Bingo! That sums it up pretty well..You'll be in a better position to get the big points when you are ready for the big ticket items & There's lots of different ways to run your village. My villages for example tend to be sort of Stalinistic/technocratic There's barely enough food but the research table is very crowded, and they get technologies early. Other folks I know take a much more balanced apporoach and they do pretty well too (but their villagers play more However, late game the villages seem to end up fairly similar in terms of quality of life. So I feel that it's really sort of a matter of "role playing" insofar as village management style is concerned.