A lot of it really comes down to experience, which really can't be taught, but there are some things than can be taught of course.
The following three guides are all pretty decent and written by players who are regularly top 10:
Startup is one of the most important stages as early on one player can dominate their area far more easily than they can later on, and also it doesn’t matter how good you are at late-game if you aren’t good enough at startup to survive to late-game if you land near a player who is decent at startup. Startup has several stages, what you doing most all of them depends on your location. I will attempt to list alternate options for each stage depending on your personal situation, but planning for all scenarios is obviously impossible:
Stage 1:
If you have at least 1 barb near you:
Iron 1
Clay 1
Wood 1
Otherwise:
Clay 1
Wood 1
Iron 1
Stage 2:
If you have no barbs near you at all:
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Iron 2
Clay 4
Clay 5
Wood 4
Wood 5
Wood 6
Wood 7
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
If you have 1 barb near you:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Iron 2
Clay 4
Wood 4
Wood 5
Wood 6
If you have 2-3 barbs near you:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Iron 2
Wood 4
Wood 5
If you have 4-5 barbs near you:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Wood 4
If you have more than 5 barbs near you and are not particularly active:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Wood 3
More than 5 barbs and very active:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin arming upon completion)
Stage 3:
HQ 2
HQ 3
Barracks 1
Stage 4:
Once you have 4 spears begin sending them to barbs with your paladin, until then they only slow it down and make you get fewer resources per minute.
If you have more than 4 barbs:
I would now suggest making 50-100 spears, keep sending your spears to the barbs alongside your paladin until you have 35 spears. Once you have 35 spears start sending 35 spears to each village separately from the paladin and send it to the barbs as its own group. How many spears you make should depend on your activity and area. The goal is to make as many spears as you need to make the barbs you are farming empty nonstop, but not so many that you are getting empty hauls or having spears sitting in your village. Too few is better than too many in this instance as the goal is to research and begin making light cavalry as fast as is possible. I’d suggest making a level 1 market at some point during this stage as you are likely to overflow on iron. Ideally you make a market early and put up trades of iron for wood. If accepted this lets you make spears faster, if not accepted it is spare iron for you to use for light cavalry production later on.
If you have less than 4 barbs:
If you have three or fewer than four barbs near you, you should only make 35 spears. Send the spears alongside the paladin when attacking barbs until you are up to 35 spears and then send them as a group separately from the paladin so you gain the benefit of his faster movement speed. I’d suggest making a level 1 market at some point during this stage as you are likely to overflow on iron. Ideally you make a market early and put up trades of iron for wood. If accepted this lets you make spears faster, if not accepted it is spare iron for you to use for light cavalry production later on.
Stage 5:
If you have fewer than 4 barbs:
HQ 4
HQ 5
Smithy 1
Smithy 2 (Research Axes)
Make somewhere from 15-25 spears per barb in your area. This is a total number, including the 35 you made previously.
Make thee axes per barb in your area.
Send one group of 15-25 spears alongside three axes to each barb in your area. Three axes is enough to keep the spears alive so you don’t have to replace 1-2 dead spears per trip. How many spars you need per barb is largely dependent upon your activity, if you are very active and are sending troops back out as soon as they return 15 per barb is plenty, otherwise you may want to lean closer to 25 than 15.
If you have 4 or more barbs:
HQ 4
HQ 5
Stage 6:
This is the final stage of this guide, the goal from here on out is to get HQ to 10 as fast as possible. The only upgrades you will be making before HQ reaches 10 are market upgrades to continue storing resources in if you come close to overflowing. The next goal is to raise barracks and smithy each to level 5.
I would suggest raising smithy to level 5 before barracks. The reason is that smithy is cheaper per unit of time. By this I mean that it has a longer construction period per its cost. What this means is that you have more time to farm for the resources for the following upgrade while the current one is being built, this makes it easier to stop the building queue from ever being idle. If you somehow get to the point where you are close to having your warehouse overflow while raising your smithy to 5 then feel free to mix in a level or two of barracks in before smithy reaches 5 to speed up your resource spending. If you are still getting mostly full hauls at this stage I would raise warehouse to level 6 (the level needed to be able to hold the lc research cost) and then make a level 3 stable and begin saving up to research lc. If you are getting lots of non-full hauls then I would make a level 1 stable before raising warehouse to level 6 and research scouts and then make 5 or so scouts (or 25 if this is a world where you have to send at least 5 to a village for them to live) and scout the villages around you to ensure you get full hauls. After making the lc I would then raise warehouse to level 6, then raise stable the rest of the way to level 3 and begin saving for lc research while continuing to scout and farm to save up.
Once you have researched lc you will want to do nothing (besides farming of course, you should always be doing that) but make 50 lc, as soon as your lc return, spend the haul on more lc and send them back out to farm again until you have 50 lc. Your rank will drop in this stage, but it’s well worth it as once you go back to building you will leave the competition in your dust due to your enhanced level of farming.
What to do after you have 50 lc:
Continue making lc and axes nonstop while farming, as able also queue HQ upgrades until you have a level 23 HQ. At this stage there are too many options to try and suggest exactly what to do, but usually you raise your mines up till roughly 20ish, then your barracks to 20 or so and stable to 15 or so, and then begin raising your smithy so you can make your academy. You won’t likely be the first person in your area to noble,
but you’ll have one of the largest villages and have more troops than your neighbors.
Iron 1
Clay 1
Timb 1
Statue (build the palidan and farm immediately upon completion)
Clay 2
Timber 2
Iron 2
Clay 3
Clay 4
Timber 3
Timber 4
Timber 5
Timber 6
HQ 2
HQ 3
Barracks 1
7 spears (start farming with spears and pali together as it is now profitable)
Build to about 20-40 spears while continuously farming. (Do not split up your spears from your pali until you have at least 35 spears)
Warehouse 2
HQ 4
HQ 5
Warehouse 3
Smithy 1
Smithy 2
Research Axes
Build about 15-45 axes and start splitting up your farming parties with axes included to reduce losses.
Farm 2
Market 1 (If you have excess iron, store it in a high ratio trade for later)
Barracks 2
Barracks 3
Smithy 3
HQ 6
Barracks 4
Warehouse 4
HQ 7
HQ 8
Smithy 4
Smithy 5
Barracks 5
Warehouse 5
Warehouse 6
Market 2
Market 3
HQ 9
HQ 10
Stable 1 (Option to research scouts and build 5 but can be skipped for later)
Stable 2
Stable 3
Research LC
Wall 1
Build LC
Farm Like Crazy (Build up to at least 50 before moving on)
Remember to trade away your wood and clay for iron on the market. The market is one of the most overlooked buildings
After getting LC, you want to focus on building up your LC count and then getting your Resource Pits to about 17-19 or so. Then you usually will want to get your HQ to 20 because all of your farming resources will require you to build faster so you can spend it all while still keeping your troops producing nonstop or as close to that as you can get with activity level.
After upgrading your HQ(on growing barb worlds a level 22-25 HQ seems to make sense depending on your level of farming), you would normally want to get to level 10 smithy so you can build your workshop and begin producing siege.
After acquiring siege, back to resource production to low 20's followed by upgrading your barracks and stable to 15-21 for barracks depending on activity and between 10-16 for stable.
Once you have your troops producing at a high level, you then have the option of either pushing for a little higher resources or going immediately for upgrading your smithy to 20 and getting your academy.
Once you have academy, it is highly recommended that you wait until you have 3 nobles before nobling so you can noble several villages in a row. It also has the benefit of giving you more time to build up your troop levels so that when you do noble, your losses will be minimized and thus being more efficient and ready to take several more villages without waiting to replenish your troops.
Build Clay 1
Build Wood 1
Build Iron 1
Build Clay 2
Build Wood 2
Build Clay 3
Build Wood 3
Build Iron 2
Build Clay 4
Build Clay 5
Build Wood 4
Build Wood 5
Build Wood 6
Build Wood 7
Build HQ 2
Build HQ 3
Build Barracks 1
Maintain 15 spears
Farming Time
Maintain 35 Spears
Build Wood 8
Build Warehouse 2
Build market 1 - store 1k iron once you have 1200 by setting up a high ratio trade
Build Wood 9
Build Warehouse 3
Build Wood 10
Build Clay 6
Build market 2 - keep on the look out for lopsided trades
Build Clay 7
Build Iron 3
Build HQ 4
Build HQ 5
Build Smithy 1
Build Smithy 2
Research Axe
Maintain 45 spears, 9 axe - send them out in groups of 15 sp and 3 axe
Build Iron 4
Build Iron 5
Build Market 3 - make sure you are still searching for beneficial trades.
Build Iron 6
Build Iron 7
Build Farm 2
Build Farm 3
Build Warehouse 4
Build Farm 4
Build Warehouse 5
Build Barracks 3
Build Barracks 4
Build Barracks 5
Build HQ 6
Build HQ 7
Build Farm 5
Build Smithy 3
Build HQ 8
Build HQ 9
Build HQ 10
Build Smithy 4
Build Farm 6
Build Smithy 5
Build Stable 1
Recruit 5 scouts
Build Stable 2
Build Stable 3
Build Warehouse lvl 6
Research LC
Build Wall 1
Start to Build LC
Farm Like Crazy
Remember to trade away your wood and clay for iron on the market. The market is one of the most overlooked buildings
After getting LC, you want to focus on building up your LC count and then getting your Resource Pits to about 17-19 or so. Then you usually will want to get your HQ to 20 because all of your farming resources will require you to build faster so you can spend it all while still keeping your troops producing nonstop or as close to that as you can get with activity level.
After upgrading your HQ(on growing barb worlds a level 22-25 HQ seems to make sense depending on your level of farming), you would normally want to get to level 10 smithy so you can build your workshop and begin producing siege.
After acquiring siege, back to resource production to low 20's followed by upgrading your barracks and stable to 15-21 for barracks depending on activity and between 10-16 for stable.
Once you have your troops producing at a high level, you then have the option of either pushing for a little higher resources or going immediately for upgrading your smithy to 20 and getting your academy.
Once you have academy, it is highly recommended that you wait until you have 3 nobles before nobling so you can noble several villages in a row. It also has the benefit of giving you more time to build up your troop levels so that when you do noble, your losses will be minimized and thus being more efficient and ready to take several more villages without waiting to replenish your troops.
More vague advice.
Raise mines to a suitable level first thing, what is considered suitable varies depending on your area as well as the unit speed of the world you are plating on.
Build barracks.
Make at least 50 spears, 100+ is better if you have several barbs near you.
If you are getting mostly full hauls begin working your way toward stables.
Otherwise make smithy level one, if this is a 15-tech or simple-tech world make five swords and 15 spears for every barb near you (this is including the spears you already made it, is a total # of spears to aim for, not an additional number).
If this is a 10-tech world, make smithy level two and research axes instead of swords, make the 15 spears per barb still, but make three axes per barb instead of the five spears mentioned above.
Continue farming, if you were getting full hauls farm in groups of 50 spears, otherwise use the groups listed above and farm more farms at a time to smother your neighbors. If the settings of the world you are playing allow supporting non-tribemates it may also be worth making a few dozen swords and using them to spike your neighbors (ie. send them to the barb villages as support so they hit them when they attempt to farm them).
Get Stable level 1, if this is a world where you can send 1 scout and have it live research scouts and make ten scouts before lc, otherwise skip scouts and go straight to level 3 stable and research light cavalry.
Make absolutely nothing but lc while continuing to farm until you can keep your lc production constant, then research axes if you didn't already do so earlier and continue making axes and lc until both are constant (until they can both be constant prioritize the lc, not the axes), also use the market as necessary to trade excess clay and wood for iron.
From here on out continue making lc and axes nonstop at all times, raise HQ as early as possible to gain the most from it.
If you have any more specific question feel free to ask.
A lot of it really comes down to experience, which really can't be taught, but there are some things than can be taught of course.
The following three guides are all pretty decent and written by players who are regularly top 10:
Startup is one of the most important stages as early on one player can dominate their area far more easily than they can later on, and also it doesn’t matter how good you are at late-game if you aren’t good enough at startup to survive to late-game if you land near a player who is decent at startup. Startup has several stages, what you doing most all of them depends on your location. I will attempt to list alternate options for each stage depending on your personal situation, but planning for all scenarios is obviously impossible:
Stage 1:
If you have at least 1 barb near you:
Iron 1
Clay 1
Wood 1
Otherwise:
Clay 1
Wood 1
Iron 1
Stage 2:
If you have no barbs near you at all:
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Iron 2
Clay 4
Clay 5
Wood 4
Wood 5
Wood 6
Wood 7
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
If you have 1 barb near you:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Iron 2
Clay 4
Wood 4
Wood 5
Wood 6
If you have 2-3 barbs near you:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Iron 2
Wood 4
Wood 5
If you have 4-5 barbs near you:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Clay 3
Wood 3
Wood 4
If you have more than 5 barbs near you and are not particularly active:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin farming upon completion)
Clay 2
Wood 2
Wood 3
More than 5 barbs and very active:
Statue (Immediately train paladin and begin arming upon completion)
Stage 3:
HQ 2
HQ 3
Barracks 1
Stage 4:
Once you have 4 spears begin sending them to barbs with your paladin, until then they only slow it down and make you get fewer resources per minute.
If you have more than 4 barbs:
I would now suggest making 50-100 spears, keep sending your spears to the barbs alongside your paladin until you have 35 spears. Once you have 35 spears start sending 35 spears to each village separately from the paladin and send it to the barbs as its own group. How many spears you make should depend on your activity and area. The goal is to make as many spears as you need to make the barbs you are farming empty nonstop, but not so many that you are getting empty hauls or having spears sitting in your village. Too few is better than too many in this instance as the goal is to research and begin making light cavalry as fast as is possible. I’d suggest making a level 1 market at some point during this stage as you are likely to overflow on iron. Ideally you make a market early and put up trades of iron for wood. If accepted this lets you make spears faster, if not accepted it is spare iron for you to use for light cavalry production later on.
If you have less than 4 barbs:
If you have three or fewer than four barbs near you, you should only make 35 spears. Send the spears alongside the paladin when attacking barbs until you are up to 35 spears and then send them as a group separately from the paladin so you gain the benefit of his faster movement speed. I’d suggest making a level 1 market at some point during this stage as you are likely to overflow on iron. Ideally you make a market early and put up trades of iron for wood. If accepted this lets you make spears faster, if not accepted it is spare iron for you to use for light cavalry production later on.
Stage 5:
If you have fewer than 4 barbs:
HQ 4
HQ 5
Smithy 1
Smithy 2 (Research Axes)
Make somewhere from 15-25 spears per barb in your area. This is a total number, including the 35 you made previously.
Make thee axes per barb in your area.
Send one group of 15-25 spears alongside three axes to each barb in your area. Three axes is enough to keep the spears alive so you don’t have to replace 1-2 dead spears per trip. How many spars you need per barb is largely dependent upon your activity, if you are very active and are sending troops back out as soon as they return 15 per barb is plenty, otherwise you may want to lean closer to 25 than 15.
If you have 4 or more barbs:
HQ 4
HQ 5
Stage 6:
This is the final stage of this guide, the goal from here on out is to get HQ to 10 as fast as possible. The only upgrades you will be making before HQ reaches 10 are market upgrades to continue storing resources in if you come close to overflowing. The next goal is to raise barracks and smithy each to level 5.
I would suggest raising smithy to level 5 before barracks. The reason is that smithy is cheaper per unit of time. By this I mean that it has a longer construction period per its cost. What this means is that you have more time to farm for the resources for the following upgrade while the current one is being built, this makes it easier to stop the building queue from ever being idle. If you somehow get to the point where you are close to having your warehouse overflow while raising your smithy to 5 then feel free to mix in a level or two of barracks in before smithy reaches 5 to speed up your resource spending. If you are still getting mostly full hauls at this stage I would raise warehouse to level 6 (the level needed to be able to hold the lc research cost) and then make a level 3 stable and begin saving up to research lc. If you are getting lots of non-full hauls then I would make a level 1 stable before raising warehouse to level 6 and research scouts and then make 5 or so scouts (or 25 if this is a world where you have to send at least 5 to a village for them to live) and scout the villages around you to ensure you get full hauls. After making the lc I would then raise warehouse to level 6, then raise stable the rest of the way to level 3 and begin saving for lc research while continuing to scout and farm to save up.
Once you have researched lc you will want to do nothing (besides farming of course, you should always be doing that) but make 50 lc, as soon as your lc return, spend the haul on more lc and send them back out to farm again until you have 50 lc. Your rank will drop in this stage, but it’s well worth it as once you go back to building you will leave the competition in your dust due to your enhanced level of farming.
What to do after you have 50 lc:
Continue making lc and axes nonstop while farming, as able also queue HQ upgrades until you have a level 23 HQ. At this stage there are too many options to try and suggest exactly what to do, but usually you raise your mines up till roughly 20ish, then your barracks to 20 or so and stable to 15 or so, and then begin raising your smithy so you can make your academy. You won’t likely be the first person in your area to noble,
but you’ll have one of the largest villages and have more troops than your neighbors.
Iron 1
Clay 1
Timb 1
Statue (build the palidan and farm immediately upon completion)
Clay 2
Timber 2
Iron 2
Clay 3
Clay 4
Timber 3
Timber 4
Timber 5
Timber 6
HQ 2
HQ 3
Barracks 1
7 spears (start farming with spears and pali together as it is now profitable)
Build to about 20-40 spears while continuously farming. (Do not split up your spears from your pali until you have at least 35 spears)
Warehouse 2
HQ 4
HQ 5
Warehouse 3
Smithy 1
Smithy 2
Research Axes
Build about 15-45 axes and start splitting up your farming parties with axes included to reduce losses.
Farm 2
Market 1 (If you have excess iron, store it in a high ratio trade for later)
Barracks 2
Barracks 3
Smithy 3
HQ 6
Barracks 4
Warehouse 4
HQ 7
HQ 8
Smithy 4
Smithy 5
Barracks 5
Warehouse 5
Warehouse 6
Market 2
Market 3
HQ 9
HQ 10
Stable 1 (Option to research scouts and build 5 but can be skipped for later)
Stable 2
Stable 3
Research LC
Wall 1
Build LC
Farm Like Crazy (Build up to at least 50 before moving on)
Remember to trade away your wood and clay for iron on the market. The market is one of the most overlooked buildings
After getting LC, you want to focus on building up your LC count and then getting your Resource Pits to about 17-19 or so. Then you usually will want to get your HQ to 20 because all of your farming resources will require you to build faster so you can spend it all while still keeping your troops producing nonstop or as close to that as you can get with activity level.
After upgrading your HQ(on growing barb worlds a level 22-25 HQ seems to make sense depending on your level of farming), you would normally want to get to level 10 smithy so you can build your workshop and begin producing siege.
After acquiring siege, back to resource production to low 20's followed by upgrading your barracks and stable to 15-21 for barracks depending on activity and between 10-16 for stable.
Once you have your troops producing at a high level, you then have the option of either pushing for a little higher resources or going immediately for upgrading your smithy to 20 and getting your academy.
Once you have academy, it is highly recommended that you wait until you have 3 nobles before nobling so you can noble several villages in a row. It also has the benefit of giving you more time to build up your troop levels so that when you do noble, your losses will be minimized and thus being more efficient and ready to take several more villages without waiting to replenish your troops.
Build Clay 1
Build Wood 1
Build Iron 1
Build Clay 2
Build Wood 2
Build Clay 3
Build Wood 3
Build Iron 2
Build Clay 4
Build Clay 5
Build Wood 4
Build Wood 5
Build Wood 6
Build Wood 7
Build HQ 2
Build HQ 3
Build Barracks 1
Maintain 15 spears
Farming Time
Maintain 35 Spears
Build Wood 8
Build Warehouse 2
Build market 1 - store 1k iron once you have 1200 by setting up a high ratio trade
Build Wood 9
Build Warehouse 3
Build Wood 10
Build Clay 6
Build market 2 - keep on the look out for lopsided trades
Build Clay 7
Build Iron 3
Build HQ 4
Build HQ 5
Build Smithy 1
Build Smithy 2
Research Axe
Maintain 45 spears, 9 axe - send them out in groups of 15 sp and 3 axe
Build Iron 4
Build Iron 5
Build Market 3 - make sure you are still searching for beneficial trades.
Build Iron 6
Build Iron 7
Build Farm 2
Build Farm 3
Build Warehouse 4
Build Farm 4
Build Warehouse 5
Build Barracks 3
Build Barracks 4
Build Barracks 5
Build HQ 6
Build HQ 7
Build Farm 5
Build Smithy 3
Build HQ 8
Build HQ 9
Build HQ 10
Build Smithy 4
Build Farm 6
Build Smithy 5
Build Stable 1
Recruit 5 scouts
Build Stable 2
Build Stable 3
Build Warehouse lvl 6
Research LC
Build Wall 1
Start to Build LC
Farm Like Crazy
Remember to trade away your wood and clay for iron on the market. The market is one of the most overlooked buildings
After getting LC, you want to focus on building up your LC count and then getting your Resource Pits to about 17-19 or so. Then you usually will want to get your HQ to 20 because all of your farming resources will require you to build faster so you can spend it all while still keeping your troops producing nonstop or as close to that as you can get with activity level.
After upgrading your HQ(on growing barb worlds a level 22-25 HQ seems to make sense depending on your level of farming), you would normally want to get to level 10 smithy so you can build your workshop and begin producing siege.
After acquiring siege, back to resource production to low 20's followed by upgrading your barracks and stable to 15-21 for barracks depending on activity and between 10-16 for stable.
Once you have your troops producing at a high level, you then have the option of either pushing for a little higher resources or going immediately for upgrading your smithy to 20 and getting your academy.
Once you have academy, it is highly recommended that you wait until you have 3 nobles before nobling so you can noble several villages in a row. It also has the benefit of giving you more time to build up your troop levels so that when you do noble, your losses will be minimized and thus being more efficient and ready to take several more villages without waiting to replenish your troops.
More vague advice.
Raise mines to a suitable level first thing, what is considered suitable varies depending on your area as well as the unit speed of the world you are plating on.
Build barracks.
Make at least 50 spears, 100+ is better if you have several barbs near you.
If you are getting mostly full hauls begin working your way toward stables.
Otherwise make smithy level one, if this is a 15-tech or simple-tech world make five swords and 15 spears for every barb near you (this is including the spears you already made it, is a total # of spears to aim for, not an additional number).
If this is a 10-tech world, make smithy level two and research axes instead of swords, make the 15 spears per barb still, but make three axes per barb instead of the five spears mentioned above.
Continue farming, if you were getting full hauls farm in groups of 50 spears, otherwise use the groups listed above and farm more farms at a time to smother your neighbors. If the settings of the world you are playing allow supporting non-tribemates it may also be worth making a few dozen swords and using them to spike your neighbors (ie. send them to the barb villages as support so they hit them when they attempt to farm them).
Get Stable level 1, if this is a world where you can send 1 scout and have it live research scouts and make ten scouts before lc, otherwise skip scouts and go straight to level 3 stable and research light cavalry.
Make absolutely nothing but lc while continuing to farm until you can keep your lc production constant, then research axes if you didn't already do so earlier and continue making axes and lc until both are constant (until they can both be constant prioritize the lc, not the axes), also use the market as necessary to trade excess clay and wood for iron.
From here on out continue making lc and axes nonstop at all times, raise HQ as early as possible to gain the most from it.
If you have any more specific question feel free to ask.
