Beginners guide stolen from oldfarts :P

You should build 1 cottage square, 4 lumber mills, 2 iron mines, 2 quarries, and 4 farms. You need to remember to upgrade all of these everyday. Upgrading your resource fields is a better way to make your city strong than to rely on plundering others. You need to be self sufficient.

Every city should have 3-4 warehouses. Warehouses protect your resources from plundering. You also need an academy, a relief station, an inn, a feasting hall, a rally point, a stable, a market place, a workshop, a forge, and a beacon tower. So, don't get crazy and build a whole bunch of cottages that you don't need and lose those resources when you have to blow them all up. Some of those buildings can't be built until you meet other requirements. (Follow the Quest guides.)

You should also build 4-5 barracks. I will talk about military operations in another post.

Make sure that in every city you have, you check the production. Set it to 100% and try to use up all your resources in upgrading so that someone does not come along and plunder you.

Hope this is a bit of help