Newbie Questions

[cbone00]

I recently started playing this game. I am new to MMORPG as well.
I have advanced to the Dark Age, and I have a lot of questions. I have not found an answer anywhere else, so here goes. I appreciate any help.

For the last few days, I have been plundering any other Dark Age city that I can find trying to build my gold up. Last night, I got some emails threatening me to stop because I was attacking other Roman cities. I did not know this was frowned upon. Know that I know, I have stopped doing it. I don't want to be a jackass.

Now I have started looking for cities to plunder in another civilization.
The problem with raiding cities in another civilization is that they are so far away that I can't carry enough food to reach them.

Is there a better way to travel long distances other than marching for a Dark Age player?

How can I get up to $1,000,000 in gold if I can't plunder?
I am having trouble building up the $1,000,000 to upgrade my hero monument.

When I attack grave robbers or wolves or other things like that, I get rewards of various kinds of food. What I am supposed to do with the food?

My hero seems stuck at level 29. Do I have to reach the Feudal age in order to hit L30?

When I go into the Arcadian Ladder, I seem to get demolished and lose all my troops after about the fifth stage. Seems like a waste of expensive troops. Is there a compelling reason to use the Arcadian Ladder, or is it a waste of resources?

I have built four temples and put a missionary in each one. I have them all worshipping all the time. This is very expensive
Is this too many temples?
Too many missionaries?
How often do I need to worship to maintain my territory?
Do I need to even worry about having a lot of territory at this point?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[cbone00]

One more question:

I was plundered by a much stronger hero a couple of days ago.
I had my hero garrisoned with a bunch of troops.
I lost all the troops.
I see people saying to garrison heros with no troops in order to keep this from happening.

But what about all this troops? Will they still fight the attacker on their own, or do they just sit there useless?

[sociopath]

ok to start off yes archadian ladder is awesome for leveling you hero to make ladder easier use range troops [archers] and utilize safe spots [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Wwpg7iHtg ] the plundering aspect can be a issue if there is no red diamonded cities
[means 7 days inactive] in your civ but if your civ has any czs you can transport a hero there for FREE using battle tab then transport hero tab and plunder another civ if not you can plunder outposts in czs. Now the worshipping thing is your choice i would say until you have enough gold only worship to keep your city from belonging to someone else and to fulfill tasks. Hope that answers your questions

[cbone00]

Thanks for the answers, 1107994008.
I had no idea how to tell how if a city was inactive. The red diamond tip helps a lot.

What about the food? How do I use that?

[sociopath]

all units consume food if you run out they die as well as all units need food to travel on too plus higher the amount of troops on hero farther they can go.

[xecutioner]

A lot of the drops from mobs and lairs are for future events/features. I'm not totally sure what anything is for other than the ores lvl 10 lairs drop which go to upgrade guild buildings and to make things in the mill and smithy. Most of us are still learning about the new things on Phoenix and Valhalla servers. I know I'm playing on them to learn for when my regular server gets the patch and gets merged.