There are 3 solid ways to gather resources. The 1st is to build and upgrade your resource fields in your town/s. The 2nd is to farm the rogue cities in your kingdom. The 3rd is to attack and take the resources from the other kingdoms around you on the world map.
There is a topic for farming your rogue cities
There will be a topic about attacking other members on the world map.
Building & Upgrading Resource Fields
This method is a good one but the amount of resources produced will depend on the level and quantity of resource fields you have. The more you have and the higher the level the more resources you get. Also with this method the resource fields produced even when you are not online. The big question is how many of each resource field do you need.
Food is number 1
Lumber is number 2
Gold is number 3 but is gathered in a different way in your kingdom.
Iron is number 4
Stone is number 5
Starting with stone, which is the least important. You only need it for your buildings, Walls, and their upgrades. You also need some for your wall defenses but you will not need that much so when you are done with your buildings and walls you will not need to produce it in your fields. You do need 1 quarry to do certain buildings and upgrades in every town you have. In my 1st town I will have 4 or 5 quarries. The same for my 2nd town after that I will only have 1 in each city. When my buildings and walls are all upgraded I will demolish all but 1 in each city.
Iron will be needed to build your buildings, walls, wall defenses and your troops. I will handle my iron just like my stone except that I will not demolish the iron mines I build and will upgrade all to level 9. The reason I keep them is I need lots of iron to build a big army.
Gold is needed most for researching your academy training levels. After that is done the only other reasons for gold is healing troops after a battle and buying resources if needed.
Gold is earned from idle population (the larger your idle population the higher per hour your tax earnings are), the tax rate you set in your towns and from the resources gained in battle with rogue cities or enemies in world battles.
Lumber and food are about equal. Food is ranked 1st because without food you can have no army. A large army eats a lot of food. In my first 2 cities I will have about 2 to 1 in farms and logging camps to mines and quarries. In my additional cities I will have just 1 mine & quarry then 2 to 1 farms to logging camps. This will help keeping my hourly food production as close to zero as I can get it.
Bonuses:
Upgrading your agriculture, Stone Cutting, Forestry and Prospecting will increase your resource production so make sure you research to level 10 on all of them.
When my army is large enough I will conquer level 10 lakes. The lakes have the largest food bonus and having 10 or more lakes giving you a 20,000 food bonus per hour. That is a very large bonus.
