I haven't figured the game out completely, but it seems a lot of people a struggling on the discussion board and I hope I can help. I have a lot of experience with the game early on because I keep restarting - mid to late game gets boring for me.

In my most recent labyrinth of pain game I am currently working on, I have a 600 population build (with a food surplus) by turn 9, and half of the map already cleared.

The most important thing in this game is the economic snowball. This means
1. Constant growing population
2. Food surplus
3. Constant expanding resource production
Notice that all of the above 3 requires more and more land.
4. Large and effective armies for clearing land

Day 1: delete all swordsman (I do this, but you don't have to). 0-1 builder huts depending on starting population. 4-5 lumbermills. As many houses as you can build (6 to 12, usually around 8)
Day 2: 2-3 builder huts. 2-3 stone mines. 2-4 lumbermills. Spend the rest on food production. Storages, granary, and more houses. Build a barrack.
Day 3: around 20 archers. Make sure you have adequate food production as archers costs food.
Day 4: At this point you should be starting your townhall 2 upgrade.
Day 5+: Keep building units (hopefully 2nd tier by now), clearing camps, and expanding food/resource production.

1. ALWAYS build storage/granaries near resource/food buildings. ALWAYS.
2. Space is the most important resource, and will be the bottleneck to your economic snowball. You should always be building more armies to clear more space. Do not be afraid of building more barracks (I aim to have 4-6 barracks by turn 10)
2. Always have a food surplus. Food allows you to build more units, which allows you to clear more land, which allows you to economically snowball.
3. Make sure you are always growing your population and building more houses. If you have a lot unemployed workers, you are not using your population enough (can you build more units? more food? more resources?). Early on your population should be increasing as fast as you can increase them. I find around 500 population to be the sweet spot where you can slow down your population expansion to around 100 a day.
4. Always build more builders. I tend to get at least 4 builders (2 builder huts) per day early game. By turn 10 I am usually building around 8-10 builders a day. If you have a long builder queue you don't have enough builders.
5. Get townhall 2 as soon as you get the 100 stone needed. It unlocks farms, which is an infinite food source (berries and fish is limited). It also unlocks tier 2 buildings which is more spacially efficient. It unlocks tier 2 units which allows more effective camp clearing.


1. Berry Pickers are one of the most cost effective food building until berries run out.
2. Whether you want fortifications is up to you. I don't build them and I just use the dark knight spell and use them as meat shields, which cost mana crystals. But I would rather spend wood/stone or more houses or more resource production and focus on the snowball than on walls which can be expensive early game, and becomes cheaper in comparison later on.
3. Research stuff they are always worth it.