It's a nice guide.
But personally, when i start an account I concentrate on ballistae first BEFORE ANY OTHER TROOP UNIT.
I get 1 barrack to lvl9, max out my resource fields, and research archery for the ballistae.
Within 3 days i can usually start farming lvl3's and 5 days, lvl4's and by the time people start coming out of BP, i am farming lvl5's.
The key is to be efficient: i have this goal, to get 500 listae and 500 transports. I build my second city the 1st day to accelerate research/troop building.
And then, once people start coming out of BP, i have a very healthy income and can start pumping out troops faster than anybody else.

I think the reason this works so well is that npc's have a lot of gold (which is scarce in the beginning of a server) so I can research a lot faster than the average player.