Resource Management

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Resource Management

Follow the Strategies pushing for fast growth. That means constantly creating villagers, focusing on food sources to keep training villagers, building houses to keep ahead of the need, and establishing resource depots to keep the villagers busy.

Depots should always be as near to the resource as possible, with only one space separating them. Try to plan ahead, a storage pit that is two or three paces from two different resources is an economical trade-off, and stone and gold deposits can often be found together, with room for a pit in between.

Food is always priority number one at the start of the game, quickly followed by wood. The most efficient food gathering methods should be used early on, branching off to the other methods when villagers can be spared. The first granary should be placed as close to the berry patch as possible, in the center of a semi-circular or straight line patch, or one space away from tight clusters of berries. Later this granary will be surrounded by farms, so be sure to put it in the optimum location that still allows you to gather berries quickly. If the berry patch is near water, always build the Granary on the far side, away from the water. The first Granary will not be far from the Town Center, so try to allow for a farming area to be built around both of these later on. It could mean you need to build on one certain side of the patch, to allow space for two farms and room to walk between the farms that will be around the Granary and those around Town Center.

Other food gathering methods should also be considered at this early stage, but only use the ones that apply to the map you are on and the race you are playing. Shore fish jumping near the town center or storage pit should always have some villagers fishing them. These will harvest very quickly, but watch those villagers, they may go idle though the fish are still there. Hunting of elephants should be done in groups of 3-5 villagers, and one or two villagers should take a few shots at the pachyderm early, encouraging the elephant to charge them as they turn and lead it towards the drop point. Bring the elephant right next to the Storage or Town Center, then gang jump it and harvest like mad. Since the rate of meat decay on this food source is fairly slow, some villagers can be sent to other tasks while the meat is gathered. If there are two elephants standing near each other, one crew of villagers can entice them both to approach the drop off site, where both can be killed and harvested together.

There are ways to herd the Gazelles, but it takes practice, and it's never pretty. They will run away from approaching units, but tend to make a few hops then pause for a moment before considering moving again. This means that a unit can spook a Gazelle to run away, usually in the opposite direction from the approaching unit, but when the Gazelle stops, that unit could come to stand beside the animal for a moment before it bolts again, this time in any direction. The method to employ (only if you have the luxury of being able to divert your attention long enough to do it) is to use 3 groups of 3 or 4 units together. Two groups hold the sides of the channel you want to push the animals down, while the third group comes from behind trying to push them on towards the drop site. Keep the group in the rear moving back and forth, spooking the animals then backing off for a moment before moving up again. The groups on the sides should be doing the same thing only angling towards the drop site, pushing at the sides to keep the herd together, and towards the pit to keep them moving. When the herd moves, let them sit for a moment then push from behind, followed by both sides. You should take one or two spear shots at them as the herd moves, if you have to hunt them too much when the herding is done, they will run away from your hunters and the drop site. Have them weakened when the herding is over, so that one shot will take them down just outside to drop off site. Remember this meat will also deteriorate, so gather it quickly.

The final food sources are lions and alligators. Both are unruly opponents at best, and since their sparse meat deteriorates very quickly they are a poor substitue to the other food sources. Herding alligators is pretty simple, they are just fairly slow at getting anywhere near your drop site. Any unit within a certain range will have the alligator chasing him, and if that unit takes a few steps once in awhile, it will follow all the way to the drop site. Lions can be made to follow fast military units, but when they get close to a drop off site, it must be villagers and not the military that kill them. Any animal killed by military units is not available for harvesting of meat.

The first Storage pit should be placed wisely. Wood is the important concern, but wood will be depleted quickly and the forest edge will move further away from the pit as the trees get cut down. Placing the pit at a place that will mean a shorter walk for most of the villagers as they cut down this entire forest is smarter than dropping the pit at one edge, which would mean the walk would get longer and longer. Villagers who do too much leg work to drop off their resources are wasting their time and could cost you the game. Sometimes there is an indent in the forest itself, and a storage pit can be tucked deeper into the heart of the woods. If there is stone or gold near the forest, put a storage pit in a place to access both resources. A second pit can be placed elsewhere near the forest to optimize the access to the wood.

There really is no trick to gathering stone or gold resources. If the drop off site is right beside it, the villagers will fill up, turn around and drop, then fill up again. Technologies will allow for a bigger arm load to be collected before dropping off resources. Aside from reminding everyone to try to get two resources for each storage pit, and to gather all the resources possible from the enemies' area before depleting those closer to your base, there is not much more to it. Needless to say, a player with many storage sites manned by lots of villagers working away will completely outpace any opponent running one resource depot of each type.

Merlin