Just thought this would be beneficial for adding info I have received from other more experienced players. Not everyone plays the same and its good to have some different styles - though some of the basic remain the same.
The more barracks you have the faster you train troops so the more the merrier, some tips to maximize your barracks are;
I personally have 6 cottages which allows me to have a good number of barracks but can still train in large amounts (I have all farms though, farms and sawmills use less population the quarries and mines). I would advise 7 cottages tho.
Taverns are useless keep your tax at 0% and just collect when you need it(the cool down is about 2 hours).
You only need 1 market per province.
You can deconstruct stables or workshops in certain cities (to make room for more barracks) so that you can train for example, cav in c1, siege in c2 and train faster over all.
Tips for maximizing production;
I did this before i went pure farms, I had c1 with mines and farm, c2 with farms and sawmills, c3 pure farms. Then I had 1 mountain and the rest lakes, and grasslands in c1, and 1 woods and the rest lakes and grasslands in c2. This maximized the usefulness of the wildernesses
Random tips:
-If you scout with a knight that has 98 intelligence or more (may be possible with less but i don't know for sure)you can see a player's last login without lvl 10 scouting
-wall mounted crossbows can be taken out by send 10x the amount of crossbows, but if they are defended by even a couple hundred archers the militia will be annihilated.
-You may already know this but, 1 scout can take an occupied wilderness and as long as it isn't defended.
-If you're being attacked you can hide your resources in a wild by reinforcing it and transferring as many resources as you can.
-When you are raided they take a percentage of each resources for example if you have 100k of each resources and 3 mill stone, they will get more stone then anything else.
-Wall mounted crossbows are the best defense not trebuchets, and get caltrops and spikes, not traps, traps are an anti farming technique... hopefully none of us will be needing to prevent farming anytime soon.
-Cav and hcav are great for attacks but have a lot of upkeep and fight first when attacking and defending so you will lose them more often but ultimately are the best offense.