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Page 6 of 7
Research and development

There's research and then there's RESEARCH! Here are the items you simply can't overlook:

	Clubmen to Axemen - This upgrade increases their hit points by 20 percent and attack damage by 66 percent - all for just a measly 100 food, the price of a half-eaten gazelle. How can you say no?
	Toolworking - For 100 food you get a +2 attack for all hand-to-hand units for the rest of the game.
	Leather Armor Infantry - For 75 meat you get a -2 on the damage you take with every hand-to-hand attack for all your infantry. You can also research this for cavalry and archery range units to get the same benefits.
	Woodworking - At 120 food and 75 wood, this isn't cheap, but the payback is immediate, as your missile weapon units get +1 range and your woodcutters drop off 12 wood for every 10 that they chop down. Each age has a woodworking advantage to research.
	Wheel - Probably the best bang for your buck. For 175 food and 75 wood you get villagers that do everything 30 percent faster. Plus, you need the wheel to build priest killers, chariots, and chariot archers. Always research this ASAP.
	Architecture - Your buildings build faster and have 20 percent more hit points, including walls and towers. Research this then sneak a few villagers into enemy territory and quickly build a guard tower or two.

There are, of course, many other important avenues of research, such as ballistics and alchemy, but these are the essentials.

The 50-unit cap

The source of much teeth-gnashing, the 50-unit cap can be skirted around. Here are two ways:

	When you've reached 49 units (click on a house to see your population at any time), you can quickly queue up every building that can produce a unit to build one, and the game will accept your orders. For example, suppose you have two docks, three barracks, an academy, two archery ranges, two stables, a siege workshop, and a town center. That's 12 structures that can produce units. Provided you can click on each one quickly enough and tell each one to build a unit before a 50th unit is produced, you can build 12 additional units. So you can go from 49 to 61 - in theory. Build the ones that take the longest first, mind you.
	Use priests to convert enemies.
	Note: This unit limit can be increased to 200 by downloading the patch.

General Tips continued...

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