This is my first guide so please don't be hating too much. My Way! Ok you just started, you get volleyed, and you need to get your ally plunder up. Your build should should be all lvl 3, T2 and maybe a guild. Your next land should be 20 mil. This is one of the easiest ways I know. Do EPIC BATTLES! Keep participating in the epic battles till you get an average of 200 mil invested in allies. The reason behind doing this instead of plunder warring, is that you get plunder at the end of the epic battle. That is where you should get the bulk of your money. Where as in a plunder war, osf gets the war tax. Afterward, you should go to plunder warring. Now that you get ally plunder, plus the normal gold you bring in, you should grow extremely fast. Traditional Way! You start off with your builds. You get volleyed, then you keep building till you reach 17 lands explored. Then you build 1 billion into allies. In my experiences, extremely slow. Then you keep building again.
I'm right at this point because I recently reset. The flaw is that all of the clans that does the epic battles easy enough for me to do are full of noobs.