People come into the village faster when your happiness is higher. A cheap trick you can use, is to decrease the tax rate all the way into the best possible bribe, and guys will come in really fast. Do this about 30 seconds before the next guy, and if you get it high enough, you might get like 3 or 4 guys at once. Then set it back right after.
Tip: Make sure to train up Arts, Decoration, and Entertainment as high as you can at all times. It's essentially free honor.
You get 3 research points to spend on skills/research/etc every time you level up. You can also spend gold on them, but if you plan on doing that a lot, in the long run it's good to train up philosophy to make the research points cheaper. I haven't done this yet, since I bought RP to the point where the next one will cost over 4k gold, and haven't taken the time to train this skill yet.
I can send over some wood or stone or something if it'll help ya get going.
Also be sure to train up the food types so you don't have to build as many farm buildings.