Eartheater its just youre not too experienced 
How bout you become top player at 5 more servers, then you will have some grounds to talk about what experienced players do's and don'ts are 
Talking about the experience, playing a serous server is equal to 10 not serious ones especially when sitting for king and duke and WW...I have played 3 serious servers in TK, that's pretty much enough to talk about things.
Rookies just like looking at off and def value and ignoring carrying capacity, movement speed, training time and cost, we all know those values are not kind of decoration, they all have some meaning which is needed to taken into consideration in decision making.
For example, Teutons troops, we know they are raiding capacity is poor when compare to other tribes where troops can reach 1000 raiding cap per village. If you don't know about this 1000 raiding cap, don't you tell me that you have ever built a serious hammer. The troops of teutons are cheap and fast to produce that is true, but the fact they take over roman's off/time only when they have drunk, and it loses that ability to target important buildings, making nothing more than a wall breaker. Is wall breaker that important in TK? Yes, it is important but not as important as in T4 as there is a water ditch in TK. Destroying the treasuries is just as important as taking the treasures, sometimes it is even more important. Plus clubs are most powerful at off/time, but they paid by crops, they are not 'cheap' at all.
And for another prae and spearman part. Rookies have no idea how to defend. Start from basic, first you need to be online or your sitter online so your troops are controllable, second you need to have your troops mobilized so you can actually move them from your village, third you need to spot and identify the 'real' attack, fourth your troops need to arrive the village before the attackers. If you know that many steps before your def troops to be valid for defense purpose, then you should know the importance of speed of def troops that's why druids are highly valued in def. And standing def purpose is not make for to be crush, its preventing others attacking it at first place. Most ppl will avoid attacking a village full of standing def except WW or in coordinated operations.
Second, You can not control when they are going to die in def as you cant control when your enemies' attack landing time. And since you can not control when they are going to in defense, the def/time is very important, because when they are gone yourself or your ally's villages or treasures will be gone too. And if leave the def troops low after attack soon will provoke other 'new' enemies coming...
The third thing is, teuton plays def is not am effective move as its power lies in off, so dont even talk about spearman blah blah blah...you can have some of them, but would never grow into number like phalanx. Not saying def teutons are unplayable, but the effectiveness is not as good as gauls. Of course, you can play both off and def at the same time early game, but it will become not so useful in mid and late game. Specialization is way to efficiency.
