Raiding and combat with your first units
Once players around you run out of beginner protection you want to start raiding them, the weaker players that is. Inactive players without any army is what we hope to find, use scouts to check for this. I think everyone should upgrade their barracks to level two before they start raiding so that they get access to scouts. Intel is pretty important and saves you both a lot of time and helps you not getting too many troops killed.
Lets look at the first units. The basic unit is the peasant, and you need peasants to help you carry loot home when you raid someone. Carrying stuff is pretty much the only thing they are good at though, so you need other units to protect them. The basic offensive unit is the infantryman. Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face, always suffer greater loss compared to other branches of the army services. They work well against other infantrymen as well as against scouts and peasants, so you should have some of these at the start.
Scouts are trained to move swiftly and perform reconnaissance duties, providing detailed geographic coordinate and military intelligence by submerging the enemy troops. These are your intel gatherers, they engage other scouts in combat though so you want to have more scouts than the guy you are trying to get intel on. Most small inactives won’t have scouts at all though, so you don’t really need that many early on.
Another unit you can train with barracks level 2 is the billman. Billmen, take shining hook-spear as powerful weapons, are considered to be elite force to terrify infantrymen, even knights, mentioned as being one of the main forces during the Hundred Year’s War. These units work very well against horse-mounted infantry. You won’t fight much mounted infantry early on though, so I’d recommend upgrading barracks to level 3 for the next unit.
The next unit would be the grenadier. Grenadiers are chosen for being the most physically powerful soldiers and would lead assaults in the field of battle. These units are very effective against all non-mounted infantry and you’ll want to train quite a few of these early on. Feel free to leave comments or questions, good luck with the raiding!