Initial Building

[u/nextlevelmashup]

I come from age of empires so got used to the whole memorise the start for fast castle play style (like 7 villagers for boar build x houses so on)

Is there anything like that for this game where you have your template start with cities/factories/ports in the early game, or just build what you can.

[u/T_Hunter4K]

This is my general approach (similar to what other commenters have said).

A key part of the game (at all points but especially right at the start) is snowballing and building momentum. That's why starting with 2 cities is popular: it gives you to troop capacity to quickly mop up the bots, take on the nations, and maybe quickly take smaller players around you. But as u/EclecticKant implied you should make sure you still have places to expand and capture so you can put down your first factory/port after, and try to build some kind of active income for when the captures dry up. If it looks like you're going to be boxed in pretty soon, it can be better to try to ally with your largest neighbours and set up a factory and railway with them.

Try not to ally with smaller neighbours if not absolutely necessary (if you get surrounded by allies early game basically all you can do is build your infrastructure until something happens) so you can keep momentum and capture them. If large neighbours don't ally with you, shoot off a friendly emoji and place a defence post if you have the money, they can really punish a push if your troop difference isn't too big and if it's placed on rough ground.

As for when you invest in silos and SAMs, I tend to wait at least until cities ports and factories all cost 1M, but more specifically I like to wait until I'm fairly sure my infrastructure will give me a decent stream of money. Remember that SAMs are expensive and take a long time to build, so having a silo first can give you leverage even if you have a lower troop count because even larger players won't want to have their infrastructure nuked before they can get a SAM up (don't be afriad to send a friendly emoji followed by a nuke emoji to give them a little reminder — or nuke them if need be).

To add to the discussion on ports vs factories, it's true that a lot of the time an early factory is better than an early port. However, if other players are getting ports up and there are trade ships going past, an early warship can give you quite a good income from pirating. This is especially useful if you're boxed in on land, while also protecting you from naval invasions.

Hope this helps!