Probably the simplest strategy at low ranks is to just collect food, reproduce and try to gain VP, so you at least make it through phase 1. Killing a few spawners or barbarians is also recommended, even if it's not an objective, so you don't get overrun in phase 2.

To be efficient, it's helpful to build farms for food, and not rely on the rabbits because they take up a lot of moves -- either move cards used or dice converted to moves 2 per die. You may be forced to collect food from a rabbit if you can't yet build a farm, as that takes 2 builders.

Reproduction is important, and top priority if you have less than 8 dice in phase 1. I recommend building a 3rd house, especially if you can get nearer to rabbits, trees and spawners, or line up with a stone pit when you have build quarry objective, and reproducing to 9 dice in phase 1 if you can do this by round 8. Use the last rounds for getting VP unless you're ahead of schedule and can afford to prepare phase 2 by reproducing more.

You will need at least 2 farms in phase 1, and have to decide whether it's easier to build a third farm or hunt 2 or more rabbits, which could depend on how the cards and rolls combine.

I recommend, except if you have no farm, only to use move cards when collecting food from rabbits. It can be helpful to use a move card to build a house as near to a rabbit as possible. Provided it gets you nearer to trees or spawners as well, this is probably worthwhile. If you have no farm, and no move card, then you can sacrifice dice for 2 moves each, even though you'll probably only get 2 actions on the round instead of 3, just because food is essential and there's no better option until you have a farm.

Once you have the basics of this simplest strategy down, you may notice that phase 2 becomes more difficult as you rank up, because you need 1 more VP per rank, whereas phase 1 maxes out at 18 VP (at rank 18).

How to deal with this depends on your rank. With the simplest strategy in phase 1, of just getting VP with no preparation for phase 2, you end up probably having to get 3 farms or 2 farms and 2 rabbits. The strategy I suggest next is to get a marketplace, at least when phase 1 objectives require stone. You can get stone by converting wood to stone at the marketplace with a spare + not needed for reproduction. This is much more efficient than using distant stone pits or distant quarries because it takes only 1 move, 1 food and 1 action, assuming the marketplace is next to a house or connected by roads to a house.

Once that seems to fall short in phase 2, you can prepare more for the stone you will likely need for phase 2 buildings (at least for a builders hall if you have to build tall buildings for objectives, meaning ones that take more than 1 build action). Do this by getting a single marketplace card. If you draw it with the move card, you can activate the marketplace card for resources with a die, and still get moves from the move card. If you draw it without the move card, then you can either use it for resources or for 7 moves, depending on whether you need stone for phase 1 objectives or not, and on what you can get done on the round with the moves. If you can activate the marketplace card once and convert wood to stone once, you can build a builders hall, fountain or church.

The food from activated marketplace cards helps you concentrate a little more on actions that gain VP and a little less on food collection. This will also work in phase 2, at no extra cost to you besides having to cycle a deck of 6 cards instead of the starting 5.

I strongly recommend building a builders hall early in phase 2 if you haven't already got one in phase 1, if any phase 2 objectives require tall buildings or stone, as they often do. A builders hall card makes up for seeing the build card less often with 6 cards very well, and can also be used for stone, as can masons.

As you rank up you may need so many buildings in phase 2 that you need fountains to build extra farms or houses beyond the river banks when these are objectives. You will need 2 stone for each fountain, so stone production becomes important more often.

For phase 3, if you already have a builders hall and a builders hall card, and you collected extra stone in phase 2, it should be simple to build a castle and get a bunch of nobles, which when rolling to VP are worth 1 VP for every 5 buildings you have, which includes roads, which are the easiest to build and help with reaching spawners and barbarians in all phases. 10 or 15 buildings will be enough at ranks below 80.

I don't recommend trying to use the phase 3 objectives for VP at almost any rank -- they're usually too slow and castle and nobles is less work for more VP. In fact, beyond rank 30 the phase 2 objectives are not reliably enough to get the required VP and a phase 2 castle starts to be needed when the objectives are bad, for which I refer you to other guides, such as my other guide or Allan's guide.

The castle is quicker to build with 2 builders hall cards, since that gives you 3 build 3 options along with the build card, and with 1 builders hall the castle requires 9 build actions. Occasionally you will have build builders hall objective in phase 2 and so have several of them, which could drop the number of build actions for the castle a lot -- even to 1 action.

Collecting the resources for the phase 3 castle in phase 2 is going to be faster with 2 marketplace cards and a builders hall card and maybe a mason for more stone. I suggest 2 marketplace cards in phase 2, because you then can use 1/2 for moves and 1/2 for resources, or whichever split seems appropriate to the situation. This combination of extra power to make tall buildings from builders hall cards with extra moves and resources from the marketplace cards is very powerful.

Don't overdo the masons. I suggest only 1 in phase 1 and 2 unless you have the have 2 masons objective. That's because they don't have gatherer or + faces. You really want 10 dice if you have 1 mason and 11 dice if you have 2, to be able to continue reproducing in phase 2 and 3 and using gather cards reliably, although the gather card is less vital when you can get food from stone.

If you have hunters from the have 2 hunters objective in phase 1, you can have more masons and probably should to get enough builders. It's pretty important to get masons as soon as you can when you have hunters otherwise you will have trouble rolling enough builders to get your building done.

If you have 2 or more marketplace cards, and you use them for resources sometimes, then you may have spare stone which you can convert to food at the marketplace. This means you can spend less time building and working and gathering farms, so you can get more useful actions done with efficient food production from stone. Just remember that you want to stock up 6 stone for the phase 3 castle, so don't use all your stone. It's often worth building a farm in phase 2 after you have the builders hall, because it only requires 1 build action then, and it can stop you using up too much of your stone.