I have two suggestions that are similar, so decided to put them in one post.
First, how about a sound when the timer finishes, to help alert us it is time for the next action. All too often I forget to look and see the timer has finished an hour ago,and I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem. And put it in with the ambient sounds, not with the musical sounds, many of us have that shut off.
Second, when we have less than a week prem time or the village has less than 30 days upkeep, how about a message that repeats every 20-30 minutes, instead of just once when you log in. The message often gets lost in the other messages and we don't see it. With a repeating message like the ones for ingame issues, we get more chances to see there is a problem with our village or accounts.