So:
I thought it would be a great idea to raid the Free Land and get tons of acreage. This seemed great. I had the most land and my net worth was skyrocketing. However, because I had the most unguarded land, I became an easy target, and as my buildings were taken too, my production is down. This makes sense. My question is, what is the right balance between having a enough land for solid production, and not being a target?
You'll almost always be a target. Holding into land and slowly getting bigger typically doesn't work out.
The basic gist of most strats is to grab as much land as possible in your first 50 or so turns and then generate the crap out of as much resources as possible, knowing full well you'll lose the land later, but still keep everything you made during that time.
There's a lot of ways to optimize a run, so if yiu're like me you'll eventually build up a massive collection of equations and resource optimization calculations to get the most out of every turn, lmao
but overall don't worry about land, it comes and goes and that's fine for your growth
Well, I'd say spend more than 50 turns grabbing land. If you're running a troop-producing strat, you want to be grabbing land for all but your last 100 turns basically, as you use them to heal back up to 100% health.