Walkthrough

DometKitty

1  Gold is important until lvl 70 when you have 3 star legendary equipment.  After you are equipped it becomes a fairly useless resource.
2:  In the Market I consider the degree of importance to be Gems>Iron>Draft Orders> wood>food
3:  Food can either be highly important, or low importance, all depending on how active a player you are.  Eventually you get the tech to change your hourly bonus from gold to food, this helps alot.  If you play on PC stay logged in even if you are not actively playing.
4: Reemphasize on terrain advantage.  From level 1-70 just going with the newest most powerful of you heroes is usually enough to get you by.  But Post  70 the game gets much harder.  Every stage has a terrain type.  Each hero specializes in this type.  ALL Red and Purple heroes should be moved around after every advancement in the campaign based on this.  Also until you get Tony, Berg is a good permanent hero, He should always go first.

5: Finally, Participate in Country wars.  Capturing cities is highly important to helping you level up at the later levels.

6: advice when it comes to refining.   Getting rank 5 from free refine is.. near impossible, i wont say it is impossible.. it just.. a very very very low chance.   
Use free refine to get your gear to full rank 4, then use advanced with either paid or diamonds obtained from daily to try to get rank 5.   Get all rank 5 before tryign for the hidden skills,