Zero Reason

Village cards are only of use if you actually have cards that you can draw. It’s a common mistake to start buying Village cards only to use them to pull nothing useful.
Buy a couple of decent other cards first, then use a village cards to help get them into your hand.
A village card shouldn’t be the first card you buy.

Lugging all the boxes for a game night is a bit unreasonable. So to get around it I start by using the randomizers to knock up a couple of game setups and just bring those cards in a series of card holders.
After these have been played we use the randomizers to setup the cards for the next game meet. That way people have a couple of weeks to think about the cards and it means I have more space in the bag o bring other games.

Personally I will buy the Short Sword as weapon of choice. Not only will it give you +4 in combat. It is also worth a chunk of gold when you visit the village.

Getting those tokens out of the box is a nightmare. But it you make up some small strips of paper and lay them inside the partitions it makes life easier. Just tape one end in and leave the other poking out a bit. Then pull up the loose end to raise up all the tokens in that section.
This alone has increased the playability of a great game.

This is a pretty heavy game, whenever I have taught it I have setup the game and played the first round. Give a rough explanation of what you can do and just try and get things played out.
Then reset the game and start from fresh. Its not so bad as long as the players have experienced all the options available to them.

Don’t forget that you can use the leaders cards to get gold or build part of your wonder. It’s very easy to get drawn into having to play them as leaders. Especially when you first try the expansion.
Just take check on whether the leader ability is actually helping you or not, if not then use it to build your wonder.