Take part in the Guild Battleground. The Statue of Honour (and Road to Victory) are well worth acquiring.
In BA through EMA, it is a space-hog, especially if you're tacking on the RtV's... while it's stats
are definitely great, it is far
more important to first of all establish your basic economy. (ie: Arc + Chateaux)
Once it's unlocked however, *DO* try to fight as many encounters per day as you're able to in the GBG's, as each encounter can produce various rewards! (ie: fp's, goods, more troops, and even a few diamonds!)
As has been said, take part in the Guild Expedition to as high a level as you can. If the battles get too much (and on L4 they are a nightmare) then try negotiating.
Also, always remember to activate your bonus turn from the Friend's Tavern... and never, ever use diamonds for the extra turn, unless you've already made enough to cover the cost!
(ie: if I win say 25 dias early on, then I can safely spend 10 dias on the final encounter of Lv3 if I am guaranteed to win it)
You get more score from negotiations than you do from battles
Early on, yes.
By Industrial/Progressive era, not a chance in hell.
Remember, the pts you earn via battles is your 'victory score' divided by 50.
So an EMA/HMA battle giving out say 2000 vp's, is really only 40pts added to your player score. A Future era battle that may give out 50k vp's? That's 1000pts.
Aid your neighbours, don't attack them. Not only do you get coins, but also the chance of blueprints for Great Buildings.
As a general rule, I only ever aid the top 20 in my 'hood...
Why? Because a) they are typically all active players, and b) it's generally not worth the resources incurred to try and attack/plunder them.
Other than that,
NEVER AID YOUR NEIGHBOURS!!
These guys are where you can fill out annoying quests such as "win X battles" and/or "win X battles in a row without losing in between" during events. (as most of the bottom half of your 'hood will typically be 2 spearchumpie auto-wins)
Plus, sometimes you can pull off some decent plunders as well. *insert evil grin here*
Do the daily challenge if you can. Every 7th completed challenge gives you a serious reward.
Only if the cost to complete is worth the possible prize. ie: NEVER do
*anything* that demands C-map sector/province clearing. (also, as long as you have 0 'open' uncompleted provinces, you will **never** get any tasks asking for sectors/province clearing
)
Or for example, don't waste goods in treasury donations for things like 200 medals or a couple fragments, etc...
The settlements are slow, and irritating, but they offer rewards. You don't have to complete them within a certain time, and on completion of your first Viking settlement you will get the Tree of Life (Yggdrasil) which is very useful - coins, supplies, FPs and att bonus! Worth finishing a Viking settlement for!
The Lv1 buildings are worthless. Absolutely DO complete the settlements and max-level those buildings, because they are fething broken as all gak!
Yes, it may be a miserable experience, especially the 15x required to complete the awful Vikings settlement, but the rewards are the most heinously broken buildings in the game.
On the plus side, the Japan & especially the Egypt settlements are a breeze to complete within the time frames to earn at least 1x the secondary buildings.
Controversially, I'm not convinced about the benefits of Wishing Wells. They don't throw out masses of diamonds, and they do take up valuable space. As a new player, don't become blinkered from your objectives by a lust for diamonds, diamonds are simply a tool.
WW's are best left to secondary worlds you'll use simply as 'Diamond Farms'.
ie: a world with only the bare minimum basics such as Zeus/CdM/ToR/etc... for quickly completing GE every week + as many WW's/shrunken WW's as you can possibly cram in.