Upgrades, whether they make your infantry's attack stronger or allow each one of your farms to increase in productivity, are essential to your success in AOE. Unfortuately, upgrades cost resources. Before performing an upgrade or even building something that costs at least moderate amounts of resources, you should ask yourself, "What will I be missing out if I spend all of these resources on the upgrade/unit/building?" For example, the Iron Age upgrade costs 1000 food and 800 gold. That's a total of 1800 net resources. A calvary costs 70 food and 80 gold which is 150 net resources. So 12 calvary costs 1800 net resources. By poorly managing your resources, if you upgrade to Iron when you barely got enough resources to do so, you'll be very vulnerable for such devastating attacks.

Resources Management in General.

- The four resources are Food, Wood, Gold, and Stone.

- In the Stone, Tool, and Early Bronze Ages, Food is the most important resource. Wood is never really important although it's essential. Gold is the most important resource in the Bronze and Iron Ages. Stone is rather unimportant. It's ok in the Tool Age, but after that, it's even less important since defenses often get chewed up by Siege Weapons.

- In the beginning of the game, food should mainly be gathered from berry patches. Only hunt if you're Persian or if berry patches are scarce. Fishing is also possible especially since it's very fast. However, it can sometimes be unreliable since you gotta keep watching your villagers cuz they have a tendency to stand by the shore and do nothing after a while.

- Try to consistently train villagers in the Stone Age and immediately assign them to a task after they've been trained.

- Put no more than 6 villagers on wood in the Stone Age. Although wood isn't very important, it's rather easy to waste (and to conserve if you know how.) Sometimes, people want to get way ahead on houses in the beginning. You'll run out of wood quickly and it may take you longer as you replenish your wood supply before you build your first storage pit. What you do is click on a house and it'll indicate the number of units you have and the number that can be supported before you need more houses. If at that moment, you can build only 2 units before you'll run out of housing space, build another house immediately.

- If you have a surplus of wood late in the Tool Age, you should build one or two docks and build some fishing boats. This will bring in more food in addition to the villagers you continuously train.

- Put one villager on stone unless all stone patches close to your town are so isolated from other resources that you cannot share the storage pit.

- Build a Market first in the Tool Age. This will allow you to build farms although you shouldn't start farming until all berry patches and shore fishing locations have been depleted. In 90% of the games I play, I don't farm even need to start farming until I'm almost to the Bronze Age.

- Once you begin the Bronze Age upgrade, you should take some villagers off of food and put them on gold. You can also take one or two off and put them on wood.

- Resource management is rather crucial in the beginning of the game when there are many ways to get the most out off the resources you gather.

Upgrades.

- Normally, I worry very little about Upgrades until the Bronze Age. Upgrades usually aid the following : an effective military or a long-term efficiency in gathering resources but temporary depletion of resources. This isn't what you would normally want early on.

- Get the first farming upgrade (Domestication) right after you start the Bronze Age upgrade and when you have enough resources. Other than that, get upgrades in the Bronze and Iron Ages.

- The Wheel should be your first or second upgrade in the Bronze Age. Get it ASAP.

- The Gold Mining Upgrade is a must especially if you need gold fast without putting more villagers on gold. It doesn't even cost any gold!

- Get all of the farming upgrades if wood is scarce or if you're really lazy to check your farms and rebuild them when they go bad. :) (BTW, play as Summerian if you really have the problem of farms going bad like me.) If you're Summerian, don't get more than one farming upgrade, and you can get the first farming upgrade later in the game!

- I find that the woodworking, artisanship, and craftmanship upgrades accomplish a whole lot. You can gather wood quickly and give your archers better range. In addition, the last of the three (craftmanship) is required for the Helepolis upgrade.

- If you plan on getting both calvary and infantry, get ALL of the hand-to-hand unit attack upgrades. These military upgrades will affect a larger portion of your army than any of the other upgrades.

- There are upgrades for Archer, Infantry, and Calvary armor. If you get three or more units of any one of those catagories, you should get at least one armor upgrade for that unit class.

- I don't really see a point to the Bronze Shield/Iron Shield upgrades. They allow your Infantry to survive longer against archers. Against a skillful player, their archers will keep retreating and your infantry will not reach the archers. However, if the enemy has Improved/Composite bowmen, and your main attacking force is Infantry, then get this upgrade!

- In the Iron Age, there are many "Super Upgrades" available for all kinds of units. Usually, you need to do another smaller upgrade before you can perform a "Super Upgrade". These upgrades cost a whole lot of resources (as the name suggests.) Since they cost so much, you should get all of the other cheaper upgrades for your unit before getting a Super Upgrade for it. For example, if you plan on upgradeing from Phalanx to Centurions, make sure you've gotten all of the hand-to-hand and infantry armor upgrades possible. These Super Upgrades are also conveinient if have a lot of resources when you hit the unit limit.