When you first build your city, all there will be is the Town Center. The Town Center is able to construct the most basic structures at the beginning of the game, the Farm and the Lumbermill. The Farm produces crop and the Lumbermill gathers wood. Let's see how to build these two structures and start gathering some resources.
Building a Farm[]
Clicking on a structure will show its abilities.
Click on the Town Center to see a sidebar with all of the available options. As you can see on the right, the Town Center is capable of building a Farm , a Lumbermill , and roads . Roads are required to be built next to many structures but they aren't required for Farms and Lumbermills so we won't need them yet.
Clicking the build Farm button will show where it can be built.
Click on the Farm button to build a farm. The squares where a Farm can be built will be highlighted. Farms and Lumbermills must be built on the grassy patch tiles in your city.
Double click where you would like to build the Farm. The Town Center will then be unavailable for a few minutes while the farm is being constructed. You can see how long it will take to build the Farm by either clicking on the Town Center or by clicking on the City Details button on the top menu.
Assigning Laborers to the Farm[]
Assign laborers to your Farm to produce crop.
The Farm by itself won't produce any crop. Instead, you must place laborers to work on the Farms. Click the Farm to select it then choose "Assign Laborers." The labor assignment dialog will popup which lets you choose how many laborers to place in your Farm. You can only add so many laborers to the Farm at a time, so you will need to come back later to add more. You will want to max out the laborers in the farm as soon as possible, as crops are one of the most important resources.
It will take sometime to transfer the laborers to the farm but once it is done, you can see that your city's crop production has increased by hovering over your resources on the top right of the screen.
Building a Lumbermill[]
Open the minimap to locate a forest, then double click on the minimap to center your view on whatever location you like
Lumbermills are used to gather wood from the various Forests spread throughout the map. You can build a Lumbermill the same way that we built the Farm. Once your Lumbermill is built, you will need to find a Forest to gather from.
The easiest way to find a Forest is by using the minimap. You can maximize the minimap by clicking on the map icon above of the minimap. Once you find a Forest, double click it to travel there.
Once you locate a forest, you can click on it and choose to build a lumber camp to begin harvesting wood from that forest
Click on the Forest then choose to gather from it. You will be required to choose how many laborers to work on this Forest. The more laborers, the more wood you will get. After accepting the labor assignment, you will see your Lumbering Camp being built. Depending on the distance from your city, this may take sometime. You will start gaining wood once the camp is built but be aware that Forests (unlike Farms) run out of wood. You will get a notificaiton once a Forest has depleted and you will need to find a new Forest to gather wood again.
You can always locate your existing Lumbering Camps by going to the City Details screen and clicking on the working Lumbering Camps.
Building a Training Ground[]
Wait a few hours until you have at least 250 Wood and 180 Crop. You will now be able to upgrade your Town Center to level 2. Once it is built, click on the Town Center and select Training Ground. You will notice that you cannot place it like a Farm or Lumbermill. You need some roads.
Select your Town Center again and click Build Road. You can place these anywhere in your city by double clicking. Play around with them to see how they work and try and set up a grid like area.
Now go back to your Town Center menu by clicking on it and select Training Ground. Place it anywhere on the roads you have made. You now have a Training Ground!
Training an Army[]
Now that you have your Training Ground, you are able to build your army. Click on your Training Ground and look for the button that says Fighter. Clicking on it shows a box that allows you to select how many Fighters you want. You only need 5 for your next Town Center upgrade but suggest training 20 since laborers are plentiful at the moment.
Once your fighters are ready, you can send them to attack other cities. You can do this if you want but be careful, your victim may want revenge!
For a more in-depth view of armies, go check out the Training an Army page.
What Next?[]
Those are the basics of the game and should get you going on your way. You can continue to read more about the game on our wiki or simply keep playing to learn more. The next step will depend on your play style but we recommend you to keep upgrading your Town Center, Farm and Lumbermill for more resource income as well as a higher resource capacity. Every level of Town Center will include more buildings that you can add to your city (University, Trading Post, Foundry from your University, Markets from Trading Posts, etc), which will give you more options for upgrading. If you are interested in efficient play you may want to check out road layouts.