The "Newbie" Guide
So you’ve never played and you want to know what to do? To begin with, when are you entering the game? Utopia games are two months long and your strategy changes depending on when you arrive. I’ll start out with general "newbie" tips and then give specific advice for people who arrive after the start of the game.
Read The Guide – Do what I did when I was learning to play, read the guide and make some notes. Make notes on what the buildings do and what your troops strengths and weaknesses are. For example beastmasters have 1 point of offense and 8 points of defense. You should never send your beastmasters out to attack. But you won’t know that unless you read the guide.
Decide On A Building Formula – sit down and figure out per hundred acres what you are going to build. Too many people just build as they go along and try to get a little bit of everything. Have a plan and try to maximize your population , cash, and buildings by building just a few types of buildings. It will make a large difference in how well your game goes.
Defense And "Land Fat" – Make sure that you have adequate defense to defend the acres you have. What is adequate defense? It changes throughout the game. Very early on it may be as little 15 points of defense per acre. Later in the game it may be as much as 60-70 points per acre. What is considered "land fat" changes as well as the game goes on . Early on people may have less than 100 points of NW per acre. As the game goes on 150 points of NW per acre becomes the standard. Then near the end you may have 200 to 250 points of NW per acre. Just try to make sure you are comparable to, if not better than other people your size.
Get Bigger Every Day – Grow a little bit every day. Personally, I shoot for 50-125 acres a day either by exploration or "land grabs". This is where a lot of people fall down. They either grow way too fast and can’t defend their acres or they don’t grow fast enough and fall behind. Finding your groove is essential.
Balance Your Province – Make sure that your military, thieves per acre ratio, and wizards per acre ratio are all solid. Neglecting any of those 3 areas will eventually come back to haunt you. It is extremely difficult to succeed if you badly neglect any of these three areas.
	For late comers to the game, here's some specialized advice:
Defense, Defense, Defense- Pick a race like faerie or elf with strong defense and build all the elites you can. You will be comparatively very land fat when you come out of protection. Make sure your defense for your size is outstanding.
No Exploration Early – Do not explore under protection – You make yourself more land fat and a bigger target if you try. Wait until you are out of protection and have solid defense
Defection – If you are on a horrible kingdom that’s full of inactives, other newbies, and generally looks like a bomb was dropped on it, I’d say consider defecting. You do lose 15% of your meager resources but with no one to help you, you may lose those anyway. I’d rather start from 50 acres on a strong kingdom that would help me, than at 200 acres on a nightmare kingdom where no one can even help themselves. Plus, if you can get on a solid kingdom, next round you get to start from scratch there.
Keep Things In Perspective – If you arrive late in the game and aren’t an experienced player, use that time to really learn the game. Don’t get frustrated and don’t let the whiners and complainers get you to give up. No matter how far down you get, you can come back. We had a guy on our kingdom who was down to 7 acres. Now he’s doing terrific and has a NW higher than 85% of the other players in the game just 3 weeks later. If you take a few hits, just accept it and keep going.
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