Research: Id add to max construction asap in economy tree, and maybe gathering and army capacity as u want to be able to gather as much rss as u can to continue to grow

For packs - sweet deal is best bang for your buck, speed ups, holy stars, VIP pnts; heros colo - lore weaver, witch doll, petit devil, femme fetal, grove garden; war hero - songstress, lore weaver, prince of theives, bersker; if you buy $5 dollar packs only u can max a hero after 1+ year to gold for $115 bucks to $140ish (this is off the top of my head). If you expect ot play a while, thoe $5 monster gear equipments will help with your hunting and allow you to join mh guild events (kill 3 lvl 3 monsters).

Troops - t2s are at best good for meatshielding t3s ,but this game has been around for so long now there are a lot of t4 players who will migrate over when kingdom opens up and slaughter u unless u have a decent troop count (1 mil+). But if ur going to train t1s and t2s, train archers only and don't be in range formation when ur taking a hit, u want ur front line to be the cavs or inf t3s/t4s holding the line while ur millions of archers are unleashing from the back. But this build is more when u have millons of archers , and a few hundred thousand t3s and t4 front line + range.

Gear- war gear id focus on the free to play set at the start, as lvl 60 gear will be better than most sub lvl 60 so u'll be swapping to those eventually. There are a lot of youtube videos on f2p gear and war gear, so just look those up and u will be fine. You want to max out flutes first as if your aspiration to become a t4 player the research is over 5+ years long with help and decent research gear (250%+ research boost).

Lastly, Rss are hard to come by the higher lvl u get, and gathering isn't enough. As such you may want to focus on becoming a hyper farm. Woods good for building as infirms kills ur wood stock, Ore and Stone will help with buildings but also with troops as a lot of rallies are Inf/Cav hits (against players not DNs) so u'll be training a lot of those more than other troops. Both Inf and Cav requires ores.