Let's start with perhaps the advantages:
1. Sawmill. Large + bonus of this resource is that the woodcutter's hut built on any cell, thereby building a city in a forest can produce very well, a lot of wood.
2. The doctors - one of the key units the game, the number of doctors often rankings can be compared with the rest of the army, so the light elves can stay longer at a lower rank, comparable with the army (as in fact it makes a number of doctors, pharmacists to the ruins of a lossless and the elves can have them less)
Disadvantages:
1. The main drawback with which you can confront - the problem with science. If you are building a stone demon, and the rest build up labs, and knights in the steppes stoyatsya (millet + lab), the built-up town of sawmills lab set to become not so profitable. We have to allocate a separate city for science.
2. Dependence on the demand for wood. At times, the tree can greatly cheaper (eg 3-5 days start when all the tree at the farm leavers), and other resources effectively to produce no benefit.
We now turn to the development strategy. Starting City, I suggest using a science building and the army. Bonus native land makes the city easy to store army (it will be harder to kill enemies). For the production of wood should be used only for the city terrayne "forest", so free cells will be the best solution is to build up the laboratories. In addition ponabitsya from 3 to 6 expeditionary corps, center of colonization, the guild spyware, 1-2 towers of mirrors, a couple of stores (here it is important whether you want to change the architecture or not), and 2 buildings of all troops, except for doctors - they can build pieces 5 The market and the guild of merchants, at least 10 dwellings, the rest to taste.
For two of the city looking for a Level 5 cell in the forest, and no matter what there will be resources - that's already evident advantages elf, after all, still going to build up its fully sawmills. Besides building a market, a guild of merchants (you can 2), 2-3 storage, preferably anti-spyware and a tower of mirrors, pieces of 10 dwellings. After construction of the sawmill is desirable to include 25 to the extraction of wood for the black pearl. And I would advise you to build a guild of mercenaries 3.2 in cities, it is convenient sroit for gold, the proceeds from the sale of wood.
Next we have to have time to take a good mine, and it is better to 2, preferably 4.5 level, but also three is not bad enough. It is best if it's mine on a rock and metal, at first you will have nowhere to spend it, but you think about it a couple of weeks later. Gold-mines are easy to use, but less profitable.
What to choose three city? There would be up to the player chooses, his style of play. You can still build a city in the forest for resource extraction. If a player prefers an aggressive style of play - you can build a city on the steppe under the science (if there is a suitable 5 level and a large number of grains) or a magical forest, in a city will also build additional troops (especially useful to build there healers).
And do not forget about the defenses. It is best to build on two magical towers in each city. They are much more efficient than conventional towers, at the level of captain, and still relatively large armies. Strengthen inefficient, in my view, it makes sense to build them in the mines, so it was extra barrier of capture (as it is necessary to destroy all the defenses and destroy only the structure of a type for an attack).
Good luck in the game, the Great Salt Lake and arhiruin!