The computer "remembers" where the Peasant Mined or Harvested, and will generally place the Peasant out to the left or right of the Town Hall, up or down depending on where the mine is located (occasionally, if the mine is directly above or below the town hall, they'll pop out above or below the Town Hall). Here is the reason Peasants sometimes will come out of the town hall the wrong way:

The order remains the same as the pop-out order if the position is blocked, only flipped. What this means is that this is one example for the pop-out order:

This will be the order of the Peasants if the Mine is to the lower left or below the Town Hall. usually is to the left or right of the Town Hall, but not above or below it. What happens if the Town Hall is up against the left edge of the screen in this case? The Peasants will pop out at position 6 - opposite the direction of the mine! The most basic of solutions is to build your Town Hall without any major obstacles to its left or right. However, you can also apply a bit of analysis and wisdom to figure out the safest position for it.

[ Click to Enlarge - 67 KB ] When the Town Hall is this far from the mine you will need a lot of Peons to get a steady flow of Gold as seen here. This is very slow mining. Another Town Hall should be built closer to the mine.

What If Peons Pop Out the Wrong Side of the Mine?
Occasionally, the Peons decide to come out on the wrong side of the Mine away from the Town Hall depending on how the Town Hall is placed in relation to the Mine. When this happens, build some walls around the mine until they come out on the right side.

[ Click to Enlarge - 69 KB ] Because the left side of the Gold mine is blocked by trees, the Peons pop out on the far side. Proper map making should solve this problem.	[ Click to Enlarge - 71 KB ] If you insist on playing maps where this problem happens, build walls around the mine until the Peons pop out closer to the Town Hall. You can also chop away the Lumber to the left of the mine which will probably be faster and cheaper than building walls.

Use Buildings As Walls
Walls are cheap but they only have 50 hit points. Early on it was discovered that Buildings make much better walls. Buildings have more hit points, cover a greater area, can be repaired, and are useful. Farms in particular are often used as walls. One drawback of using Farms, however, is that they have 400 hit points which is exactly the damage done by Goblin Sappers. When using Farms as walls you must be careful to make multiple layers of Farms, or build actual walls in front of the Farms to make them less desirable as targets.

Learn how to Wallin Your Town

Walls
Farms replaced walls for defense, but walls are still useful. Build walls in front of buildings to protect them from Goblin Sapper attacks as seen here around Towers as shown here.

[ Click to Enlarge - 74 KB ] Use walls to spell out messages to your friends!

Avoid Placing Buildings In-between the Town Hall and Mine
Try not to place any buildings in between the Gold Mine and Town Hall. These buildings may interfere with the movement of Peons trying to mine Gold. If your Peons have to walk too far, or have to walk around some object to get from the Gold Mine to the Town Hall, you will get behind in resources. This is often enough to cost you the game. Keep the path between the Town Hall and the Gold Mine clear.

[ Click to Enlarge - 63 KB ] A Farm in the way cause the Peons to be confused as to how to return to the Great Hall.	[ Click to Enlarge - 61 KB ] A Second Farm build here fixes that problem.

[ Click to Enlarge - 61 KB ] Buildings in between your Town Hall and Gold Mine hurt yourself much more than the enemy attacking you. Although the Peons may still be able to find their way back to the Great Hall, they will take much longer to do so which will get you behind in production.

Keep Buildings Separated
To make it more difficult and less inviting for the enemy to use Demolition Squads to blow up your buildings, place them a Farm's distance apart so that the enemy will need 1-2 Demolition Squads per building to blow them up which will mean they will lose more resources on the Demolition Squads than you will have lost on the buildings.

When you place buildings tightly packed together they become perfect targets for a Blizzard or Death and Decay. Keep buildings separated so they do not become targets for Demolition Squads or Blizzards.

[ Click to Enlarge - 71 KB ] These buildings are about to fall to a Death & Decay.

Offensive Building
When attacking the enemy take units from the Barracks then send them to attack the enemy town. The closer the Barracks is to the enemy the faster these offensive units will reach the enemy town. If you have a long distance from the Barracks to the enemy town they will be able to build quite a few units before your units reach their town. Whenever possible send a Peon over near their town and hide some Barracks there so you can quickly build units and send them into the enemy town. Some players go so far as to build the Barracks in the middle of the enemy town. You must however get them completed and have enough units to protect them for this to effective. Sometimes you see a person building a Barracks near your town, head over and start attacking it and destroy it because the enemy has nothing to defend it. That offensive building did not pay off for them. Only do this when you can protect the Barracks or when you think you can hide the Barracks.

Hide Buildings
When the enemy looks for important basic and advanced buildings often they look at your main town for them. Sometimes you can hide advanced buildings such as Blacksmiths, Lumber Mills, Ogre mounds, Mage Towers, Dragon Mounds outside your town where the enemy will not notice and find them. Using this strategy you can sometimes make the enemy think you don't have these buildings and that you cannot build certain units. They might catch on however once they see units that require those buildings but do not find the buildings that allow those units to be made. Hiding buildings happens more when you have lost your main town and are defended but can also be seen in normal play as well. The downside of using this strategy is that once discovered you must defend these buildings which are usually a long way from your towns and Barracks.