Search your opponents frontiers for streets that are next to your frontier. If you have found such a street, place a flag directly next to the street, click on the flag and click the symbol for connecting the flag to the street (that green symbol with the red arrows). If it didn't work, the street wasn't near enough.
You see, this way you could then delete the flag and cut the street. But DON'T. There are much better things to do.
First, place a storage hall next to the flag, and connect it with that flag only, but not with your own streets. Soon you'll see the opponnent's settlers building the hall on your land for you. You can do even more. Let them build anything for you. This is even more interesting if it happens next to a smith, because then the weapons are being transported into your storage hall, where your knights grow (with the opponent's weapons, hehe).
But don't forget: Never connect this new street system to your own system before disconnecting from the opponents, because otherwise your resources, people and knights might go into your opponent's land and help him instead of you.
If you are not satisfied with the random generated maps of the settlers and want to modify some maps, you should try EdSet08.lha from AmiNet/game/patch/. The kewlest thing is the Mega-Geologist.
On the mission select screen type "PASSIVE" and you can play any of the 30 levels.
01---"START" | 11-"CHOPPER" | 21--"PASTURE"
02-"STATION" | 12----"GATE" | 22----"OMNUS"
03---"UNITY" | 13--"ISLAND" | 23--"TRIBUTE"
04----"WAVE" | 14--"LEGION" | 24-"FOUNTAIN"
05--"EXPORT" | 15---"PIECE" | 25----"CHUDE"
06--"OPTION" | 16---"RIVAL" | 26--"TRAILER"
07--"RECORD" | 17--"SAVAGE" | 27---"CANYON"
08---"SCALE" | 18---"XAVER" | 28--"REPRESS"
09----"SIGN" | 19---"BLADE" | 29-----"YOKI"
10---"ACRON" | 20--"BEACON" | 30--"PASSIVE"
The placement of your castle is vital, it must be near a range of mountains. You can't hope to win without lots of mines. There are often only a few suitable mining areas. Later on a lot of the fighting will be over who controls the mountains.
Now for your building program. The fighting doesn't usually start until most of the land is occupied. You can do this quickly with guardrooms but they don't offer much security and will quickly be over-run by your enemies. Protect important areas with Watch Towers or Garrisons if there's room.
You'll need at least one of each building early on, except the boatyard and perhaps a pig farm and butcher, Start building military buildings on the edge of your territory straight away. Get your geologists out prospecting the and get those mines going as soon as they find anything. The mines need food, the easiest way to get it is to use fishermen, later on you can progress to farms.
Next start a couple of woodcutters and and a stone cutters. For every wood- cutter build a forester, or you'll soon run out of trees. The stonecutter will exhaust surface stone after a while, so destroy the building and put up another one or the poor chap has to wander all over the land looking for suitable stone.
The sawmill is next, place it near to your castle. You now have all the raw materials for building work. Now get the other manufacturing buildings going. The steel worker, goldsmith, armourer and tool-maker. You'll generally start the game with stocks of raw materials to get them into production without mining anything. Put the buildings as close as possible to your castle, along with a military building or two for protection. These are vital buildings, you need weapons and gold to win the fights.
Get a corn farm going if your miners look like running out of food. Then either a pig farm and butcher, or a windmill and baker. One butcher can serve several pig farms and one baker and miller several corn farms, so you're unlikely to need two of these unless your territory is huge.
When your power builds up a second goldsmith and armourer will help your army expand and get tougher.
Attack enemy territories carefully, expand too quickly and you're left with large areas dotted with guard rooms and little else, your army will be stretched very thin. Keep the garrisons high and well stocked with gold. It's easy to build more guard rooms, watch towers and garrisons than you have knights to fill them.
Leave the warehouse for last, you only really need it when you have a large kingdom and long supply routes. Once raw material production is in full swing, concentrate on gold and weapons and build up your army. To keep your army well trained keep rotating them with knights in the castle, where they train.
Keep roads straight and build a few short cuts if you can. Avoid building "red" roads, keep them flat and level and your chaps will get about a lot quicker. If you see piles of raw materials building up at a junction then a bypass is in order. Try and build roads in a grid pattern rather than a star or you'll get traffic problems.
Watch your enemy for a weak link, a single iron ore mine or a steel worker in an outlying territory and let loose with a knight or two. Have a look at the flag on the enemy dwelling and make sure your chaps are up to the job, you can lose a lot of low level knights in an attack on a well defended building. A neat and rather mean trick is to attack a building deep inside enemy territory. You'll probably lose it soon enough if your enemy is any good but it causes lots of destruction. And that's always a good thing.
The Goldsmith, the more gold you have the better your chaps fight so get at least a couple of built as quickly as possible
Corn farmers wanders about sowing the seeds and harvesting the crop, it even goes in seasons. One miller and one baker can very easily handle the output of three or more of these corn farms.
The bigger the military building then the bigger the area it commands. Be very careful when knocking them down, or you'll lose precious buildings.
The warehouse, too close to the main castle to be much of use is bad.
Nearly surround your enemy castle with military buildings. Strong forts ensure he's not going to get the land back easily.
Eventually the supplies of mineable raw materials will be exhausted and it'll be time to fight with the neighbours over the remaining supplies.
Keep those roads in a neat grid pattern. As soon as you spot a blockage, build another road to go around it. It's frustration-city to see precious supplies getting stuck at the crossroads.
The info screen with a descending Zig-Zaging stair (kind of) with tools, food, weapons and supplies in small boxes:
You can tell your carriers which goods to carry first. When you need something in a hurry, put it at the top (of the stair) and they will carry it in preference to anything else.
The flowchart with arrows, diagrams and drawn lines to different workers:
This flow chart tells you if your chaps are getting enough raw materials. You can quickly spot any shortages and take action.
The screen with the four castles, -/+ signs, Full, Good, Medium etc:
You can release a lot of soldiers for combat by lowering occupation levels for a while, you'll have loads to play with. Beware of enemy attacks though.
The info screen showing the mines, sliders and food supply:
You can adjust which mines get what proportion of food. If you see someone walking up and down outside the mine, he's on strike coz he's hungry.
The info screen with the big diagram (red, orange) in an X-Y axis with tools food and weapon beneath:
As soon as production levels start falling do something about it. It's easy to find everything held up because you're short of one tool.
Attack enenmy wood supplies (Woodcutter, Sawmill) to effectively halt his or her expansion and then slowly eat away at their territory.
Have at least two weaponmakers and three iron foundries for a decent expansion of weapons.
As a rule of thumb, have one mine per building requiring mined supplies, so for the above example of military expansion have five coalmines and three ironmines. This should produce small surplus for those lean times.
On higher levels, combat can be tough, so it's probably best to attack with a ratio of between ten and fifteen to one.
If your settlement is under attack, attack an enemy settlement directly in line. This will lead to your forces clashing halfway between the two settle- ments; if you have good supplies of gold then you are certain to wipe out many of the enemy before they reach your settlement. As a bonus, you could even take the enemy settlement.
Try to surround the enemy main castle. This, coupled with the potential of wiping out any of his warehouses, will also halt his expansion.
As a norm, on the troop allocation table have:
FULL/FULL - Front Line
FULL/MEDIUM - Behind Front Line
FULL/MEDIUM - Well behind enemy lines
MINIMUM/MINIMUM - Well out of it.
This will prevent the enemny nipping in and attacking when your soldiers have set off to attack the enemy, since on higher levels the enemies await for you to attack someone, then attack your reduced castles.
Always have seven to ten in your initial castle to prevent surprise attack.