Here is my gameplay cycle.
Also please keep in mind that you want to be working on skills like Charm, Leadership and maybe even Roguery as much as possible so by phase 5 these skills are as high as possible. This are kind of more important than weapons skills to be honest.
Run around and try to get enough money for my first workshop. Build my first workshop so I can afford to expand my army. Save up and build my second workshop, then my third on up to I get them all built. By this time I should have a fairly decent army and have a good positive passive income coming in. This is Phase One.
Phase Two is depending on my whim, I join as a merc for a while or just join a faction as a lord. In either case I start by using practice catch and release tactics on lords and try not to initiate any sieges. This will allow me to make friends and work on my charm skill both of which will be needed, if and when I decide to start a Kingdom. I also try to participate in as many votes as I can to build relationships with my factions lords.
Phase three is that eventually after I have built up really good relations with as many lords as possible, at least a dozen, I start planning my kingdom. By this time you should have plenty of influence so you can pull together big armies. I then use opportune wars to attack and take cities or castles I would like to have and use as much influence as required to acquire as many fiefs as I can, usually focusing on trying to keep them as close together as possible. I do try to take care to pick fiefs that aren't owned by my friends if I can but if you have enough relation with them, your friendship can tolerate something as minor as taking their fief from them by force. I also try to stockpile as much money as I can as you will need to have at least 3 million or more Denars for the next phase. I also work on making sure my fiefs have the largest garrisons possible and that both me and my clans parties are full. Then after I have my stockpile of Denars and also a couple cities and a castle or two, I move to phase 4.
Phase 4 is creating a Kingdom. You do have to be at Clan Tier 4 I think to do this so keep that in mine. Now that I have a couple cities and a few castles all pretty close to each other ALL with maximum garrison AND have my clan parties and my army maxed out and with me, I wait until my Faction is deep into a war and I then just leave the Kingdom keeping all my fiefs. This will cause your previous faction to go to war with you and you will lose some relations with all of them but this is not a big deal. You then create your own Kingdom (be sure to you change your banner background color to something not used by any other faction before you do this though because once you create a Kingdom your stuck with whatever background color you original choose). Once you have your Kingdom created, you immediately want to run to the nearest enemy lord and tell him you wish to discuss something with him and then tell him you wish peace between your Kingdoms. Their will be a barter window come up and you will have to offer them some level of compensation to make peace with you but since nothing has really happened in the war yet, they usually let you off with a relative small sum, usually about 100-150k. Now your kingdom is at peace and you can move to phase 5.
Phase 5 is stabilizing your new Kingdom. You will have your army plus the 2-3 parties in your clan so a decent starting force but you will need some lords ASAP. This is where all the catch and release and voting comes in. You want to check your friends list and you should see a dozen or so lords all with positive relations. Generally speaking you want to find the ones with the highest relations possible. Next sort them by highest clan tier. Then go find the Clan Leader with the highest relations prioritizing relations first and clan tier second. Go talk to him/her and say there is something I must discuss. Then ask them their feeling about their current lord. This will bring up what I call a dialog minigame. You will usually have 3-4 choices in the dialog and those choices are modified by your relationship with the lord plus several of your skills, specially Charm, Leadership and Roguery (there might be more skills but if you have decent levels of these 3 you should be fine.). Basically you want to chose the option that has the highest success rate. I think you have to have 4 success and if you manage that, the lord will agree to join your faction....for a price. If you have high relations with them, the price can be pretty minor, maybe 50k or even less. The lower the relations, the lower the chance you have to win the dialog minigame and the more you must pay them to get them to join you. I think Clan Tier and what fiefs they currently own might influence the cost as well. In any case your probably going to be paying up to 500-700k to get some of them to join you which is why you want at least 3 million in the piggy bank. Try to get as many Clan leaders as you can to join you but you probably want at least 3 or 4 Clans if you can. As long as the Clans you recruit are Tier 4 our higher you should get at least 2 lord parties from each clan. Then give them each a fief. I usually give the ones with the Highest Tier a City and then give out the castles, just make sure to keep one city for yourself as the capitol of your new Kingdom, usually the one most protected and with the highest prosperity because your going to need the taxes and income.
From there you just have to keep your lords happy and expand. If you can use the catch and release policy in all your wars, you will always have a steady supply of positive relationship lords you can try to recruit if you need lords. Also, as I understand it, if a faction gets wiped out, you can pretty easily recruit those lords too but I usually just save up denars and strategically recruit lords form the factions I am waring with. I think I had Vlandia down to something like only having 5 clans at one point in my last playthrough and because of that they were very easy to steal territory from.
