ah, those were the days when i couldn't beat a moderate computer. my strategy was "kill his houses" LOL!
that was a bit better than my vs. easy computer "kill his farms" strategy! MAN THAT'S FUNNY in hindsight!
anyway, i play zeus so can give u some good advice cuz i was an ultra noob (never played rts games b4 either) about a month and a half ago, now i win 50% of my online games.
on land maps:
1st six villies on hunting (or other food source if no hunting). get hunting dogs upgrade from ur granary right away (i didn't even know what hunting dogs did til a few weeks ago).
next 2 villies on wood.
next 2 on gold.
next one build house then wood.
next one food.
next one gold (build temple when have enough resources).
next ??? (however many u need to get 400F) on herdable animals (sheep, cows, pigs). scouting will help u locate herdable animals. click on them and then send them back to ur base.
SCOUT LIKE A MADMAN. at first it's hard to multitask, but learn to cue ur scout to banner 1 and then switch back and forth between scout and econ as soon as u're able to handle this. if u can't, then just hold shift and click the minimap to make waypoints where ur scout will just go to. first scout around ur base a bit then around ur opponent's base in archaic b4 he has towers upgraded. avoid his TC and villies. u need to keep ur scout alive. ks_josey_wales has a great guide to scouting on his website. josey is also one of the best zeus players out there. hope is another. i hear geek and pgfire are also good with zeus. kamrantu from the forums here is also really good. watch recorded games of these experts to learn the basics.
the above build order should get u a 5:30 classical advance with ~ 21 villies. that's good enough unless vs. a loki hersir rusher where u'll want more on food earlier to advance at ~4:30 to fend off his rush.
during the classical transition get the gold and wood upgrades from ur storehouses as soon as u can afford it. partway into classical, get the husbandry upgrade from ur granary. econ techs are essential to becoming a better player.
once u hit classical get up two stables and pump hippikons from them and centaurs from ur temple (forgot to mention that u leave ur temple-builder praying to collect favor in archaic; add another in early classical). once u have ~2 centaurs and some hippikon RAID THE COMPUTER TO DEATH, literally. against eggy, raid gold mines in particular. against the others, look for food and gold operations to raid. if u encounter resistance, run away and attack a different spot. meanwhile, build a second raiding party at ur base. have ur scout on banner 1, ur first raiding party on banner 2 and ur 2nd raiding party on banner 3. concentrate on learning how to use ur scout to locate their villies and ur raiding parties to keep him scrambling to defend. it's only a good player that can still think offensively when on the defensive.
if u raid the computer b4 10 minutes, u win. if u haven't attacked the computer by 10 minutes u lose. that was my rule of thumb while learning the game.
NEVER, EVER let ur tc idle on villie production (unless needing TC to make heroes, which u should do asap because greek heroes are very strong and good against myth units)
watch ur games over to see what u did right, wrong. pick one wrong thing per game that u will NEVER DO AGAIN. i STILL do this on all my rated games. it works well. win or lose, i pick one thing wrong that i will never do again.
this game is a heck of a learning curve and it is HARD to get to an intermediate player (~1700 rating), especially as zeus who is the worst, or 2nd worst, god right now. ra being the other worst civilization.
just work on the above-mentioned things and u'd be surprised how easy the computer dies, even on hard. i played vs. 2 hard computers last night for the first time looking for a warm-up challenge. it wasn't a challenge. 1 raiding party on each, went heroic, forward built TCs and fortresses, brought the siege, game over.
if u want to take advantage of the ai in this game, mass 12-15 hoplites in the beginning of classical and go in and destroy the computer's TC. don't let him rebuild it and the game is urs. that's harder to pull off vs. hard, but still very possible if u've got a raiding party going at the same time.
hope this helps, i can remember struggling vs. the computer too and it isn't fun. however, if u read on this forum often and watch expert recorded games, u'll get the gist of it in no time. then, the learning curve starts anew on rated games. it's TOTALLY different vs. human players cuz now u have to learn how to DEFEND against raids. whole new ball game.
but we can talk again when u get there hope this helped.
fh