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I guess I use scripts for everything I do in regards to troop movements, resource movements.
But to answer your question.
Defense Related:
[spoil]If it's a close range troop coming, I open up the combined overview, hit a sort script to sort them to the village in question, then run another script to pull up travel times to that co-ord, which you can enter a time away to highlight those times green/red depending if they can make it or not, or black if you omit a travel time. (see spoiler)
[spoil]
Done with 6:00 hours as the time out for the attacks[/spoil]
If I have a pile of trains longer range, I dump my troops into my excel multi planner I wrote, I run a couple of macros to give me lists of defensive, offensive, scout, noble villages (Can use it for planning attacks or defense). Then I can generally find troops immediately to put in front of the trains so I can enjoy my day, using my planner.
[/spoil]
As for your question on resources for a noble, I'm on a packet world, have been for 2 years, so that's never an issue, however when I do need resources for a farm, the naming convention of my villages puts them close together in my lists so I just need to flip to the next couple of villages, or back a couple, and I'll have all the resources I need generally under 12 minutes.
Some things I think are better done with scripts, and some screens if you put too much information on them will just make them too complex for the regular user to understand.
I would love to see something implemented in regards to defense, personally I think one of the biggest failings on players in various communities is their lack of will to defend, because they think it's impossible, when the reality is, it's far from that, defending is one of the easiest things in the game.
If I were to suggest an implementation on the troops side, instead of cluttering up a rally point further, I'd put it right on the combined overview.
Sort/Compare to Co-Ord ( ) <-- player enters a co-ord, and the list will sort closest to furthest from that co-ord, and troop times will populate under each village.
Enter landing time ( ) <-- player enters the landing time, and it will color the ones that can make that landing time in green. (red is overkill for not making it, can really leave those in black and save on recolor times on the screen.).
And on top of that, you could put a little button on incoming attacks, that will open up the combined overview, and populate these two fields with the information from the attack, to make it very easy for users when defending.