

You can either be strictly a fighter, strictly a farmer or a hybrid. You always want to make sure you have abundant supplies, coin, goods and decent leveled GBs before moving into a higher age. The amount of space it demands vs the reward per tile is horrible. And in my opinion, and others as you will find out, it is not worth ever building.

Essentially you should come out of Bronze Age with at least a Zeus or Tower of Babel, and stay in Iron Age until you get a Lighthouse of Alexandria and all of the buildings I have mentioned so far, the other Great Building in Iron Age is the Colosseum. Also, yes you do want to accumulate blue prints. I made that mistake on my main world in Walstrand and am paying for in by spending a lot of my time in the Late Middle Ages, leveling my GBs. There is absolutely a benefit to staying in an age before aging up.
