the fighting is great but the art is so- so there's no upgrading buidling only building new ones that are more powerful resaerch is the same so is most sity mechanics i don't really see a difference but i havent gotten whatever tourney is and the event is locked because i havn't resaerched far enough. pretty much the same thing though.
1. Bronze Age is basically the tutorial stage - get out of it as quickly as you can.
2. First Iron Age tech you want to research is 'Architecture' which unlocks Great Building donation. (ie: can finally spend fp's on other players GB's)
3. TAKE. YOUR. TIME!!!
I can't stress this enough... Unlike Elvenar where there is no 'right' vs. 'wrong' way to advance, in FoE, it is absolutely critical that you *never* advance until your city is well and truly prepared.
For example, it's generally accepted that you don't want to unlock the 'Military Tactics' technology which unlocks the attacking/plundering mechanics, until *after* you've built & leveled your main 3 military GB's to Lv10. (Zeus + Cathedral of Achen + Castel del Monte)
Most new players who flounder and end up hating the game - namely the PvP aspect, do so because they just blindly race through unlocking techs & constantly pushing forward on the main campaign map. They thus end up with a crap city economy that barely functions, are mid/bottom of their nieghbourhoods & thus constantly getting plundered, have limited ability to do much of anything in events/Guild Expeditions/Battlegrounds and become too over-extended on the campaign/continent map...
FoE is a game where 'campers' prosper.
ie: sitting in each era as long as possible and simply making your GB's more powerful, gathering as many goods/special resources as possible, farming the weekly guild expeditions/battlegrounds, etc...