Generally Important for Beginners:

When you are building your city, you need to focus on getting certain things done as fast as possible.

You need to have your embassy up to level 5 by the time you are out of bp and then up to level 9 ASAP. This is important because it allows that number of GROUPS to garrison at your city to reinforce you when you are under attack.

Which brings me to another point. For those of you who have not checked the little box in embassy which allows garrison of troops, your host is about to lose her sanity, so please just check the box or we won't be able to help you.

Another thing along those lines. If you are being attacked and you want us to help you, make sure that you have teleported to Franconia. If you have not, we will not be able to help you. There is one exception to this and that is if you have already talked to me about it, as is the case with SirJohn.

When you are researching, try to get informatics and archery up as far as you can as fast as you can.

Archers are the most important military group that you have. You need to make as many archers and scouts as you can. Scouts will allow you to kill people who try to scout you, if you have more than them and your gates are open, and it will allow you to get more information. Archers do more overall damage than any other group.

Archers towers are the most important wall fortification. You don't need any of the others if you have a lot of archers towers. But, you must have the corresponding number of archers to go in those towers for them to be effective, otherwise they are worthless.

Along with informatics and scouts, you need to get your beacon tower leveled all the way up to 9 as fast as possible. Try to keep it one level ahead of or at least the same level as your informatics. It allows you to get a better report when you scout someone.

Just to note, you open your gate in your rally spot. But only do that if you are absolutely positive you can take the person attacking you otherwise they will kill all of your military and take more resources than if your gates were closed.

So, to reiterate, every city should have:
10 Barracks
10 Cottages
1 of everything else

There is no reason for you to have more than 10 cottages unless you are making an archer's city.

That is all that I can think of on this topic at the moment, but I may add more later.

Thanks!
Your Host,
-Katirie

I would also suggest that you build a relief station as fast as you can. It cuts the time to reinforce and transport between cities in half with every 2 upgrades.