Well, I took the advice posted and hosted my own game. 2v2 inland, rookies only. To my surprise, only rookies joined. Nobody had more than a dozen zone games under their belt.
I started at 5:00, and my teammate (Red, don't remember the names.) started at 7:30. I quickly found 5 berry bushes and started stripping them, but knew that it wasn't going to be enough food. A little more searching uncovered an elephant next to 4 gazelles. Not much, but it'll have to do for now. (I hate hunting gazelles. They're too skittish.)
I know that early villager scouting is essential to winning the game, but I've never had much success with it.... until now. Knowing that food was going to be a huge problem for me (and knowing how bad I am in late bronze and iron), I sent out 3 villagers to find the enemy. I found yellow at 9:30, only a shallows away from my teammate, and green at 12:30, all by his lonesome. (What happened to that third villager? I forgot about him.) I hid the two villagers near the enemy camps.
I had found another berry patch, so at 11 minutes I finally tooled. After that finished, I went to place a couple of archeries and disrupt their peaceful communities. Uh oh. I forgot to build a barracks. Good thing this is a rookie game. After quickley remedying that mistake, I built my stables and archeries and sent three bowmen right into the middle of yellow's town. (Forgot to give them the armor upgrade.) I killed some villagers, he countered with axemen. "That's okay," I figure. "Seems like a fair trade."
With that, I turned my attention to green. On my initial recon, I saw that he had a few towers between me and his villagers, so I decided to send some scouts after him. (I didn't want to risk building archers only to have them cut down by the towers before they reached the targets.) Ugh, what a mistake. Yeah, they killed some villies, but every time I head back to my own town to keep things progressing, they stand around doing nothing. They ended up dying, don't remember why.
I bronzed shortly after that, at about 18 minutes. A few Chariots, Chariot Archers, and Stone Throwers later, green resigned. He had some good berries and elephants, so I sent a bunch of villagers up that a-way to live the good life.
My teammate had walled the shallows between him and yellow and was steadily progressing towards iron. I started moving the remnants of my little army towards yellow while building a few more CA's in his back yard.
About this time, I check out my teammate, and see he's got about 10 ST's and a few cavs waiting to go. "When are you attacking?" I ask. "Right after I finish iron and upgrade to cats" he says. "Okay, I'll thin him out a little."
I sent 3 CA's in his back door for a little "social visit." He countered with about 15 (improved?) bowmen and axers. Seems my original visit caused him a bit of concern. His archers made quick work of my CA's, but I had a key piece of information: All his bowmen were bunched together, having a little pow wow. I queued up some more CA's and focused on my other "army."
My 1 Chariot, 2 CA's, and 3 ST's left over from green reached his front lines. I tried targeting the ground where his bowmen were with my ST's, but the lag was messing me up, and he discovered me before I was ready. My ST's killed about 6 of his archers before travelling to that great woodpile in the sky.
Just then, my teammate came over the shallows with hoards of cats and cavs. (Yes, 10 cats does qualify as a hoard when your defenses are down.) Between them and my other CA's, we easily finished him off.
Thanks to all here for your advice and encouragement. I've definitely learned a few things:
1. Early scouting does work. Green did discover the buildings I had planted in his back yard, but it was too late to do anything about it. I don't think yellow ever found where those CA's were coming from.
2. Zone gaming can be fun, as long as no one takes it too seriously.
3. It's all a matter of perspective. Everyone that's better than you is an expert. Everyone that's worse than you is a rookie. (And I'm still a rookie, as evidenced by the mistakes I made in this game.)
Maybe next time I'll try working on my Iron game.