Elves are by far the most well-rounded race in my opinion. Its pros are having the safest infrastructure, the most managable economy, and starting with gatherers that are also archers, great for early defense.

Contrary to the human players, every single resource exists safe within the starting walls of the elves. You start with 2 male wardens, which are the main builders and gatherers of your economy. You start with two female wardens, which cannot build, and gathers resources more slowly, but also acts as your main bulk of early game archers, much like the orc's merauders.

You also start with two treants, which acts as resource dropoff points, so put one in between your berry bushes and the stone mine, and one directly behind your gold mine to be most efficient. Unlike humans and orcs, gatherers don't have to move when gathering resources. The resources travel from the gathering point to the treant in small shining balls of light.

The first thing you should do is select a male warden, press B to build a Grand Tree, the only building the wardens can create. Place it in the middle of your base, between the berry bushes and your main building, because you need this one to be safest. Then task the other male warden on the berry bushes. Select both of the female wardens, and set them on the gold mines (only one group per node). Position the treants like I explained above, and then build one more warden.

When your Grand Tree is done, set them on the berry bushes too. You will need food fast. Now, select your Grand Tree, and upgrade it into a Tree Symbiosis. The entire reason elves are so beginner friendly are these badboys. Once you have got a Tree Symbiosis, research Spirit Communion, because it reduces the cost of Forest Spirits, your endless supply of free wood trinkle.

From this point, start creating more Grand Trees with your berry picking wardens, and send them back to gathering afterwards. You can focus on many different things at this point, but a good early building is Sylvian Shrine for extra food income from deer and gold income from unicorns, and afterwards you build at least two more wardens and put them on either gold or food as needed.

Then you should start focusing on military buildings, based on your overall strategy: Tree Dwelling if you plan on building walls early, or War Lodge if you plan on early map control (doing red camps on the map are the fastest with melee units).

Remember the best use of your Tree Symbiosis building is to get Stone, Berry bushes and Gold resources there later, when yours are depleted. Just click on the stone blocks next to the building and choose the node you want. At one point you will start to float resources heavily (have way more than you logically need), so delete some workers and focus more on the trinkle you get from your economy buildings, it will free up population you will need for a huge military. Obviously if you have a node on your Tree Symbiosis, use it, otherwise, there's no point in trying to get nodes on other parts of the map. You might want to get some gold from the middle resources eventually, but this is why you have female wardens, your main archer unit (a bit weaker than actual archers but 1000x more useful, as they can loot corpses, and heal your troops too).

If you have learned anything please leave a comment and if there's anything I'm missing, please share. I hope you too will pick up the elves eventually because they are definitely one of the most interesting races in my opinion.