The most usefull thing to buy is probably the horseshoe, you get much better value bying these and getting lucky than to buy other items directly. With the new feature you can even get troops using these horseshoe coins, as well as lots of other cool items of course.

If you get treasure maps, make sure you don’t use them until you can manage to beat the troops in a level 10 wilderness. It really suck if you can not manage to kill the troops and get your prize, what a waste of coins. When it comes to treasure you can only dig up your own, not other players treasures. To get the treasure you have to occupy the location where the treasure is, gather for 1 hour and then pick it up.

One last thing, it is possible to get any type of item just from pillaging and occupying. This is cool, so you don’t have to spend money on the game if you don’t want to. However, it can take ages to get the item you want without going to the shop, so many people do it to speed things up.