Before you I lay a widely used, but great strategy. Before I used this strategy i had lost many games, but then i found out this strategy, which combines power pretty early in the game. So heres the plan:

Pick a Greek god (personally I use Zeus but you can also use Hades). In the beginning age get a decent amount of food; enough to advance w/some surplus, but also start mining for gold and hoarding the wood. Once you click the advance to the Classical Age send all your villies gathering food to chop down trees.

When you have advanced create as many villies as you can with your amount of food. Then, keep creating villies till you have 4-5 more. Send one to create archery ranges 2-3 perferrably and the others(4 villies) to mine gold. Make 4 more villies and set them to work on farms. Establish settlements on every gold mine you can see. Now, you will have a steady flow of gold/wood. To keep the amount of food you need to advance up you should creat a villie every minute or so for like 3 minutes and send them to work on more farms. With the gold, wood, and the 2-3 archery range start creating toxotes. You will keep your food because toxotes cost like 55 gold and 35 wood, so they are fairly cheap and since you have the settlements established on the gold mines you will keep a decent amount of gold. Dont forget to upgrade your toxotes. Medium Toxotes are more effective. After you have 17 or so medium toxotes find an enemy and attack his villies on gold/wood. This can be extremely effective because the opponent will lose precious time and resources.

Once you click the advance to the Heroic Age you should have a good surplus of gold and wood. Keep the creation of toxotes constant. If you have enough wood build another 1 or 2 archery ranges. Keep sending skirmishes of toxotes *Note: Keep expanding your archery ranges, it can be very effective in the attack.*

As soon as you advance reaserch heavy toxotes in the archery range and create 5-7 villies. Divide them up to wood chopping and gold mining. *Note: Try to reasearch as many gold/wood/food bonuses in the settlements/granary as you can without it effecting your toxote creation.* Now keep the flow of toxotes constant. Make sure you send skirmishes because setting a gather point at the enemy location wont do any good (they will just die). If you have the resources you can make a fortress and maby a petroboli or two. Soon your enemy will not be able to stand the skirmishes and either give up, or you will destroy his towncenter.