If I had to do it all over, I would have focused on 1. lumber, 2. iron, and 3. residence, since you can't improve your lumber and iron production without it.
If you get these two up quickly, then you won't be tied down waiting for resources to build a number of other things. If you focus on getting the iron, lumber and residence to 20, everything else will go much quicker.
Obviously, you can't start building an army with crop, but if you are under newbie protection, then who cares. I am not convinced that creating a huge army to protect your capital is wise, anyways. So long as you keep your resources spent and in your treasury, you shouldn't lose out too much on invading armies.
The reality is you are going to be attacked. People are stupid and fight to the death for no particular reason. They often waste more resources trying to steal yours than they actually get from stealing.
Unfortunately, they aren't smart enough to wait until they have enough plunderers to make off with a few hundred thousand units. If you focus on being able to generate resources quickly, these people are a minor problem.
For example... RoongRoong likes to attack weak players, but his army is small. It is something like 7 calvary, and 20 plunderers. He wastes his time, because the resources he gets (25k each) come quicker by doing nothing. If he took some time to build up his army, he could focus on getting a decent score that would help his city improvement at a much greater rate.
