That's exactly what we doing each day on Call of War...we research, produce and construct and invade countries, doing the things that would enable us to play the game.
Tips I can give you are:
1)Read the in-game unit description, it will tell you what that unit is and what you can use it for and for which terrain.It will also show the attack and defense strength against enemy units.
2)Learn and understand the doctrines.
3) Google the Call of War wiki for additional information.
4) Observe the experienced players on how they do things in the game and take notes on what they say in the chats and forum.
6) Don't be scared to experiment, it's the only way you will learn first hand.
If you want to know what to research, produce and construct,it will be the things that you want to do.For example
If you want infantry then you research infantry, build a barracks and produce the infantry,the infantry needs resources,you construct the industries for those resources and so forth for every unit that you going to need/use.
Research only what you going to use not every single unit.
You will have to invade countries in order to progress on your map.
Find your own game plan.My way of doing things might not be appealing to you...
Some will start with construct unit building, research unit then build industry, produce unit.Others will say no build industry first.
My mistake I made in my first Axis doctrine game was, I started with built unit building and research,then I used my starting units to attack immediately,after research I produced units with the resources I had (not reading the doctrine that Axis units are more expensive than other doctrines), I could not build industry due to lack of resources and my starting units could not be replenished with fresh units.That was utterly dumb the way I did it

