I’m an active, low maintenance and self reliant newbie looking for a mature game alliance. I don’t think training alliances are for me because because I like to explore (slightly) alternative ways of playing - it always served me well. Also, I don’t want free resources at this time, I can pay for them at least - I'd lose interest otherwise and I know I can grow at a good pace nevertheless.

I realize learning the game will take a looooooong time, but through an alliance I hope to get introduced to different aspects of it beyond all that I can learn by myself : tournaments, faction play (I've done years of RP), trading, metagame... I won’t understand much at this point, but over time the puzzle pieces will start coming together. I also want to be part of a team and will try to contibute and be supportive in some way. 

Where I'm at now : I've been playing for about 10 days, focused on avoiding newbie pitfalls. I’m now working on getting Exodus researched and I have a settler ready to go. For now, this is the plan for my 2 first cities, thanks to a post from Auraya of 12-13 years ago. I'll need to confirm it's still valid: 

Now, if you exodus your first city before you teleport, your capital changes to your second city. If you have placed your second city on a 7 food tile, you can then telport that 7 food city to any 5 food square without losing your 7 food plots!   https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/teleport-vs-exodus_topic3620.html" rel="nofollow - https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/teleport-vs-exodus_topic3620.html

I'm going to start looking at hunting as well, as an introduction to combat. I sincerely hope there’s a place in Illyriad alliance for a player like me!