First thing you want to do is look around to see where to place your town hall.
To quickly scout you can press tab and use WASD to move your camera.

There are 3 vital things to consider when placing your town square. You want to be close to:

Rock - Preferably straight and flat.
Fertile Grass - the darker shade of green. For farms and pens.
Water - Needed for many crafts


You dont want to place your town square too close to everything, as you cant place any buildings on it.

Once you have placed your town square, drop your axe and assign both of your peasants to
be woodcutters.

Also, head in to the edicts tab (in V>Edics) and set chest template to show always. You may want to fiddle around with the edicts tab as it is very important later on.

Once you have enough wood, place your artisan workbenches facing the town square. This is so that when they are using it, they get extra happiness from the terrain bonus of the square.








From then on, I recommend finishing all the quests. However I personally learn Washing and Soaking before Stone processing for the early game barrels.

Part time professions
If your artisan is not doing anything because hes finished crafting all his queues, or if you just have your builder sitting around doing nothing, have him do a part time job such as building or hunting. You can always swap him back when you need him to.

Don't be idle Yourself
Remember that you are also a player and shouldn't be very idle, especially early game. If you find yourself having nothing to do then do a part time job.

Food
You especially want to build the kitchen ASAP. This is so you can learn your first Supply Tech and get a stable supply of food. Once you have it, set Crafting Steak to 1000x. To get steak, assign someone idle to be your temporary part time hunter. To advance supply tree quicker, grab a scythe and go around the map to reap everything. Then use those ingredients to craft food. Pumpkin is the best tech to advance first.

Early Game Raids
Just press G and let your peasants mob them. Don't do this late game though.

Tool-making
Set your most intelligent peasant (check yourself as well!) to be your part time weapon smith. This is so you can increase the chance of getting high quality tools. Weapon Smith is one of the least occupying jobs, so he is your go-to person for part time jobs (such as building or early game hunter). Keep around 4 of each tool in storage (earlygame), then you can swap him to do more important stuff once he is idle.

Higher quality food gives more happiness when consumed.
In my opinion the happiness generated is not worth the time crafting high quality foods, at least until super late game anyways.

Innovations Update: Higher quality foods have been significantly buffed.

That being said, you at least need 1 farmer to farm flax until you have a trader. Flax oil is very important for lacquered planks.

Cows provide food and hide, so domesticating them is killing 2 birds with one stone.

• Create at least 2 pens for cows and sheep.
  
• When you are first starting off get at least 2 males and 4 females.
  
• Make sure none of them are old.
  
• Whenever the population of a pen gets low, transfer some other cows from another pen to compensate.

TIP: You dont need to finish building your pens as placing them down already counts as terrain

Have a shepherd to collect the meat, milk, wool, and hide. One shepherd with a pen this size has no problems feeding 15 people.

Happiness makes peasants increase stat and work faster. It also makes new peasants arrive faster.
Therefore placing objects and creating setups that creates the most happiness is crucial towards a more efficient base. This is very important for jobs that require high stats like Miners and Weapon Smiths.

Noteworthy things that increase happiness
• Wall Proximity
  
• Chest proximity
  
• Floor type
  
• Bed proximity
  
• Monument proximity
  
• Flower proximity
  
• Food type consumed
  
• Garden Proximity

*I've tested a few and they dont stack with themselves.
*Floor type is only the floor DIRECTLY under. Adjacent and floors near you dont affect happiness.
This has been changed as the Innovation update. Upgrading the skill Territory Decoration will give bonus happiness proportionate towards the avg. happiness of the 8 surrounding tiles.

WALLS
There is a mechanic that you can abuse to save materials while building a house
Any wall inside an "enclosement" will give its buff. If you surround your base with cheap wooden walls and use more expensive brick walls inside your enclosement, it will still work to give its buff.


TIP: Mountain/Rocks count as a wall as well, so you can create a house around a mine.

Ideally, every workplace should have all these buffs.

Generally speaking, you want to make sure your artisans dont walk across the base to craft something. Place things in rows and use roads frequently to minimize travelling time.

I use this block/row pattern for my base.

1x WALL. 8x ANYTHING. 1x WALL

* Wall can be replaced with Iron door.

I've found that this way is the most optimal way to organize my base.

There is another important crafting mechanic that you also want to utilize. Any ingredient touching a workbench does not need to be fetched.

By abusing this mechanic, here is an example where my artisans can craft all the way up to Knights Lunch without having to move to gather a single material.

Heres both mechanics demonstrated:

Against tough opponents, I use a volley strat to prevent any peasant deaths.

First thing you want to do is to equip all your peasants with bows/crossbows.
V>Select peasant>Weapon:Long Range
Make sure you have enough bow and arrows.

Save your game as soon as you get attacked.



Black circle is archers
Blue line is how you want to draw aggro

• As soon as you start getting attacked, press G and ` (tilde)
  
• Command your whole army to move to a open position. (X+Left Click) Do this outside of base so nothing gets destroyed
  
• Lead the enemy army into your peasant volley
  
• Before the enemies reach your archers OR when your archers run out of stamina, aggro the enemy army away
  
• Command your army to stand back in position again (X+Left Click)
  
• Rinse and Repeat

The strategy takes a bit of skill and kiting, so make sure to perfect it!

Bonus tips:

• Just before the their army is in your volley range, input buffer all of your archers to attack the 3rd enemy from the front(Z+Left Click). This is so they dont lose formation once the target (closest ) enemy dies.
  
  
• Before the enemies reach your archers, kite the enemies around so that they lose their stamina and all their sprints.

Using this method to kill them off is also good for resources, as you dont need to craft Armour.

LATEGAME DEFENCE - Building a garrison

Archers can shoot further if on the archer tower. Use this to your advantage while building a garrison

Traps are really effective if you can spare the iron. Have creative ideas to path your enemies into them

Otherwise, the principle is still the same with earlier methods of defence.
Here's my current garrison.


Blue is where you stand and how you want to path as they get closer.

Make sure your equipment is close to the garrison so your peasants dont walk half the map to get them.

24 August 2018 UPDATE:
The Innovations update brought a lot of changes. Now you can get perks which really change up the late game



Circled in blue is what you really want to get IMO.

Whats really important is the Love of Neigbour buff that decreases the population debuff. This makes it really easy to go to populations of 20+ late game. Currently my population debuff for 32 peasants is -133.

That's it! Please favorite and like :D

Here's a screenshot of my base if you are curious of my setups.