I haven't been playing long, so I'm by no means an expert, but I found this link in a post called "Common Newbie Mistakes" that details the level of research you should do, hope it helps:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3206&p=33889&hilit=useless#p32198

In games like this, best community ever here. The chats are always great. Join the chat. Get on the forums. Join an alliance. You seem to have simply isolated yourself and are angry that by playing solo, avoiding chat and rarely visiting the forums to contribute, you have missed out on the player-b...

Hi. I just started this game recently and would like to participate in the voting, but I honestly have no idea who i would even nominate for anything. There's pretty much zero interaction between players in the game and the times I've tried out chat I've seen only 2 things: complete silence immature...