most Android projects these days use gradle. install it via your favourite package manager, and if the project is well-configured a simple 'gradle build' will do the trick. at the worst you might need to download the latest Android SDK, point some environment vars, and do a basic fetch of the most recent build tools.

android is rather cli friendly - a full 50% of the devs I know use vim or emacs.

I don't have any tricks to share. Just build the app with the command-line tool, and the included android.el will do the debugging integration for you.