Long story short, after five years of playing I had a bunch of cities between my main and alt accounts, some big. I got sloppy for a while and didn't log in often enough to keep an eye on things. Someone apparently assumed I was abandoning my account and captured or razed all of my cities but one. When I logged in the other day there was a siege army incoming on the last city and I had nothing to throw at it. I suppose I could be annoyed by that but it's actually kind of liberating to start over with more experience than the first time around. I was never that happy with my original city placements once I understood the game better. Newbie mistakes. Once they grew, moving them was a daunting task that I never took on. Lots of little development things where you say, "Wish I'd done that differently". Now I can, so I don't feel too badly. Makes the game interesting again.

Fortunately, I had the foresight to stash ample resources in hub storage so as soon as I can get a new trader in place the only real bottleneck will be research. I have enough res in storage to seriously accelerate building with a liberal application of prestige. It's been so long now though I can't seem to recall whether I need a trade office to create and send the trader. I'm assuming I do but I can't seem to find a clear answer in help or any tutorials. If anyone knows for sure some feedback would be appreciated.

Regardless, I thought I'd ask what you would do differently if you were starting from scratch knowing what you know now? I can definitely use some ideas.

1. Siege all cities. Settling's for chumps. I recently grew an account from 0 to 9 towns in 2 weeks by capturing cities.

2. Save your tenaril.

3. Plan where you're going to move to once you've finished capturing towns.

4. Surround cities with plains.

You need a merchant's guild to make traders.

Also, I would never have touched the facebook API with the world's longest bargepole.

First, understand exactly what you want your account to do. If you're going military, don't build cities for pop. Don't get talked into the 7 food meta. Take what you need, and nothing else (be lean). Understand terrain, and invest in good terras, surrounded by plains. Begin stockpiling terrain and class specific (defensive) gear as soon as your economy allows.

Associate with the older accounts you admire. Learn from them, work with them, and a) if they leave, inherit from them, or b) if you even suspect they'll stab you in the back, rob them blind.

Mentor new players, but now every newb. See which ones are active, have staying power, and express interest in your playstyle. Don't just teach them the game, incorporate them in your network. Set them up for succes. 

Know when to be magnanimous in victory, and when to erase all signs the opposition ever existed. When in doubt "we must forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged".

Understand that Illy burnout is common, and will pass with a break every now and then. Don't abandon. Set a sitter, and make sure he doesn't suspect you'll stab him in the back.

Try to be a presence in GC, both because it is fun and social, and because the game becomes better by player interaction. Create a persona. Try to *be* content for your fellow players. They don't have to like you, every story needs an antagonist. But keep hostilities in-game, and remain social with the players on the other side of the fence. It's just pixels. 

When dozens of people tell you not to trust Josh, don't trust Josh. 

That's what comes to mind at the moment. Enjoy the game. It's really a wonderful sandbox, with a great community. I remember friends (and enemies) that left years ago,  some that passed away while playing, etc. In the end, its those memories that outweigh anything you do within the game. 

Have a great holiday season everyone. 

Grom 

Similar to Grom i am happy with were i am ingame. I read a lot to get more knowledge about different topics and made good plans - that worked out really well.

I did not engage in GC and Illy politics in my first years and i am really glad about that. I found a nice alliance that i enjoyed being in and that was (and is) much better than GC for me.

Illy is a complex sandbox game and for long time i did not realize how different the playerbase is. On one side you have as an extrem case PVP players that are trying to stir up trouble and try to provoke. There were alliance war declarations because a PVP player disagreed with what a non-PVP player said. On the other extreme side you have non-PVP players that hate getting their cities attacked in any way and try to avoid that at all costs. I know a few new players that abandoned because of a single diplo attack. And of course there are a lot of players in between.

In my exprience GC is mostly used by PVP players, new players for advice and smalltalk. On the other hand a lot of non-PVP players only use AC. So if you are a PVP player then do what Grom suggests. If you are a non-PVP player then find an alliance you like and use AC instead of GC. In case you want to use GC then block players you do not like - that made GC a lot more enjoyable for me.

And my last and probably biggest lesson for me is to not try to argue/reason with some of the players in GC - its not worth it. How some people view and play Illyriad is sometimes just too different to how you see and play it. Don't feed the troll

Thirion/Ellania

So Guilds, Faction Markets and Trader are going to be your top researches.

If you have a clear purpose then it makes other choices easier, because they are made in order to achieve the purpose.