I've played other games where you have to build quick and fast, find some protection in a guild/fellowship/alliance just to survive. Yuck. This game differs in that you aren't pressured to build fast and furious but can take it at your own pace. There are a lot of tutorials and advice pages here and there. Elvengems is a good one, but others have delved down into the mechanics of things and give different types of advice. Here's my shot.
The game is balanced between it's various components and you have to manage to keep them in balance if you want to grow steadily. There are: the city building aspect, the weekly tournament, the weekly Spire climb, events, and Fellowship Adventures. Of these only the FA could be left out as it just doesn't contribute a lot to your city (in my opinion). So my advice is to go slow and build a balanced city so that you produce the goods you need as you go.
The most basic goods are: Coins, Supplies, and Goods. So at the beginning you need to focus on building a solid base for these. Coins come from residences, supplies from workshops, and goods from manufacturing buildings. So you will need about 15 residences, 10 supply and 11 goods (more on the goods idea in a moment). I have found that this balance takes you nicely through the first few chapters --4 at least.
Goods in Elvenar of 9 types. But you don't build all nine types since only 3 of them are "boosted," meaning they produce a lot more per square than the other six. So you build only boosted and then trade for the other stuff. This is where a good fellowship is almost required. They are your partners and a good fellowship can have you waiting only minutes to get the goods you need. In any case, at the beginning there are three "tiers" of goods...you will unlock them as you proceed in the chapters. For T1 (tier 1 of course) should have about 6 buildings. T1 should be 3 and T3 2. That's the 11 buildings of which I spoke.
Now as you get going you will find that keeping all the same buildings at the same level makes laying your city out much easier. So as you improve your residences they should always be no more than one level from each other. Ditto workshops, goods mfrs, and so on.
That's basic production and will carry you through the first 4-5 chapters. In addition to building your city though, you will need to "discover" your neighbors. That's what "scouting" is all about. To discover a neighbor you go to the world map and pick one of the neighbors with an active spy glass. You will pay some coins for the right and it will take a growing amount of time. At first a few minutes, then hours, and even days. Each neighbor you discover you can trade with without a penalty. In addition, the more provinces you discover the more space your city gets in the form of expansions....BUT...you can go too far, too fast. So, if those undiscovered areas begin to say "hard" or "very hard" you are "over scouting" and things will be more expensive. Ideally, as you finish each chapter the amount of exploring you've done will be just enough to open the next chapter -- the first research of each chapter tells you how much you need to have explored.
How when you've opened a new province you will have to have some encounters with it before you can actually consider it usable. After all, you "discovered" it, and then you "explore" it, right? To do that you have to deal with the inhabitants. You can go to war to conquer them or you can just feed them some goods/coins/supplies and they'll be friendly. The problem is, in the beginning your troops are usually so weak they aren't always able to encounter the inhabitants. I've found it useful to concentrate on just "catering" the provinces for the first 3-4 chapters rather than fighting. During that time I build up my troops and try to get them strong enough to work for me. By chapter 5-6 I find them usable. Before that, not so much...though others of a more military bent may accuse me of being a bad commander as they can fight from chapter 1 and conquer all!
That's it for me.
AJ