exteremly more useful than people realize. Your first town center will keep your enemy from advancing his forward bases past your 1st tc's radial area. Once the 1st tc is destroyed, the enemy has freedom to build barracks, stables, etc. directly inside your base and that basically means game over. You can also use this to your advantage by destroying your enemy 1st Town Center so you can build freely near his base.

• You can build your other Town Centers far from your 1st Town Center but near fresh hunt or mine so your newly created villagers don't have to walk too far to gather resouce.

• When you decide to delete a Town Center for any reason make sure its your 2nd or 3rd town center, not the 1st.

• If your game is started in Nomad mode, it's usually best to put down your Town Center right where you are to avoid wasting time. Exception: your starting point is next to Trade Route/Native Post or a big cliff that can divide/obstruct your base, in this case you should move the TC wagon to another place for bigger space, but the new spot should be next to a hunt [animal] so you can save villager walking time.

 

CONGRATULATIONS! You made it to the bottom of this massive list. You have absorbed tons of treaty experiences which can only achieved by hundreds of battles before. You are now a proud .::X::.Veteran ^^.