Ok, arguable one of the most important parts of the Age Of Empires game is having a Good economy to back up your armies,  After all a soldier cant march on an empty stomach..... So below you will find some helpful hints on how to get a good economy up and running to set you on the road to victory...

 Dark and Feudal Age

--Villager Flow is very important    Make sure your TC is always busy at least until Castle age If not until Later on in the game, and research Loom only when you cant build a villager (due to either Lack of food or houses to support them) or you need it (i.e. you are forward building, so you don't die to wolves. If you cant bring back boar to your TC with out loom)

--Housing                                     Make sure you build houses at least 2 population before max, i.e after firs 2 houses it will be pop13, 18, 23,28, etc.

--Get FREE food first                    Like Sheep, Boars, Deer's, Shore fish and Berries this is for a lot of reasons:-
1) it doesn't cost any initial layout of resources (like farms do, 60 wood).....
2) They are all the fastest ways of gathering in food (except Berries)...... See the Gathering rates on the Gathering Rates Table 

--Forced Food Drops                    Sometimes you will be faced with the problem of having less food than is need to keep villager flow going. So rather than wait for the villager to gather and drop off the 35 meat from that Boar or sheep, Right click on the TC to drop off what they are carrying, this should place enough food in your stock pile to keep you villager flow going. Also you should drop off resources that your villagers are carrying before you switch to another (i.e. when eating sheep drop off the food gathered BEFORE you shoot the boar being lured back to your TC)

--Use middle of TC                        Eat Sheep, Boars, etc in the middle of the TC square so villagers only have to stand up to drop off food, not walk (this also makes forced food drops easier)

--Don't make your vills work hard  Try to cut down the distance you vills have to walk, there are many way of doing this, i.e Build mills touching as many berries as possible, build farms touching your TC's or mills (not 1 or more tiles away), build lumber camps next to the trees and once the trees have been cut back a distance build another camp, etc............. I did a little experiment with a farm 0 squares away from TC and 1 square away here are results:-

 I know that dosnt seem much but but if you got 6 farms around your TC that nearly 6 mins time difference and in a minute you can collect 20 more food from a farm thats another 120 food extra you would have and thats just 6 of you villagers.

--Stop Villager bumping                Try to stop vills bumping into and trapping each other while gathering resources the best example of this is when chopping wood, to help stop this you should put fewer people on same areas of resources (i.e instead of having 10 vills on 1 lumber camp you should build 2 with 5 on each, in dark age, YES!!! 2, I know it sounds like a waste of 100 wood, but you soon get it back)

--Upgrades                                    When possible you should get economic upgrades, the sooner you get them, the sooner, they pay for them selves. When you get them will depend on your strategy, for example if your Flushing you will need Wood upgrades almost as soon as you get to feudal, If you are booming then you will get wood and farm upgrades on the way up to Castle age. Also Wheel barrow only really benefits farmers so don't get it until you have 10+ farms (or you have forgot houses and cant build villagers)

--Build docks                                 When you are on a map that has water (unless you are going to Flush) you should build docks as soon as possible, even though you are spending a lot of wood early on, it easily pays for it self before you get to feudal age (its like building 2 vills at same time as enemy builds 1) I find if the area of water has 3+ fish spots it is Well worth the dock). Also at this point I would just like to point out it is a lot faster for fishing boats to get Deep sea fish than shore fish so always get them first even though it will be further to travel. and a quick reminder about houses:- you will need to build them earlier than 2 before pop max

 Castle Age

--Build many TC's                        Build as many TC's as your strategy will let you, If you are booming then as soon as you get to castle age you should throw down 3-4 TC's, on Arabia (which you will of flushed) maps you will probably get 1-2 more down because you will be build a lot of Military buildings and units. At the end on the game (if it gets to Imperial age) you should have 8-10+ TC's up. You should build these new TC's by resources, such as gold stone etc, the reasons for all these TC's is because:-
1) You can produce more villagers, if you have 2 TC's and enemy have 1 then you will build 2 vills for his 1 hence resulting in 2x as many resources 8x TC's = 8x resources..
2) It is a safe place for your villagers to hide if attacked
3) It also gives you a free house (2 for Chinese)
4) It also gives you a free mining/Lumber camp 
5) It also gives you a free mill for your farms to be built around............... So don't think of them as expensive buildings (275wood +100 stone but only as 45 wood +100stone, .::house=30wood, mining/lumber camp=100wood mill=100wood TOTAL=230wood  minus this from cost of TC and that's what you are paying to be able to build more vills::., Britons have an even better time at paying -50% the wood). TIP:- an easy way to keep villagers being built in all your TC's is to keep pressing the H,C H,C H,C H,C etc Keys until villagers are queued up.

--Upgrades                                Again as soon as you can get the upgrades to wood farm etc

Imperial age/End of game

--Villager High                            If the game reaches imperial age you should have 130-140 villagers/Trade units

Extra Tips

-- Don't waste 100 food and 100 gold on Cartography until later on in the game when you need it (castle age at the earliest, usually in imperial age)