Im attempting to attack on primary, but it says "you cannot attack while in protection!" (well, i did just start today.) anyone know how to disable that?

You must play 100 turns to leave protection. Anyone you grab before you/they have at least 3000 acres will cause you to die

spend those 100 turns on building 20-40 constr sites and farms (and maybe some indies to produce spies) and exploring when needed (1 turn at a time) and selling bushels on priv market (under purchases) when you need cash and when you are out of protection you should spend few days to grow before even thinking about attacking.

This is actually a really important point to make. Not only will you die but you also will be unable to learn to play this game, it will tear you up inside and make you depressed and probably ruin most of the relationships you have in real life.

Thus: Explore to 3k acres then probably explore to 12-20k acres and learn the game before you start attacking. :)

Your first goal should be about 1900 acres, then batch explore for 50-60 turns. Build all empty land then batch explore with as many turns as possible.

I would suggest learning the game as a fascist, republic or democracy farmer.

Next bridge is to learn how important technology is

if he wants to attack straight away w/o learning game then let him do it even if (actually when) it ends on losing his country. its his choice if he wants to learn this game or not.

i agree with you two that he should first learn how to play (set or more) and then start attacking (grabbing land).

Some good advice here.