I can share some thoughts, although I dont usually play ofensive gaul.
Here it goes - and it works. It can be optimized, but, you guys have to work on it.
If you don't know how to level your first villa, the prety basic stuff is this:
a) 1x Iron - Lvl 1
b) MB - lvl 3
c) 1x (crop / crany / granary / WH / market / embassy / clay) - lvl 1
d) MB - lvl 5
e) 1x iron - lvl 1
f) granary - lvl 3
g) 1x (wood / residence) - lvl 1
h) WH - lvl 3
i) 1x crop - lvl 1
j) WH - lvl 7
k) 2x (clay / crop) - lvl 1
l) all resource tiles to lvl 2
By now you should have enough to research TT's, so work on it! Don't make mistake, or you won't have and will be stuck waiting - and your production sucks.
I mean, I guess you have enough, just try it out in a new server and let us know 
With your phalanxes raid empty oasis. Group them in pairs, dont just send all 5 to an empty oasis... Keep farming, every resource counts.
Once you have your first TT, send it to an empty oasis. Keep doing it, raiding each oasis with only 1 trop. Carefull with the animal spawn. Once beginer protection ends, you should not be raiding oasis.
Look for those easy to clean oasis - with 10 rats, 7 snakes, 2 pigs. Use the simulator and clean it. Try to optimize your losses with the use of bandages. You should only lose 1 TT in each attack! Sim it until you win it 
This is the pretty basic and first few days stuff.
Then I believe it's all the same. Find a cropper in a confort zone, but quite near to the borders - so you have targets. If you don't play with gold, just settle in a 4536 or 4437 near your first villa. Delay you capital - you will later get a cropper near you, if you play it smart 
Don't do TT's in the capital.
Don't sleep until you can queue TT's 24/7 in cavalary and Great cavalary. Farm allied tech accounts. Blame your sitter if you get caught with your proxy offline. Blame TG for making this a p2w game, you know, top raider stuff.
I'm just a pure def player, so I just imagine that this last part is also required.