Prophesy of Pendor - Struggling with army composition and other things

I’m fairly new to PoP and I’ve been doing a bit of digging on the wiki to figure things out. I’m still fairly early game I believe? I have decent gear, the hideout built, around 100-150k denars, quite a few enterprises in many different cities, and 10-12 ish Noldor troops (2 of which are the twilight dudes) stored away in the hideout. The wiki told me to store all my high tier troops away in the hideout for further use, so I’ve been running around building up what I think are decent troops (Ravenstern Rangers, the green huscarls, etc.) and storing them away.

My question though is what troops should I really be focusing on? Also, what knight order should I join if I plan to befriend the Noldor? I was planning on joining those Carion dudes till I found out they hate the Noldor.

On a side note, I’m also a little confused on what I should be working up towards. I have been working to build renown to join a KO (which I now have), but other than that all I’ve really been doing is trying to build Noldor rep. I think I should probably become a vassal soon but I’m little concerned on which faction to join because I want Ethos and Laria eventually, but I currently have a very high rep with Empire.