I like this thread =]
I have restarted on world 2, and i definitely agree with the more aggressive idea, and with the clusters, when i played before i had my villages in clusters of 3 or 4 to allow for easy support but also to allow of some distance to be covered. The things i learned was to definitely take chances to suppress local live players to stop them from being threatening themselves later on. another thing i think it quite important is not jumping straight into a tribe, take your time and wait for them to come to you (unless that takes too long =])