Señorita had the best advice. Build an attack build for more plunder and faster growth. Hansels are harder to build from scratch. Do the 12-12 formula. 12 guilds. 12 forges. All on lowland. As u open highland, build guilds, until land cost in 30 bil. After that as u open land. Put up guild to lvl 3 only. Save up 26.6 bil, put volary on the opened land. Then don't open any more lands. Save up gold enough to do a mass conversion of all lowland to SOS. On highland build 2 colonies. 1 is all u need but for plunder build 2. One by one convert all highland build that u have guilds on to Volary. Once all builds are done to level one on highland, before u open any more lands, max each volary up. Max only one of the colony, leave the other one as is. Open lands build volary, max build each as u go. This is the longer war but u grow incrementally. Other way is to save up fully for the mass build. Open all lands build only guilds, and forges even numbers. Then mass convert, either way works as I have 2 alts this way.
Yeah like senorita said, start out as an attack build then convert, it makes everythinf easier trust me, i done it before.
Dont build forges theyre a waste, go for the balanced buildings. Once youre at 25 lands you can scrap all but 1 attack build for guilds lvl 4. Always max your guilds. Not economical to build volaries or SoS on LL/HL unless you want the stats in which case do volaries first and SoS later. Change your attack build to a T5 om the highlands, better plunder and better stats.