Make 4 villagers (H+C) right away (1 if Chinese, 5 if Persian). Have your first 3 villagers build 2 houses and assign the number 1 to your scout (Ctrl+1). With your scout, hold shift and make way points all around your village. Send all sheep directly to your TC. By now you should have 2 houses. Send your 1st 3 villagers on sheep if you have them. Have your 4th villager go on wood, your next 2 on sheep and the last one on wood. Now you should have 5 on sheep and 2 on wood. Keep cracking out villagers. Your next 3 should go on sheep and the one after that should join with your lumberjacks to build a lumber camp near a forest (B+Z). Make more housing when needed. In the meantime, your scout should be scouting and sending all new sheep back. Your 20th villager should go chop wood so now you have 4 on wood and 16 on food. When you run out of sheep, build a mill by your berries (B+I) and have your 16 start foraging keep making villagers until your population meter says 25. Have 1 more villager go on wood, have 2 on stone and 3 on gold. If you had enough sheep at the beginning, you shouldn't run out of berries by the time you have 24 villagers, 1 scout and 500 food. Start going Feudal.

While you’re going Feudal, you will probably run out of berries. This may seem bizarre, but don’t build farms yet. Take 1 to 3 villagers and build your Barracks (B+B) where you please. After your berries are gone, seek out the nearest wild boar and kill it. Since the limit on hunting food is higher than foraging berries, your villagers will take a while longer and each will return with about 35 food which will help out.

At any point during the Feudal Age, take 1 or 2 villagers and wall off the main entrances to your portion of the map (i.e. shallows, forest paths). Immediately go to your Mill and research the Horse Collar and right after that go to your Lumber camp and research the Two-bit axe. If food and wood permits, research stone mining. Begin to build farms around your Mill and/or Town Center. Once you don't have enough wood to build any more farms, send 1 villager to help with wood and wait until you have 60 wood to build another farm and alternate lumberjacks and farmers until all your villagers are working. Make 5 more villagers. Have the first one build a Blacksmith (B+S) and your second one build a Market (B+M) once you have enough wood (Note: In team games, build your Market at the far end of your town to increase the amount of gold by trade carts). Once your Blacksmith is done, send your villager to work on stone. And your other one to work on gold. Send your next 2 villager on wood and your last on gold. By now you should have around 500 food and gold. Go to your market and click the Trade Gold for food button until you have at least 800 food and 200 gold: the amount needed for going Castle. Research Castle.

While your going from Feudal to Castle, research gold mining and 1 or 2 blacksmith items that benefit the units you will use to make war (i.e. fletching and archer armor for archers/skirms/longbowmen, barding/mail armor and forging for infantry/cavalry). Build an archery, stable or both during the transition.

Take all your stone miners and some of your gold miners if you'd like and build a castle. You should have enough stone by now. If not, trade for it. Make 5 or more villagers and disperse them as you like. If you want to make an attack at this time, make sure you have enough units to defend your village in case of a counter attack. Branch out from your existing walls to gain new ground. The more area you have secured, the better off you are (i.e. tribes and other siege wont be able to attack you without going through a few walls first.) a good start is to send a villager or two to build a Siege Workshop (B+K) near your enemy's camp within the confines of your new territory. Go Imperial whenever you like. Some people like to postpone going Imperial, but I like to get there as quick as I can so I can focus my resources on technologies and military instead of being the last to go Imperial.

Build the rest of your buildings that you may need. Research things at your Blacksmith or University to improve your military stats.

Continually make more and more villagers. I've been in games where my opponent's villager high was 125. The rest is your personal preference.