No more than 3 villagers should be allocated to gold. Some civilizations start out with -100 gold, and it is highly recommended to get a head-start on gold. While you don't need gold to advance to the Feudal Age, it is important to start in the Dark Age (or at least while researching Feudal) because you won't be in the Feudal Age for very long. Build a mining camp next to your gold pile located near your town center.You should have about 10-12 villagers on wood. Some new villagers should be allocated to wood, which is very important from the Feudal Age on.
Keep building houses until you can support 35 population. Keep creating villagers until you get to 30 population.
This pattern is perhaps the most important hotkey pattern in the game. Thus, the fastest way to do this is to press H and then press shift-C. The default hotkeys are H for town center and C to create a villager (only after selecting the town center). Immediately create 4 villagers from the town center, depleting all 200 food.When the game begins, there are a few steps that must be done in very quick succession: