Also, as far as you are concerned with protection your resources and village from attacks/ raids, let me point out the following:
1. A hiding place won't do much... the aggressive player will attack you until you lose interest and abandon the village, then he will farm it. It doesn't matter if he gets resources or not, he will attack you.
2. The easiest way to prevent yourself from being farmed is to kill all your neighbors. This is best done on worlds with growing barbarian villages, as you can force your neighbors to abandon their villages and then farm the growing abandoneds. The best defense is to eliminate all possible threats.
3. The easiest village to defend is the village that is growing the fastest, to grow fast you will need troops to farm, so the more troops you have farming, the faster you can grow your village because you will be getting resources at 10x the speed (or even faster depending on your activity) than those who are not farming. When you have 10x more resources to spend on defense (or offense, as offense is a better defense than defense, if you can understand the paradox, if not, that's okay) you can make your village so strong that no one around you can touch it.
4. Real defense comes in the form of defensive troops, so build troops, not buildings to defend your village. The only exception to this is obviously the wall. A wall and a strong army of defensive troops (spears, swords, HC, archers) is what you need to safe-guard your resources. The more you farm, the more resources you can spend on defensive troops.
The point I am trying to get across is troops, troops, troops, troops.... TROOPS. You need an army to grow. Your army is your defense, it is your offense, it is your economy. Don't worry yourself about your resources mines, they are nothing compared to the amount of resources your troops can bring in. Now, obviously you need to use common sense, if you are not as active, you will need to up-grade your mines to compensate for your lack of farming.
I am also going to try and explain that paradox I mentioned about, about offense being a better defense than defense... this might be above and beyond you right now, and if it is, I invite you to come back and ponder it later after you get more experience with the game:
It is the idea that the player who goes completely offensive at the beginning or the game (in your 1st village) is going to have a huge advantage over the average player who splits his first villages into defense and offense, or goes completely defensive. It is a risk really, you build 90% offensive troops and hope that if someone attacks you you can dodge, that no one will attack you, or that you have killed and farmed everyone around you and there is no one left to attack you. If a strong player decides to attack you and wipes out your troops, you are done, you are screwed, time to restart. However, 80% of the time this doesn't happen, as fear-tactics keep most individuals from attacking you. Make yourself look huge and powerful, and no one will touch you. (I have a guide written on using fear-tactics, if you want it, mail me)
Now, if you win the gamble in going 90% offensive and no one attacks you, you are far, far, far beyond your neighbors. You can only really farm with an offensive army, and you can only clear villages to farm later with an offensive army. Farming gives you tons of resources, so it makes sense that the more offensive troops you have, the more farming you can do, the more resources you have, the faster you can up-grade, the faster your village grows, the faster you can make more offensive troops, and with more offensive troops your village expands faster and faster... and so on and so forth.
While you are farming everyone near you with your offensive army, there is no one left to attack you, and anyone who does try and attack you will have to march their army from a great distance, giving you plenty of time to dodge or, if you are experienced enough, shadow them back and kill their army (I'm not going to bother explaining shadowing right now). Thus, you have a completely defensible position by making a completely offensive village and you get to reap all the farming benefits of an offensive army.
Now, on worlds without growing barbarians, you may need to allow one or two people in your 14x14 to live for nobling later, but then you can always make nobling trains to noble further away. (A nobling train is 4-5 armies all containing one noble used to instantly noble a village, nobling with a single noble takes 4-5 attacks to take-over a village).
Also, note this all applies to your very first village, when you start taking multiple villages, you will need to make some defensive villages, but your question was aimed at a good starting strategy, so I won't go into mid/late-game now.
Hopefully, some of that made sense to you, if not, feel free to ask questions. Feel free to mail me with any specific questions that you may have. I don't profess to know everything about this game, but I can certainly give you some good advice if you are just beginning to play.
have a good time destroying people.:axemen: