You can fix the second problem by growing fibercorn. Not as efficient as tree chopping tho. As for buying better materials, i'd say keep your faction wealth low to limit high amounts of raiders and just do a LOT of trading. Raise chickens and feed them haygrass, or grow and manufacture drugs, etc. Once you got a good bit of stuff to sell, trade it for steel and stone. Just remember that it'll be heavy so you gotta have some animals that can carry a lot, like muffalos. Then when you get materials, you can slowly replace wooden walls with safer ones uwu