theres always Theris' sticky thread at the top of this page, those guides helped me a lot
stick with what pete said and you'll do fine, but maybe you could tell us which specific gods you have trouble against.
define "early". for some beginners, "early" is around the 15 minute mark (a bit of an exaggeration), so say when it is youre being attacked.
also something pete didnt mention, USE HOTKEYS. learn the keys for your favorite buildings and units at first, then soon you'll know almost all of them. for example, do you know how much faster it is to hit 'h,v,v,v,v,...' instead of finding ur tc, clicking it, then moving to the vil icon, the clicking it x times. maybe you need an armory upgrade, but where the hell is your armory??? when i was new i spent a lot of time scrolling around looking for my key buildings. time is a resource as important as food,wood, gold, and favor, so wasting it is bad. now i just press ctrl+R, and im already in the armory.
use the autoque, especially late game. no amount of uber uber uber micro or human reflexes can measure up to making the unit the second you got enough resource. i say especially in late game because in early game theres usually not as much going on to monitor and you have to make decision like 'dwarf or handaxe?' or 'villager or hoplite?'. once the streaming starts, if the game gets that far, just AQ your military buildings, but remember to change to unit counters.
speaking of military buildings, you shouldnt just have 1 or 2. this is ok...for 5.30 (some civs). you want at LEAST 10+ military buildings, and its not uncommon to end the game with 20+, and thats if youre not gaining ground.
if you are gaining ground during a flood war, you must, must, must build more rax at the new field. if you dont, you are sure to be overwhelmed and pushed back to where you started. why? well, if you push the enemy all the way back to a few yards in front of their main military base, youre gonna lose there unless youve built more buildings along the way because the rate of each players unit production is more or less the same, but your new units have to march down to the field, while his come out fighting. when youre gaining ground, build on it. rax, forts, towers, walls. build them.
raiding is always good. in many a game, when the gaurded gold is running low, the miners go out in the open, hoping youre preoccupied on the battlefield. however, if you know where they are (this is where good scouting comes in), take some fast units and disrupt them. this will always hurt the enemy far more than if those few units were over at the battlefield fighting.
find their market. l8 game when there is no protected gold or no gold at all theyre gauranteed to have a market. sometimes, just one seige weapon is enough to take it out, then when the player has a moment to take his microing off the battle, he'll see a bunch of caravans crowding his tc, and suddenly he has no gold left.
that wasnt much (lol), tell us your civ and the civs you have trouble against for more help.
[This message has been edited by Excalibur1022 (edited 02-08-2005 @ 09:25 PM).]