First of all, check how other players have built their village, how they have placed the buildings and the walls.
How to check other players?
Click the chat arrow button to pull out the chat UI, click a player’s name and click on visit.
Check our image, it shows a pretty good village structure. I think I have reached silver 1 rank with this build, only by defending, not attacking anyone.
Anyway, what you need to build first is gold mines and upgrade them.
Followed by defensive towers. Build defensive towers until you reach the limit and upgrade them like this: one gold mine / one defensive tower. Since you can upgrade two buildings at the time.
But don’t forget about the Town Hall. This should be the primary building and should get upgraded every time you have the gold.
Until level 5
Until level 5, you can just upgrade the Town Hall without much trouble.
From level 5, use crystals to buy 2 days shield. This shield will help you to gather the required gold for the Town Hall upgrade.
How to get free crystals?
Just deconstruct the trees and big stones that grow around your village. They respawn very fast.
And repeat, when you reach a new level for your Town Hall, start upgrading all the gold mines and defensive towers.
After you have upgraded those, plan your next upgrade for the Town Hall.