I’ve heard several times players claiming that you don’t really need war ships in Ikariam anymore once you get the occupation technology. Then you can occupy other players cities and use these as a base to launch attacks after all. I agree that it’s really usefull to be able to avoid other players fleets now and then, but you can’t depend on this strategy for 100% of your plundering.

For one, on some islands everyone has a tiny navy in their cities and then you are not able to occupy a city there without using war ships. More frequently however, there will be 3-4 small cities on the island you can occupy. Using a small city as a base to attack from is not optimal though, they often have tiny trade ports and few action points. If you have to use a long time to load resources and troops you will give the enemy more time to block your city with his fleet, and then the resources will be lost.

Even if you manage to occupy great cities to plunder from frequently not having a fleet of your own still makes you very vulnerable to harbor blockades in general. It’s really easy for your enemy then to just put a few war ships in front of each of your cities, and stop you from both moving troops and resources around. With no fleet of your own it might take you a long time to get help from allies to lift these blockades, and you may end up loosing lots of both troops and resources over this time. My general advice is to have at least 3 war ships for every city that you have for the first few months of the game, and just keep increasing it as your neighbours do so.

Being an active pillager is definitely the fastest way to grow, especially in the beginning. You’ll notice many accounts going inactive, and keep attacking them as often as possible, not more than 6 times every 24 hours though, in case they suddenly log on and report you for bashing.

Usually pillaging active player on your own island is not a good idea, it’s better for you that they grow as long as they donate frequently. An exeption to this would be players who don’t defend themselves and get looted by people from other islands frequently, it’s better that you get the resources than someone on another island does.
It’s important to have high level hideouts so that you can spy many possible targets at the same time, I usually just send one to each target and spy on their resources. If they have a lot I then spy on their military. It’s important to remember to blokade their harbour if they have war ships. Early on I usually don’t bother pillaging people with war ships, later on pretty much everyone does though. In the starting weeks of a new server you can usually just check out their military score and don’t waste spies spying on their military.

If you’re a peaceful player look at which resource you need the most and build it on that type of island if there is one close, for a peaceful player that trades a lot it can be a good idea to spread your villages out a bit to cover larger areas with your trade offices, but there are also minuses in doing this like lots of time spent on moving troops and resources around. For aggressive players I think settling the closest wine island is definitely the way to go.

To found the actual city you need 40 idle citizens, 9000 gold and 1250 wood. I suggest sending max resources with extra ships too, so you can start building up your new city right away, that is 1500 of each type. Before you get a governor’s residence built there will be corruption, so I suggest using all your citizens there for taxes until you get the governor’s residence built up.