Culling out the Lamers: At the start of the game most kingdoms will have inactive provinces and semi-inactives. The best thing you can do is get rid of these guys ASAP. They're taking up space that could be used by active players. Plus these guys tend to show up once every 4 or 5 days and do stupid things like attack someone for attacking them two days ago or demand the kingdom retaliate because someone stole their million GC that they had saved up, etc. Get rid of these guys fast.
Alliances: Should you join an alliance? I'd say probably not. As a general rule alliances are either useless when you need them or are a bunch of gang bangers who'll constantly be asking you to help defend their weaker members. Joining an alliance can be doubly dangerous these days because of the number of multis, psychopaths, and dedicated alliance haters who will pick fights with you because you are in an alliance. I'd recomend you get some friends and maybe a few other kingdoms willing to back you up and stay out of alliances.
Aid: Let me tell you about some of the people we gave "booster packs" (large kingdom wide aid packages) to. We had a guy last round who was down to 7 acres and he finished at around 300k. We had another guy who got in a week late and finished at around 700k. We had another guy who defected to us and arrived at around 150 acres. He got up to 2700 acres and over 300k NW. We had another guy who arrived 2 weeks before the end of the game. He was a clueless newbie. However, he listened very well and did exactly what we told him. He finished with 150k. Make sure the people you give aid to are worthy. We asked that they have strong defense, that they talked on the forums, that they played every day, and that they made attacks daily. If they met those qualifications we helped them out. We finished with all 25 provinces over 100k. Don't worry rry about hurting your province's NW by giving aid either. Last round I gave away approximately 10k soliders and 10 million GC and still finished #22 in the world. However that seed money really helped out a lot of other provinces who wouldn'y have done as well without that help. We never forced anyone to give aid but because people set good examples almost everyone was willing to help out.
Retaliation: Once our kingdom built up some strength we started literally dealing with every attack by message, traditional march, raze attacks, thieves, or mages. We struck back at anyone who attacked us including top 50 players, top 50 kingdoms, alliances, etc. We didn't take crap from anyone. We didn't allow retaliation hits for land grabs on our kingdom either. We didn't back down from anyone including whole alliances, island alliances, or even the #1 kingdom in the world. On the other hand we were a unified, wicked kingdom with two top 50 players. You may not be as aggressive as we were, but you should deal with every attack made on an active member of your kingdom even if it's just with a message from the regent.
Share the Knowledge: In the first age of Utopia our kingdom finished #7 on Gaia. the next round we finished number 3 in the world. What was the biggest difference? The biggest one was that I explained to everyone exactly how to play on the forums. I told them how much defense per acre and how many thieves per acre they should have at each point of the game. I gave them a building formula to use. I answered every question and if someone was looking weak I would give personalized advice. Spread the word on how to play in your kingdom and post this website addy on your kingdom forum.
The Forums: Our forums had several important topics that we kept up. Those included a land, gold, and targets thread, a monthly retaliation thread for who we needed to deal with, and a trophy thread that kept up with kingdom and province rankings on island and in the world. These are threads your kingdom should have up as well.
A Strong Regent: Your regent has got to have his act together. He needs to respond to the other regents who are angry about your kingdoms land grabs, tons of outside requests for help, and intra-kingdom conflict. A strong and wise regent can make a huge difference. Make sure your regent is very active, easy to get along with, and is more concerned about the kingdom than his bonus's. The regent is first and foremost a servant of the kingdom. If they aren't cutting the mustard then find a replacement and vote them in. If your regent doesn't like that, tough, don't let your whole kingdom down because no one wants to call the regent on the poor job he's doing.
Avoiding Wars: The real key to becoming a huge kingdom is taking large amounts of land from other kingdoms and keeping them and the rest of the world from taking land from your kingdom. As the saying goes, "talk softly but carry a big stick". Don't talk smack, don't needlessly threaten people, be diplomatic, but let people have no doubt that if someone gets into it with your kingdom they will get torn up. I'd also recomend that you keep your provinces from land grabbing the same targets twice unless they are inactive, land farms, or have gone fallow. "Gang Bangs" on active provinces are the trigger for most Utopian wars.
Loyalty to the Kingdom First: All provinces first loyalty needs to be to the kingdom. Outside friends, alliances, etc come after the kingdom. In other words, you can help your friends and any alliance you are in but it better not cause problems for your kingdom. You don't drag your kingdom into a war or pick a fight your kingdom will have to finish.
Outside Requests for Help: If you are a top province or a regent on a top 50 kingdom you will get 3-5 to requests for help each day after the game gets rolling pretty good. If you try to respond to even 1 in 5 of them you will be in a never ending state of war. Choose wisely when deciding which people to help if you help any. It feels great to help a weak kingdom in dire peril. I personally, and the Drunken Monkey Clan have done it several times. However, you should remember that to the best of my knowledge, none of the people we helped were ever in a position to pay the favor back. So helping these people is truly a charitable act.
Going Shamrock: The flip side of avoiding wars is to be willing to beat the crap out of someone if it's necesasary. We killed multis, burned hundreds of homes, kidnapped and fireballed 25k plus peasants, and laid 5 or 6 retaliation hits on people when it became necessary. Believe me, if your kingdom is strong or weak, word spreads. If people know you go ballistic on grabs, their friends, multis, alliance members, etc, will get the word and will respond appropriately.
Keep all these factors in mind. If you feel like your kingdom just isn't cutting it in one of these areas, don't be afraid to bring it up. The most important thing is for everyone to have fun together. If people are having a good time and trust the people they are playing with the things I mentioned will be easy to accomplish. Good luck and I wish you all the success DMC had in Utopia's 2nd age.