Romanwahoo, you deserve an answer.
The Economy:
Food:
By middle Iron (after the important upgrades are taken) you only need food to support:
- Units that require food (Scythes and HA, mainly).
- Villager re-training, if a bunch has been hit
Except for Elephants (which I don't advocate at all) all the other units require little or zero food. Nothing that about a dozen or 18 farms can't keep forever.
This means, in a nutshell, that a huge food gathering effort must have taken place since it is required to reach that stage. Because you need to defend the cheapest, least demading attention servants, your friends the fishing boats, it is only normal that in Tool and Bronze (when they are most critical) you keep a sizable fleet. This is extra wood that you pay back with food and with more Villagers free to gather more wood and Gold.
Come Iron and fising becomes more and more a long travelling business, the efficiency decreases way bellow the attactiveness level and the micromanagement augments to absurd levels. After the last few concentrated spots vanish, I simply delete the FB contingent and make peons and new farms instead.
Wood:
Wood is the key.
It has always been.
You need Wood for practically everything.
I reccommended: Phoenician + Minoan + Hittite.
What I really said was: lots of Siege units (Hittite and Minoan) from Bronze onwards!...
In Iron, you will mainly be going Siege.
The Phoenician will (with the Hittite) be making Scythes in Iron.
The Minoan will be using Helepolis only, or Cats + Helepolis.
[Note: IF - and only if - the Minoan has a great partner with Hittite, someone able to manoeuvre the Cats without killing the Helepolis escort, then the game is over, man].Gold.
Well, Gold is an interesting equation.
According to recent statistics, it has been discovered that RoR gold will not be possible to mine in the Seas.
If you played well, by the 35 minute mark, after a lot of bronze figths, you all will be in Iron.
My experience reveals that by this time, about 50% of the gold is still there.
Expelling an oponent from his land is usually a very good window of oportunity to get rich: resource hogging pays dividends.
So, by this time, one question arises:
WHAT can you do with your boats?...
I'll tell you: AWAIT DEATH.
Here's what I do.
After I got the fishing bit cleared, I concentrate my boats in one or two spots that have gold mines nearby.
That's it, you can have the seas now - each 135 wood that you spend in a useless ship is one less Catapult, or 1.3 Helepolis that you COULD have built - or a building, OR 2 Scythes Now, my Siege will simply erase, kill and destroy everything that you have on land - including your docks.I need to get something by the sea?...
Well, I own the land, I own the wood - I can just sit a bunch of Hittite Cats doing ground attack and you won't even be able to come close. Or I can send a huge pack of Helepolis to an area and I'll give you $1 for each boat that you manage to keep in the area for more than 15 seconds...
Lots and lots of games have I won in medit where we had the seas up to Iron, then released it to concentrate on territorial duty.
Land, is where you win the game.
UNLESS you are playing a small map, a NARROW strip of land, or some maps that have all the gold by the seas, the possession of the sea is only important while you fish and gather resourses by the shoreline. No fleet can dominate a strip of the coast that is protected by Minoan Helepolis and Hittite Heavy Cats - that's also how long it takes to get docks - lots - and spit out a bunch of Triremes. Remember: who owns the more land owns the more wood. There is simply no wood in the sea. If your ships deny me a part of the forest my land units also deny that portion to you so I will always have more wood for retaking the seas - if that would have ANY interest at all.Mediterranean is about the only map where the possession of the seas helps, but does not decide the game.
In many other types of map (Small Islands, Narrows, Large Islands, large and medium Coastal, and even large Inland) possessing the water gives a clear advantage - sometimes decisive.
In Huge or Gigantic Mediterranean, its only a matter of protecting the fishing.
Nothing else...