If you've only got five minutes, select two players and a size one world. Then you'll have to locate right next to each other and you can attack as soon as the enemy builds his castle!

If your enemy has built a road really close to your border, you may build a road as well and set a flag near the border. Then use the "cleanup" click to connect the two roads. Your enemy will then deliver all his stuff to you, but you will then deliver your needed goods to the enemy! When you need knights, they're also delivered and enter your castles, but in a case of a fight, they don't fight on your side!

You expand your territory with the military buildings. Most buildings are self-explanatory and you'll understand more as you read on. Otherwise, please refer to the manual.

The placement of your castle is vital. It must be near a range of mountains. You can't hope to win without lots of mines. There are often only a few suitable mining areas. Later on a lot of the fighting will be over who controls the mountains.

Now for your building program. The fighting doesn't usually start until most of the land is occupied. You can do this quickly with guardrooms but they don't offer much security and will quickly be overrun by your enemies. Protect important areas with Watch Towers or Garrisons if there's room.

You'll need at least one of each building early on, except the boatyard and perhaps a pig farm and butcher. Start building military buildings on the edge of your territory straight away. Get your geologists out prospecting and get those mines going as soon as they find anything. The miners need food, the easiest way to initially get it is to use fishermen. Later on you can progress to farms.

Next start a couple of woodcutters and and a stone cutter. Build a forester for every woodcutter, or you'll soon run out of trees. The stonecutter will exhaust surface stone after a while, so destroy the building and put up another one or the poor guy will have to wander all over the land looking for suitable stone.

Next place the sawmill near your castle. You now have all the raw materials for building work. Now get the other manufacturing buildings going. The steel worker, goldsmith, armorer, and toolmaker. You'll generally start the game with stocks of raw materials to get them into production without first mining something. Put the buildings as close to your castle as possible, along with a military building or two for protection. These are vital buildings, as you need weapons and gold to win the fights.

Get a corn farm going if your miners look like they're running out of food. Then either a pig farm and butcher, or a windmill and baker. One butcher can serve several pig farms and one baker and miller several corn farms, so you're unlikely to need two of these unless your territory is huge.

When your power builds up, a second goldsmith and armorer will help your army to expand and get tougher.

Attack enemy territories carefully. Expand too quickly and you're left with large areas dotted with guard rooms and little else, and your army will be stretched perilously thin. Keep the garrisons high and well stocked with gold. It's easier to build more guard rooms, watch towers and garrisons than to obtain knights to fill them.

Leave the warehouse for last, as you only really need it when you have a large kingdom and long supply routes. Once raw material production is in full swing, concentrate on gold and weapons and build up your army. To keep your army well trained, keep rotating them with knights in the castle, where they train.

Keep roads straight and build a few short cuts if you can. Avoid building "red" roads, keep them flat and level and your men will get around much more easily and faster. If you see piles of raw materials building up at a junction, then a bypass is in order. Try to build roads in a grid pattern rather than in a star pattern or you'll have traffic problems.

Watch your enemy for a weak link, such as a single iron ore mine or a steel worker in an outlying territory and let loose with a knight or two. Have a look at the flag on the enemy dwelling and make sure your men are up to the job, as you can lose a lot of low level knights in an attack on a well defended building. A neat and rather mean trick is to attack a building deep inside enemy territory. You'll probably lose it soon enough if your enemy is any good but it causes lots of destruction, which 's always a good thing.

The more gold you have the better your men fight. So get at least a couple of goldsmiths built as quickly as possible.

Corn farmers wander about sowing seeds and harvesting crops. It even goes in seasons. One miller and one baker can very easily handle the output of three or more of these corn farms.

The bigger the military building, the bigger the area it commands. Be very careful when knocking them down, or you'll lose precious buildings.

Nearly surround your enemy castle with military buildings. Strong forts ensure he's not going to get the land back easily.

Eventually the supplies of mineable raw materials will be exhausted and it'll be time to fight over the remaining supplies with the neighbors.

Keep your roads in a neat grid pattern. As soon as you spot a blockage, build another road to go around it. It's extremely frustrating to see your precious supplies getting stuck at the crossroads.

The info screen with a (kind of) descending Zig-Zaging stair with tools, food, weapons and supplies in small boxes: You can tell your carriers which goods to carry first. When you need something in a hurry, put it at the top (of the stairs) and they'll carry it in preference to anything else.

The flowchart with arrows, diagrams and drawn lines to different workers tells you if your men are getting enough raw materials. You can quickly spot any shortages and take action.

Use the screen with the four castles, -/+ signs, Full, Good, Medium etc. to release a lot of soldiers for combat by lowering occupation levels for a while, and you'll have loads to play with. Though beware of enemy attacks.

Use the info screen showing the mines, sliders and food supply to adjust which mines get which proportion of food. If you see someone walking up and down outside the mine, he's on strike because he's hungry.

As soon as production levels start falling, consult the info screen with the big (red, orange) diagram in an X - Y axis with tools, food, and weapons beneath it, so that you can do something about it. It's easy to find everything held up because you're short of one tool.

Attack enemy wood supplies (Woodcutter, Sawmill) to effectively halt his or her expansion and then slowly eat away at his or her territory.

As a rule of thumb, have one mine per building requiring mined supplies. So for the above example of military expansion, have five coal mines and three iron mines. This should produce a small surplus for those lean times.

On higher levels, combat can be tough, so it's probably best to attack with a ratio of between ten and fifteen to one.

If your settlement is under attack, attack an enemy settlement directly in line. This will lead to your forces clashing halfway between the two settlements. If you have good supplies of gold, then you're certain to wipe out many of the enemy before they reach your settlement. As a bonus, you could even take the enemy settlement.

Try to surround the enemy main castle. This, coupled with the potential of wiping out any of his warehouses, will also halt his expansion.

This will prevent the enemy from nipping in and attacking when your soldiers have set off to attack the enemy, since on higher levels, the enemies wait for you to attack someone, then attack your reduced castles.