Anticipate wood. Don't wait until you have 120 wood to send villagers out to where they will be building the next building. It will usually take the villagers 20 to 30 seconds to get there, so you can send them as soon as you have 40 wood and 8 active wood cutters.
Other food sources can be used to gather the 105 (150 if not Shang) food per minute that you need. I like shore fishing, but elephants are useful for non-Shang civs because you can get started on them faster than berry picking and hence can conceive your eighth villager on schedule.
Shore fishing from the beginning can allow you to reach the bronze age several seconds faster because it gives you two extra villagers from the start because 3 villagers shore fishing replace 5 villagers foraging (for non-Shang civs, 4 villagers shore fishing replace 7 villagers foraging.) If you find two schools of shore fish before you find the berries, build a storage pit and sending two villagers to one school and one to the other (for non-Shang civs send two villagers to each. See section 6.3 for details. The school that has two villagers working it will be depleted in just over three minutes, so make sure that you get your berry picking started fairly soon.
If you find an elephant before you find the berries, bring the elephant to your house, kill it and collect the food. See section 10.4 for details.
Both of these methods have advantages over foraging. If the elephant
is sufficiently close, you may be able to start gathering food faster from
an elephant than from berry bushes. Hence, you may be able to conceive
your ninth![[*]](foot_motif.gif)
villager faster. Whereas, four villagers shore fishing
do the work of 7 villagers foraging, allowing you three extra villagers
while the schools last (i.e. three minutes and 20 seconds).
However, since they don't last very long, you will still need to get started on your berry bushes soon. One elephant allows you to conceive 8 Shang villagers, keeping the town center busy for 2 minutes and forty seconds. Two schools of shore fish allow you to conceive 14 Shang villagers, keeping the town center busy for 4 minutes and 40 seconds.
One of the best ways to improve your bronze time is to place your wood collection storage pit near food.
The ideal food is shore fish because shore fishing is twice as fast as any other method of food gathering. Hunting gazelles and elephants are the other choices. If you will be hunting gazelles you should kill the gazelles first (See section 10.5) but you should start 6 villagers gathering wood before you start butchering the gazelles.
Hunting elephants is dangerous but since villagers are faster than elephants, you can bring the elephant close to your food storage location without losing a villager. I recommend that you bring your elephants close first and that you hunt them as a second operation. i.e. don't hunt them while they are on the move - you are likely to make a mistake.
Bring one or two villagers to a spot about 3 squares away from the elephant in the direction of where you want the elephant to go (i.e. your town center or storage pit).
Wait until you have just conceived a villager.
Have these villagers to attack the elephant,
as soon as they have hit the elephant, have them retreat toward
your food storage location. If the elephant stops, go back and hit
it again, but remember to retreat quickly. If a villager gets hit
by the elephant, get it back to safety before you finish the
attack.
Conceive the next villager. (i.e. "H, C")
Wait until you have just conceived a villager (i.e. the last step in section 10.4.1).
Make sure that you have at least five villagers all roughly equidistant from the elephant. (If one is significantly closer, the elephant can kill it.) Select them and click on the elephant.
Conceive the next villager. (i.e. "H, C")
If there is another elephant within 2 to 3 squares, your villagers
will automatically start hunting that elephant after they finish
butchering the elephant that they are working on. In all likelyhood, they will lose a villager in this hunt, if you
allow them to do it themselves.
There are two dangers in hunting elephants. The first is that you will lose a villager - a huge mistake. The second is that you will get wrapped up in the attack and fail to conceive the next villager. If, like me, you wait until you hear the sound of a villager being born until you hit ``H, C'', if you miss that sound you may wait quite a while before you go back and check.
I like to use two villagers per gazelle. Kill the gazelles first, then build the storage pit and then go back and hunt them. I first read this strategy in: http://netleague.com/aoe/STRAT/food.html.
Don't waste your time on these unless they happen to be near a storage pit. If you do hunt them, use several villagers.
I have always found it difficult to rememeber to upgrade the right technologies. My response to this problem is to create a unit which contains all of the buildings holding key technologies as follows: I start by putting my town center into unit 0 (``H, ctrl-0'') and then add a granary (``select a granary; shift-0; ctrl-0''), at least one storage pit (``select storage pit; shift-0; ctrl-0''), the market (``select market; shift-0; ctrl-0''), the government buildings (``select government building; shift-0; ctrl-0''), and a house (``select a house; shift-0; ctrl-0''). In fact, I usually create unit 0 with the Town Center, a granary, one or two storage pits and a house during the transition to tool age. I then add the market as soon as I start building it and so likewise with the government center.
Then, when I want to check my technoloiges, I simply type ``1'' and tab through the technology buildings clicking on whichever technologies I want to research.