by ousgg
Straight off the top of my head, Agricola for beginners::d10-1: Do yourself a favour and play the Family Game first. It'll make sure you get the essentials right and it will be quicker because people won't spend ages reading their cards.
:d10-2: Spaces with arrows accumulate between rounds; others don't.
:d10-3: Remember you need to feed each family member 2 food each harvest. A family member 'born' in the round immediately before the harvest only needs 1 food.
:d10-4: Feed family first during the harvest, breed animals afterwards. You only get one baby of each animal, no matter how many you have.
:d10-5: Fenced pastures have to be contiguous. Plowed fields have to be contiguous. Rooms of your house have to be contiguous.
:d10-6: Renovating costs 1 reed in total, plus one building material (clay/stone) per room.
:d10-7: You can only bake bread by using a bake bread action. You can convert a grain in your supply to one food at any time. Grain (and vegetables) on fields cannot be touched but still counts during the final scoring.
:d10-8: Fireplaces and cooking hearths convert unlimited animals and vegetables to food at any time.
:d10-9: Be action-efficient. Don't buy an oven if you haven't got the grain to bake. Don't renovate if you don't have an action to play. Don't use the Plow/Sow space unless you can do both.
:d10-1::d10-0: Try and get food from a single source. This makes it easier to diversify your farm to get points in all scoring categories.
:d10-1::d10-1: Don't fail to take the Start Player and then complain there's no good spaces left.
:d10-1::d10-2: MOST IMPORTANTLY - don't even think about building fences or plowing fields until after Round 7. All your efforts up to then should be concentrate on building more rooms, growing your family, and making sure you can feed them.
EDIT - all this talk about a food engine is pretty much nonsense. You can easily survive off a couple of well-timed food grabs until round 8. Most food engines would require 3 or more actions. But obviously keep an eye on the other players if they look like they might be trying to deprive you of food.