Peter: Yes the hints helped. I finally finished it through what appears to be luck. The yellow Kibi on the Eastern part of the isle attack you with waves of yellow clubmen only. If you wait too long then the powerful brown Kibi will send landing parties on boatds consisting of mostly composite bowmen (which equals certain death) and powerful axemen to attack your town center.
My strategy that finally worked went like this:
First I sent all the villagers to hunt the gazelles for food to get to Tool Age as quickly as possible. I let the twin towers attack the clubmen and ignored fixing any damage to them.
Second I waited until most of the waves of clubmen had been killed by the towers and then sent all my troops to the East of the island. These consisted of 3 clubbers, 3bowmen, and about 4-5 villagers. I was careful to make sure they didn't wander too far North by the main beachhead -which triggers a brown invasion. Curiously all the yellow clubbers & villagers were gone (possibly exhausted or due to yellow trying to Tool?). In any event, yellow was a ghost town inhabited by buildings only when I got there.
Third I abandoned all buildings in the initial Western town center (soon as I reached Tool I sent my troops East leaving a)town center b)2 towers c)barracks d)archery range e)1 house) and let my soldiers attack all the yellow houses while my villagers quickly built a vertical wall stretching North to South bisecting the island and cutting off advance brown Kibi landing parties.
As I did this the brown composite bowmen destroyed my town center and house -I would rebuild replacing yellow territory with all my new houses, town center, etc.
Fourth I Bronzed as quickly as possible and made two priests which I converted brown Kibi bowmen & ships with that attacked the far Eastern buildings & coast until brown was mostly exhausted of supplies -a long time.
It is mysterious why there were suddenly no yellow Kibi. I can understand the clubmen missing -but why no villagers? Is it possible brown killed all their people but not their houses/town center.
Anyway I didn't look this gift horse in the mouth. The absence of yellow Kibi allowed me to establish a solid unreachable town center/houses/base on the Eastern side of the starting island.
After that it was mostly a matter of gradually mopping up brown Kibi then skirting the red powerhouse enemy on the Northern fortress island with 2 priests and a catapult.
I landed these 3 on the skinny strip beach and converted all troops above on the cliffs and bombarded the red towers one by one until I had converted all their defenses. There was no need for building any of my own troops.
At the end there was no tree standing anywhere except for the very last top tier where the red temple is up North.
Wood, gold & all bushes & gazelles I'd stockpiled from every other area including the alligator island far West. I traded wood for gold with brown Kibi which left me in excess of 1k gold at the end of the mission.