Age of Empires/Citadel

Getting food will be your first priority when you start this map. Send the villagers you have to pick berries near your granary. Upgrade to a battle axe and use what food you have left creating villagers and sending them to chop wood near the storage pit. Explore the coastline and find the one shallow region where the enemy is most likely to send his forces. Research and build a guard tower here to protect your innocent villagers from possible attacks. Create a few more villagers and build farms near the granary and a dock. Build some fishing boats and find the fish jumping along the shoreline for even more food. Finally, build an archery range and when you hit 800 food, advance to the Bronze Age.

Build a small army of 4 axemen and 4 bowmen and transport them across the river to the island on the far left. There is a small stone deposit here and some trees. Build a tower to help defend in case of attack and a storage pit here near the stone and start harvesting it. Now build two stone throwers (all you can afford at this point), and transport them both over to the island. Send your warships up to the shallows on the top side of the island for support and march your small army and stone throwers in to battle. Tell the stone thrower to focus on the watch tower near the resources while your foot soldiers attack any enemies that show up. Build another storage pit and watch tower here and start gathering gold and stone.

Now that you own this territory, send your warships to the next set of shallows further up the coast. There are two towers here and enemies are sure to come streaming in as soon as you pick on a tower or two with your stone throwers. With your ground and sea forces in place, you should be able to fend them off long enough to destroy the towers. When the towers are gone, move your stone throwers away and move your armada up to block the shallows. March your army and stone throwers farther up the river and you will eventually run into a dock, then the ruins guarded by two towers. Take out the towers and claim the ruins for yourself. With your guard in place, it should take not time at all to construct two towers in the area.

By now, you should have a hefty amount of wood, so upgrade to war galleys and build a force of 5 to 7 war ships.