for F2P, you should first decide which troop type you want to focus? infantry, cavalry or archer?

usually they would recommend F2P to focus on infantry

if you decide infantry, then focus all infantry commander, Richard is a must

and your first legendary should be Richard because he is very useful

you can pair richard with sun tzu until you get a better legendary commander to pair with him

2nd must have legendary will be YSG

for epic commander, if you want to try your luck on lohaar 3rd skill just go ahead, this is because sooner or later your epic commander will be all max skills and you will have thousand of epic heads which are useless

for legendary commander, general rule of thumb must max each skill before you upgrade star

some legendary can be use at 5111, some 5511 but there are also legendary that need to be 5555 or they will be pretty useless

dont bother to use general golden sculpture on julius caesar because no one use him for war, i only use him to increase my siege number to loot zeroed city 

yes, maybe in early game people use mixed troops because they dont have enough number of single type of troop

but in the latter game, all use single troop type, rarely people will use mixed troops in war

this is because use both commander that can boost your troop type is definitely better than others

baibar skill for movement speed buff only work after you leave battle for 10 seconds only, if u want fast speed all the time, you must use cavalry with belisarius + cao cao, then actively using the rss point to boost your movement speed (please check belisarius skills and talent must focus on those that increase movement speed)

do remember that both skills of 1st and 2nd commander and talent of 1st commander will work

talent of 2nd commander does not count

1. stop leveling eujli and baibars, concentrate on sun tzu, joan and boudica. as a f2p, u definitely cannot fight in open field because it will use a lot of resources.

2. for legendary, i recommend (actually MUST) to keep all your universal gold heads only for YSG. because YSG can deal circular AOE when expertise unlocked. Richard can be 5/5/1/1 or 5/1/1/1 and still be useful.

3. just upgrade lohar to max stars, but never use experience tomes on him. he will eventually max out the skills.
now early game normally, people do not have full single type army. so just use whatever troops u have.
sun tzu is the best epic, focus on him.

just directly max out sun tzu and boudica after u get their first skill maxed out.
the skills doesn't matter because at around day 100, most probably both of these commander skills maxed out. provided you used all the universal purple heads on them.
i maxed all my epic skills at day 240-ish.
also pick up, belisaurus + boudica + aethelfeld + markswoman + lohar, max their first skill, up their stars and take the reduce AP use talent.
u need 5 barbarian hunting marches if you are seriously wanting to be successful F2P player.

sun tzu = garrison + tanky + AOE
boudica = fort rally leader + barb hunter (40AP after talent) + huge single target nuke

joan is the supporting commander when u have 4-5 marches on the open field. just have joan casting her first skills that buff all nearby marches can make u fight evenly with those P2Ws if needed.
if the P2W never target your joan, you're doing good damage on them.
joan also good when u have to field multiple marches on karuak event, her buffs keep all your marches alive.

these 3 commanders are still being used, even though i am in day 400 now.

as a F2P, you will never be leading rallies against structures/objectives/gates or even cities.

for sun tzu, get his skill tree and infantry, garrison only abit will do.
you don't want your city to be attacked anyway.

in terms of fort rallying, yes boudica is better. lohar only have barbarian enhancement if compared to boudica, who can deal nuke, heal and crit.
lohar is good to make other commanders max level and for events which need survival outside cities for long periods of time.

i would recommend boudica + joan, lohar + sun tzu for better leveling experience.