When laying out your village, build multiple defensive structures. At the start, you will only have access to walls, archer towers, and cannons. Use walls to close off important structures, such as your town hall and gold and oil storage. You can also wall off your cannons and archer towers to make them more difficult to take out.
Gems
Complete the achievements, which are listed on the right side at the main menu. When completed, your reward might be gems.
Quests
Quests can be started at the main menu. You do not have to actually do anything during a quest. You simply must to wait a specific amount of time. You can check how long a quest will take to complete before you accepting it. The longer the quest will take, the better the rewards. If you are constantly playing actively, choose the shorter quests. Accept longer quests if you have to leave the game for awhile.
Raiding
When you raid another village, focus on the defensive structures, such as cannons, first. If you can take them down, the rest of the camp will be vulnerable to attack without retaliation.
Resources
There is a cap on both gold and oil. Before raid a village or complete a quest, spend resources if you are near that maximum limit. Any resources that you cannot hold are wasted. Always, upgrade your gold and oil storage as much as possible.
