Basic Advice

Here's some advice for players just starting to grow.

--------------------------------------------------------
Buildings that reduce material costs tend to be a waste of resources and building space. The exception is the Wine Cellar as you're using wine every hour of every day.

If you check to see what resources it takes to level up these buildings, you'll realize that you've spent about as many resources in that as you will ever get reduced, or it will take a long time to recover what you've spent in it's construction. I tried it out in a new town and didn't get much of a benefit from it other then that I had to ship a little less resources, so it was a minor benefit in that case, though not cost effective.

Some may argue that it does help, but I've seen people put hard numbers out there that say otherwise. It should be on the Message Boards somewhere.
---------------------------------------------------------
The only real benefit that I've seen to having more then one warehouse is that you are able to build more islands as you need to stockpile a LOT of resources to upgrade those Governor Residences and the Palace. Other then that, the actual resources that can't be pillaged is so small that it's laughable. A partial benefit is that you don't have to spend as many resources to equal the same storage capacity. A small benefit to be sure, but can be useful at lower levels.
----------------------------------------------------------
Always have something defending your harbor. ALWAYS!!! This will make people send a blockade rather then just ships and a couple of soldiers to take your goods. It's preferred that you have an army and navy, but things happen and for whatever reason, you may not have your navy in town. Just remember to keep one ship minimum in your harbor. Also, naval ships tend to travel slower then trade ships, so making your opponent send a blockade may give you time to offload some resources.
-----------------------------------------------------------
If you are attacked, know you're being attacked, and can't win the fight, then I suggest that you move your troops away so they don't get slaughtered. You can garrison troops in an member's town for double cost, but they'll stay there until you call them home. Move resources as well. Send them far away, as you can always call them back once your opponent is done. Better yet, send them to one of the main posts (General/Home Secretary/Diplomat) for safe keeping. Just make sure that you let them know your sending some resources their way and put in your notepad how much of each resource.
-----------------------------------------------------------


Feel free to add more information or give variations on what I've mentioned.

Slingers... There is really no good reason to have them. You could waste them on checking a towns defenses, but that still is a waste of gold.

Let me give you some numbers to help you understand why you should never use them. The Upgrade number represents the 3 different upgrades you can buy from the Workshop. The number is the new total, not in addition to the original.:

Slingers
Attack: 7, Upgrade 1: 8, Upgrade 2: 9, Upgrade 3: 10
Defense: 6, Upgrade 1: 7, Upgrade 2: 8, Upgrade 3: 9
Cost: 40 Wood
Upkeep: 3 gold
Special: -

Phalanx (Research: Professional Army)
Attack: 14, Upgrade 1: 16, Upgrade 2: 18, Upgrade 3: 20
Defense: 30, Upgrade 1: 34, Upgrade 2: 39, Upgrade 3: 45
Cost: 46 Wood, 52 Sulfur
Upkeep: 8 gold
Special: Resistance (+30% defense bonus when defending)

Ok, now that we have the basic info related to these two units, let us compare the actual numbers.

You can make 2.67 Slingers (3 gold each) for the upkeep of each Phalanx (8 gold each), so we'll compare 2.67 slingers vs 1 phalanx.

2.67 Slingers
Attack: 18.69, Upgrade 1: 21.36, Upgrade 2: 24.03, Upgrade 3: 26.7
Defense: 16.02, Upgrade 1: 18.69, Upgrade 2: 21.36, Upgrade 3: 24.03

So, we can see that the the same upkeep of slingers will provide a slightly better attack then the phalanx, but you'll notice a significant loss of defense for those same units. Those slingers have 13.98 LESS defense then 1 phalanx and that's BEFORE the +30% defense bonus without upgrades. Fully upgraded that's a loss of 20.97 points of defense. Yes, the phalanx cost sulfur, but you can always buy it or check to see if a member of this fine alliance has some laying around that you could make use of.

Moral of this long post: Don't waste your time making Slingers!