I'm gonna point out a bunch of things for new players which is often overlooked by more seasoned players trying to help.
1 - get familiar with hotkeys.
Having the hotkeys on your keyboard as muscle memory is key to being a fast player so get your fingers acquainted well. B for build menu, and the various hotkeys for buildings within, and K for blink. these are probably some of the most important as you'll save a lot of time you could be spending in build time fumbling around with menus with your mouse.
You can control group things like your builder, your Alchemist, your command centers (I usually do multiple sets for various pages in cc) vendor, even walls and repairs if you dont want to look at them to upgrade.
Simply select the unit(s), hold control and press the number you want to have them hotkeyed as. 1-9 above the letters. Get creative.
2 wall formation. When setting up you walls it's important to think about a couple things: how much face is exposed to attack, how many repairs can I fit round them effectively, and is there room for repair bots.
Dont build your wall in a hallway. This only allows as many repairs as you have walls. And 2x that many bots.
You want your repairs to far outnumber your walls so set your wall 1/2 a space inside where the hall ends and your base begins.
Dont make your repairs directly in line with your walls. Depending on the orientation of your base, offset the repair 1/2 a space above or to the side of being exactly parallel with your walls. They can still reach and the offset formation will allow you to get more repairs hitting each wall.
Since the repairs can reach half a space, also build your repairs 1/2 a space away from the walls: which is just enough for a line of bots to fit inside. There are a few prebuilt walls in certain bases that you can refer to for these tips.
3- Repairs and faster lumbering.
I see a lot of newer players using very few or even no repairs at all to speed up their lumbering and often not even using their Alchemist to shrink and move them.
Just like the walls: you can set up an offset formation of repairs and hit your lumber building process to speed it up, there are lots of examples in this channel. Bots can speed up building too, but you have to right click with them. This is a great way to get your shrinking zone set up faster, or anything for that matter.
Less time not building wood the better.
The lumberyard is an important tool! it can slowly upgrade the mills you put inside up to lvl 4, and mills inside will provide lumber at a much hampered rate, which is very useful for tiny bases, and the amount you recieve can be upgraded through the pressure in production upgrade and team lumber upgrade...so don't forget to keep a few mills in your lumber yard for the free upgrades! I usually do 4 and take them out to combine a lvl 5 as soon as its done. Ivl 5 mill is 4x level 4 mills next to each other in the shape of a square, a level 6 mill is a repair mech (finished or not) surrounded by full size level 4 mills. a level 7 mill is a repair mech (finished or not) surrounded by tiny level 5 mills, you can only have 5x lvl 7 mills and they are the most powerful providing around 11 wps(wood per second) if memory serves me.
the level 6 mill is important because your lumberyard can consume it, upgrading your builder! after consuming one your builder will start lvl 2 mills, a second and he will make lvl 3, consume a third and your producing lvl 4 mills without ever spending wood to upgrade them! however, you will no longer be able to make lvl 6 mills after that.
your engineer can finish a trio of these while your builder is massing out tiny mills for your lvl 7s 
*FINISH* them, he cannot start them!
Armor vs wall upgrades: the command center upgrades are more important than upgrading the walls themselves!
I suggest upgrading walls and armor/hp in progressive cost.
Your armor statue is the cheapest after the 3 cost upgrades and it is not to be forgotten either.
For example,, if you have a 3 wall base and wall upgrades cost 25 each: total of 75, then do it after your armor/hp upgrade cost about the same. (69+63.)
The 3rd armor statue has a total cost of 75 as well. 50 for 1 gold from a vendor and 25 lumber.
This is also the time you want to get your solar or lunar team upgrade depending what phase its currently in. Don't waste your lumber on both, get the one it's currently on and the next once it changes from day or night.
Upgrading repairs and getting mecha-up team upgrade should be thought of and thrown in the same way.
Dont kill stuff!
Killing the early mobs only exposes your walls to more deadly stuff. The only reason you should kill enemies until the final quarter of the game is if you have the elemental stone and really want to buff up your hero with the kills.
If your doing all this and are still not surviving, then it's either your lumber technique, or macro. Balancing between upgrading wood and your defenses can be difficult but only experience can cure that. But if your making lv 1 mills fast enough you don't even have to worry about that for a little while.
No amount of try-hard or speed will make up for a technique that is simply not efficient. So take some time to analyze some techniques in the discord strategy channel, pick one that suits you, and practice it on an easy mode trying to get the highest end wood per second you can.
Hope this helps someone.
I've Included a picture with a reccomended shrinking zone setup for new players.
NEW PLAYER BUILD ORDER: - requires engineer - Rank 5
(this build assumes you constantly upgrade in rotation as described above)
-Walls
-command center->make engineer
-split wall repair between engineer and builder to finish faster
-cogs of time aura statue 1 building space behind walll repairs for armor statue
-builder starts making lumber between repairs and aura statue
(first 5 lumber go to lumberyard, take them out when level 4 to make a level 5 and replace with level 1s check this in your rotation. the 5th mill will be your gold mine set it somewhere it wont be combined.)
-Engineer makes 2 factory (lumberyard and repair), 3 more command center, then works on the repair diagram above. vendor last
-Builder and alchemist continue making lumber right off the walls. make bots for the walls asap.
-when engineer is working on vendor builder sets up 3 squares of regular sized mills for level 6s. make 4 bots and set them on a hotkey.
-bulder and alchemist start using the new shrink zone when finished
- teleport engineer to the center of a lvl 6 square, hold shift. right click each unfinished mill in the square, and shift-que in a repair in the middle, then shift que in a teleport to the next square. repeat for each. you wont have to touch engineer again until all 3 are finished.
-less stressful rotation begins: builder finishes a line of mills, alchemist transmutes and sets them, builder starts a new line, move the hotkeyed bots to help the next mill engineer is working on, upgrades in command center, walls, repair, team, repeat. prioritize upgrading mills in the level 6 squares.. but dont forget the tiny ones.
- when level 6 mills are all constructed engineer sets off to make bookshelves (can use the same bots to speed this up)
- when bookshelves are done make 4 more command center and hotkey them for your kill method (units, tower, both?)
- when all 3 sets of level 6 mills are fully upgraded and combine, transmute them and put them in the lumberyard *all at the same time to benefit from the lumber they make in the meantime* and press the lumberyard arrow button to consume them. Your builder will now make level 4 mills without upgrading!
if youve stayed vigilant and fast in your rotation surviving in Mad should be easy.
about 10-15 minutes to the end you should have all book upgrades on walls, repairs, and aura statues (buy and spend gold as needed to get this done, armor statue first and fast.) and a brigadier general. When you make the merc tent for this isnt important, perhaps in the huge amount of time when engineer has nothing left to do except cogs your builder.
and you can start buying/setting tiny towers or weapons like ice piercer/super larceny for your captain/hero.
if you stay vigilant the rest of the game upgrading defense/offense it will be GG.
