Playing a strategy game like the Age of Empires is like playing chess. You should know what to sacrifice and what to hold on to. If you treat each and every unit as a treasured one and if you spend a lot of time creating fortifications for each and every unit, chances are high that you will run out of resources.

If you are working towards a specific campaign goal, you should assess each and every unit with reference to the ultimate goal assigned by the game. For example, if your job is to destroy the castle of your opponent, then investing too much of stone and gold in building a huge wall around your fortifications does not make sense.

Once your opponent comes up with a few castles, it is just a question of time before you lose the game. In such a scenario, you may have to set up certain military and civilian installations in strategic points simply to divert your enemy.

Secondly, you may have to classify a certain members of your military as expendable and may simply have to let them fight it out only to lose. All this may seem like a terrible waste but it will help you buy some useful time, which will be helpful in tackling the final objective.

Sending a force that has been purposefully designed as a very small and compact one to cover lots of terrain with minimum damage to the enemy may help you complement the efforts of your scout.

Thirdly, focusing on specific structures of your enemy and backing out every time you are attacked will help you identify the weak points. This will require a holistic approach where your emphasis should be on the final goal of your campaign and not just on the units involved.

The scouts are probably the most underestimated characters in Age of Empires. Very few people bothered to even make scouts. Most of us make one or two scouts for the novelty aspect and let them roam around in an aimless manner. Why is it important to have scouts?

Well, if you are playing a death match where you are competing with four or five other opponents simultaneously, identifying the weakest opponent and taking over the assets of the opponent can make a huge difference to your resources. If the weakest opponent has lots of gold hidden in his or her corner of the map, you can set a force and take over the opponent with minimum damage to yourself.

However, very few persons even think of exploring the map until they have sufficient resources and armed forces to launch the attack. At the end of the day, such persons invariably find themselves defending attacks and never initiating the same. In strategy games, intelligence is more valuable than gold.

If you know where all your enemies are placed and if you know the level of development in and around the region, you can easily assess your attack plans accordingly. For example, if your opponent has created multiple monasteries, then you should protect yourself from conversion.

On the other hand, if your opponent has created multiple heavy vehicle and catapult manufacturing units, you need to not just focus on building walls but also coming up with counter offensive vehicles on your own. This will help you fine tune your strategy and make sure you are prepared for the attacks until you are prepared to launch your own.

Hence, make sure you have sufficient number of scouts roaming around the map. You may lose many scouts to enemy attacks. That is inevitable and unavoidable. Make sure they are replaced as early as possible.

Why are strategy games so popular on the internet? Well, not every individual will get the opportunity to command a group of villagers and plan the future of a local economy. Or, plan a military expedition to destroy and abolish the military installations of the anyway before they do the same to you. Even if people do get a chance to leave these lives, the risks involved make it an unenjoyable process.

On the other hand, strategy games help you plan your campaign and start it all over again if you happen to mess it up. Thousands of your army men can be slaughtered and you can restart the entire campaign by just a click of your mouse. Hence, strategy games are the closest you come to being a master strategist without any risks attached.

The Age of Empires was one of the first strategy games that brought the past to the computer screen. It led to numerous other games like Caesar and other such administrative games.

What makes the Age of Empires different is that it is a combination of civilian and military administration. The civilian part of the job involves a collection of wood, stone, gold and food. You will have to plan your crops, identify foraging sites, offshore fishing and deep sea fishing options. You will have to plan your installations in such a manner that you are never short of wood and other essential items.

Your military capacity is dependent on the level of raw materials you obtain. You also have the option of trading for different goods and products. Of course, all these advanced options will be available only after you complete certain levels and reach a specific age.

What makes this exercise a really fun is that you can plan your military conquests simultaneously. You can improve your armaments and move from plain old infantry with clubs to armored cavalry and crossbow man to take on your enemy.