First of all, don’t worry if your city gets defeated. You only lose resources and troops (if you have any for defending). You won’t lose the game / get your city destroyed or anything. Check this article to know how not to lose resources and troops if you get attacked and defeated.
So you have like 10.000 might or something in this range. What to do? You can check for cities that you can attack. If you scout them, you will know how much gold they have and other resources. Gold will become the most important resource because is the only resource that can’t be protected against attackers, unlike lumber, food etc.
Gold is only required for “researches”.
Here are some important tips to protect your city and use the gold as best as you can.
Upgrade your vault so you can protect at least 500 – 600k resources. Only attack other cities when you really need gold, before doing a research.
Leave your city unprotected, set it from your “keep” > “overview tab” to “hide all troops”. By doing this, you won’t lose any troops if your city gets attacked. But, you won’t be able to protect your gold. So make sure you don’t have “extra gold” when you have nothing to do with it. Later in the game, as your researches are having higher levels, you will need to protect your gold but don’t worry for now.
This strategy works great if your researches require less than 100.000k gold.
So when you got the gold, do the research right away to spend it. Keep your army hidden. If you get attacked and defeated, you won’t lose anything. The idea is to focus on research and put the gold for good use.
Any tips, ideas or questions, leave in the comments.