Dorks! (Historical Allies)

One of the recent features Inno has been shoving down our throats, Historical Allies (hereafter referred to as dorks for brevity and to reflect my opinion of the feature) have now reached the point where they're hard to ignore, especially Rare dorks.  Every event main building has a room for one, and they represent a decent chunk of the building's potential value.

This is still a feature in progress that isn't as fleshed out as they plan (there's tabs marked coming soon), so I'll need to update this at points still.

Summary of dork "Power":

Rarity	Base Value	# of Stats	Total Value	~XP Cost
Common	10%	1.0	110%	6.2M
Uncommon	15%	2.0	230%	7.8M
Rare	25%	2.0-3.5	250%-438%	9.0M
Epic	35%	2.5	338%	15.5M

1 "Stat" = Generic Single-Color Sword or Shield or Venue-Specific Single-Color Sword and Shield.  Rares always have 3 stats, but often 1 or 2 of them are "half stats" (Venue-Specific Single-Color Sword or Shield)

There's 3 tiers of rare so far in terms of value:

• Ragnar Lodbrok and Freydis Eriksdottir have Generic Single Color Sword and Shield for a double stat plus 1 full stat plus 1 half stat for 3.5 Stats.
• Artemisia I, Pompey the Great, Septimia Zenobia, and Thermistocles have 2 full stats plus 1 half stat for 2.5 stats.
• Qin Shi Huang and Fu Hao have 1 full stat plus 2 half stat for 2 stats.

100% Gets added to the Base Value for each stat from the levelling process.

Some of the first dorks came with levels already in place, but new dorks arrive at level 1 and need to be levelled by Heroic Endeavours in the Heroic Taverne to unlock their full value.

There are 5 types of tasks with 20 entries each per week that reward 10 1k xp scrolls:

• Win a Battle with red stats (0 - 10000% boost opponent)
• Win a Battle with blue stats (0 - 10000% boost opponent)
• Pay FP (10 - 10k ; total = ~49k)
• Pay Medals (1k - 1m ; total = ~4.9m)
• Win a Negotiation (5 rounds, 10 options, 1 - 589 goods multiplier)

For each 5 tasks total you complete per week you're rewarded with an additional 100 1k xp scrolls and 5 fragments of an Epic dork.

Maximum earning per week is 3m xp of scrolls + 100/1000 fragments of the Epic dork, but it's likely that some of the tasks will either be too much for you (high boost opponents), or that you'll deem them not worth the cost (high FP payments or high multiplier goods negotiations).  Do what you feel is no big deal and wait for the next week to do more.  It'll take you 3 or more weeks to fully level a single dork in general.

When you've got some scrolls you can view the status of your dorks in the building next door:

In the level up tab for the dork you're interested in, hit the "use multiple scrolls to level up" button (there's no sense in using 1 scroll at a time):

Some general advice:

• Only level dorks you have rooms for.  The house symbol on the icons on the left of the overview mark which ones you currently have placed.
• Rare dorks generally provide the best value.  You should be willing to pay twice or more the cost of a common dork's level to level a rare one instead.
• Higher levels cost more.  If you have many dorks sitting in houses don't neglect grabbing a few cheap lower levels (generally level 25-30 on a common makes sense before level 100 on a rare as an example) on all of them before focusing on the ones that have the best value to you.
• Most dorks come from events.  Recent events have included the possibility to obtain 2 rares each event.  If you fail to complete a dork during an event options to finish them have been lacking (though Care for Tomorrow appears to be including an option in the shop to buy a few missing fragments for previous dorks).

There's really not much interesting about this feature yet, just boring free power with additional busywork.  But enough that it'd be silly to continue to neglect them.

Quantum Incursions for the Lazy or New Cities

As I'm considering a return to the game for a (possibly short) stint, I've been thinking on Quantum Incursions.  Specifically how even on many of my diamond mines it'd be really nice to get a prize or two to make GE more relaxing; yet even on my main I'll be contemplating how to do less of QI.  So the question is what is the least effort one can do and still get decent access to rewards in a timely manner.  Note that this is not an optimized approach if you want to try hard at the feature - rather it's based around "I don't really want to play it, but I would like some rewards for the least effort".

Prerequisites and General Strategy

So the starting point is going to be an assumption that you're in a solo guild with no QI support at all provided by your city.  The concept also can be adapted if you're in a guild that clears the bosses and gets you to the farming nodes (actually even easier then as you don't need to make goods or troops; just donate coins and supplies); but the in-between situation where you're in a guild that finishes the early donation nodes but doesn't open the farming nodes will be a struggle.

Because of the nature of QI, you're going to want to be online twice a day between 10 and 14 hours apart (between 11 and 13 hours apart being slightly preferred as that means the 1 hour build time on tailors is of no consequence).  This allows you 2 collections a day and, barring a whole lot of bonus AP production, an ability to always spend before you get capped.

You will be using 250 Quantum Shards per round for 2 expansions.  This only gives you 2 rounds per championship guaranteed (you start with 500 free QS), but should be sustainable if you're actually playing to the extent discussed here (which should make you ~400 Quantum Shards per round from random rewards alone - plus sometimes some from the pass).  You can use extra shards to open chests after the last round of the championship you decide to play.

You want to select archers or soldiers as one troop type (assumed archers going forward); and iron as one goods type as you ideally want a 3x3 or smaller building when you need to make stuff to donate.

When donating coins or supplies try to keep them roughly balanced - the city I'm recommending produces them roughly equally and you need equal amounts for goods and troops.  It should be ~13 coin donations to 4 supply donations, if you're following the plan exactly, because you start with many more coins than supplies.

Settlement Layout

Part of the requirement to be lazy is not changing your settlement layout too frequently.  Accordingly we'll be doing very little buildup, and a fixed road grid.

The 2nd tailor, marked by the yellow circle, you cannot afford immediately and can be replaced with 2 additional rooftile houses in the initial build.

The 4th butcher, marked by the green circle, will be replaced with your goods building or barracks when you need it and has room for 1 additional rooftile house in that configuration as long as it's 3x3 or smaller.

The two expansions can be any adjacent plots without an impediment, they don't need to be any specific spot.

When you collect you will need to sell down to 6 rooftile houses to get full enthusiasm (from 7 in the plot as is; could be 9 before you get your 2nd tailor; or 8 when you've got a goods building or barracks replacing the 4th butcher) but do not need to build any culture.  Just collect the extra rooftiles, sell them, collect the rest, rebuild the rooftiles.  If you don't like to do the sell and rebuild while collecting at all you can just stick to 6 roof-tiles (instead of 7-9) and have some additional wasted space and a few less coins and AP (you will want to donate supplies somewhat more often).

The Play

Donation amounts assume you start between 8am and 9am eastern and will be available shortly before or after midnight eastern to drain your AP bar at the end of a day or start of the new day.  In general the primary goal is to avoid capping your AP bar, but the amounts here are also intended to maximize your most efficient donation days (2,4).  If you need to do more at a moment or different stuff because of your situation do so - better to have spent early on a less efficient day than to have sat at cap because you couldn't be there when you were about to cap.  Fully spending your AP bar should give you 17 hours before you have to spend again.

• Day 1, as soon as possible, construct your settlement with 1 tailor, and all 4 butchers from the above layout.  Include 2 rooftile houses in place of the missing tailor.  Donate 17 sets of goods (finish the first node) and 7 sets of troops.
• Day 1, collection 1, collect 3 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, build 2nd tailor, and rebuild 1 rooftile house.  
• Day 2, after reset: Donate 17 sets of goods and 10 sets of troops
• Day 2, collection 1: collect 1 rooftile house, sell it, collect everything else, rebuild 1 rooftile house.  Donate 7 sets of troops and 2 sets of coins.
• Day 2, collection 2: collect 1 rooftile house, sell it, collect everything else, sell marked butcher, build iron foundry, build 2 rooftile houses.
• Day 2, before reset: Donate 15 sets of coins or supplies and 13 sets of troops. 
• Day 3, collection 1: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Make 80 iron.  Sell iron foundry, build archery range.  Donate 9 sets of goods. 
• Day 3, collection 2: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses. Make 32 archers.  Sell archery range and rebuild iron foundry.
• Day 4, after reset: Donate 17 sets of goods and 8 sets of troops.
• Day 4, collection 1: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Donate 9 sets of troops and 8 sets of coins or supplies.  
• Day 4, collection 2: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Make 60 iron.
• Day 4, before reset: Donate 9 sets of coins or supplies, and 14 sets of goods.
• Day 5+, every collection: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Make as many multiples of 20 iron as you can.  Donate all you can.  You will be wasting AP on these days because you don't have enough coin and supply production to fully donate.

Expected Results

Average expectation is 631 fragments per round of the 2 seasonal rewards and the selection kit for old rewards.  This means a bit less than 2 seasons should, on average, get you a level of each of those from random rewards.

You should also get ~2700 progress per round on the pass.  Which means ~3 rounds to get 2000 fragments of the selection kit for old rewards from that using the current pass.

To the extent that one of the old rewards is your goal, 3-4 rounds (=6-8 weeks) should get you 2 level 2s of whatever it is you were hoping for - one from pass and one from random rewards.

Further Optimisation

If you're looking to put in just a little additional effort, some small changes while keeping the core of the lazy approach are possible:

• If you can get enough main city support to build one out of the gate, 1 Goat Farm replaces *all* of the supply producers in the above layout.  Or 1 Arch replaces *all* of the culture.  This would be a slightly different grid but can save you expansions or enable you to build more production so you can do more on later days.  You can come up with a bigger plan based around what you can afford from your main city support.
• Fighting is cheaper when it works and if you can autobattle it's not that much additional effort.  Especially on day 1, fighting can be nearly "free" (no troops lost) with 8 ballista or 6 ballista and 2 archers.  If you have some boost to your QI troops from your main city it can last for more days.  This means additional coins and supplies saved for later days.  It is more clicking though compared to "check the max box and donate all".  If doing this you may wish to work to replace 1 of the culture with an arch so that you don't need to sell rooftile houses.  and upgrade 1-2 of the rooftile houses to better houses so you can have both archer and iron production available when the fighting days end as you'll have some extra coins and supplies to donate troops too.
• If day 11+12 aren't too useful to your guild (which if you're in a solo guild = up to you), you can start day 1 after midnight eastern and have a full 24 hours for day 1 instead of 16 hours. And 8 hours for day 11 (no day 12).  The expected difference in the above strategy is ~17 fragments less and ~60 progress more for starting at midnight on the first day instead of 8 am.  It could have more of an advantage if you fight on early days.

You will need to adapt the timing and amounts of goods and troops produced to match your optimisations.

Ugh! Harbors...

Recently a number of my worlds have hit Arctic Future with the goal of nothing more than to get through it (and OF) as quickly as possible.  Obviously the primary obstacle is Promethium and Orichalcum.

Way back when Arctic Future was new, I had settled on "just use +Promethium" as my arctic strategy and copied it forward to Oceanic Future when that released.  Worlds I've done since have largely copied it but weren't in a rush.  And I still wholeheartedly recommend just +Ore for a lazy world that may not collect on time.  Even if -time was better in theory, failure to collect it on time would pull +Ore back ahead.

But what if you were willing to set timers and get on at crazy times.  Can -time be better?  One of the properties of -time is it gets increasing returns the more you stack (to the cap of 7 hour trips).  Going from 24 hours to 20 hours is 20% better.  Going from 20 hours to 16 hours is 25% better.  It's also for the same reason better with a fully upgraded harbor and base trip time of 17-18 hours instead of 24 hours.  By contrast +ore is %-wise less incrementally effective the more you get.  going from 65 to 80 ore is ~23% better.  Going from 80 to 95 ore is ~19% better.

But bear that in mind, just how good can each strategy get.  Let's start with Arctic Future:

With maximum upgrade crew:

Time Crew	Time	Promethium
Steersperson Tsani	-180m
Navigator Avril	-144m	+4
Navigator Zhon	-121m	+5
Steward Bryce	-90m		28% Time Boost
Trip Yield	7.0h	74	10.6 / h

Promethium Crew	Time	Promethium
Storesperson Maddox		+24
Miner Pikatthi	-39m	+17
Sailor Elise	-33m	+15
Quartermaster Mediha		+11	47% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	16.6h	158	9.5 / h

So time *is* capable of out-producing +promethium when fully upgraded and with extra attention, but the catch here is that you're not likely to hit max crew before you no longer care about promethium.  It takes 154 trips to get a member to level 10 in Arctic.  And you're probably not there much more than two months tops.  

In general early on time crew will level about 50% faster than promethium crew due to more trips.  We'll compare Level 4 Promethium (24 trips) vs Level 5 Time (38 trips) as somewhat indicative of where you might expect to be at the 1 month mark.

L5 Time Crew	Time	Promethium
Steersperson Tsani	-123m
Navigator Avril	-80m	+1
Navigator Zhon	-89m
Steward Bryce	-50m		18% Time Boost
Trip Yield	11.4h	66	5.8 / h

L4 Promethium Crew	Time	Promethium
Storesperson Maddox		+14
Miner Pikatthi	+4m	+9
Miner Bobby	+8m	+9
Quartermaster Mediha		+5	29% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	18.2h	111	6.1 / h

While Time Crew isn't *that* far behind in production at the 1 month milestone, it is much worse at the start, with an un-upgraded harbor:

L1 Time Crew	Time	Promethium
Steersperson Tsani	-91m
Navigator Avril	-50m	-4
Navigator Zhon	-70m	-5
Trip Yield	20.5h	41	2.0 / h

L1 Promethium Crew	Time	Promethium
Storesperson Maddox		+10
Miner Pikatthi	+50	+6
Miner Bobby	+75	+7
Trip Yield	26.1h	73	2.8 / h

As such my recommendation for Arctic Future in a practical sense, is to focus on +promethium, and only take -time if it's enough to move the collection time to a more convenient spot or if the crew members you want are not available.  The storesperson and miners are your main crew, but other crew members that have +promethium are good subs.  All those words to circle back to "just take +promethium" :)

Oceanic Future is a different story.  They made the time crew members in general much stronger in OF.  In fact they're so strong there's multiple configurations that hit the "minimum trip time" cap and allow you to include a member for other considerations.

Balanced Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Electrician Stan	-495m
Officer Deklan	-70m	+15
Officer Zia	-30m	+18
Reactor Walter		+28
Trip Yield	7.1h	129	18.2 / h

Just Ori Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Reactor Controller Alize		+22
Reactor Walter		+28
Officer Zia	-30m	+18
Auxiliary Eun			50% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	16.5h	170	10.3 / h

Excellent value from Electrician Stan who cuts *over 8 hours* off by himself and causes the time-optimized crew to make close to 80% more per hour!  Without him you probably want at least two time-primaries instead of one of the ore payload characters.  You already get good gains from time with a level 4-5 crew (albeit with more time characters).

L5 Balanced Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Electrician Stan	-260m
Sonar Tech Kali	-285m	-6
Electrician Yara	-165m
Reactor Walter		+17
Trip Yield	7h	79	11.3 / h

L4 Just Ori Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Reactor Controller Alize		+11
Reactor Walter		+15
Officer Zia	-20m	+9
Auxiliary Eun			27% Ore Boost
Trip Yield	16.7h	112	6.7 / h

A time-focused crew has already pulled way ahead with somewhat levelled crew.  It's already surpassed the level 10 Just Ori crew.  A teeny tiny bit of bad news though is that they don't fare so well at level 1 with an un-upgraded Oceanic Terminal.  

L1 Time Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Sonar Tech Kali	-265m	-8
Sonar Tech Iggy	-90m
Electrician Yara	-110m
Trip Yield	16.3h	42	2.6 / h

L1 Just Ori Crew	Time	Orichalcum
Reactor Controller Alize		+8
Officer Zia	-15m	+6
Yeoman Skye	+40m	+7
Trip Yield	24.4h	71	2.9 / h

It is however not dramatically behind, and as we've seen it'll surpass it pretty quickly with harbor and crew upgrades.  In terms of which time crew members to focus on:

Electrician Stan is the strongest of the time crew at high levels but starts out rather average.  You should try to include him to get him experience whenever possible.

Sonar Tech Kali starts as the largest time savings at a cost of a decent chunk of your orichalcum per trip, but makes your other time investments better at that time.  She doesn't improve very fast with levels however.  She will nevertheless offer the 2nd highest time savings at level 10 and the orichalcum penalty will not be so significant by then either.

Sonar Tech Iggy, Electrician Yara, and Digit Rosa are all medium-strong time members with average levelling progress.  You'll use them a lot earlier when your other time members need more help, but later a couple of them (or one of them and Kali) will be the backup plan if Stan doesn't show up for you to pick.

Officers Deklan and Zia aren't the strongest time members but are great orichalcum payoffs in combination with stronger time members while still being able to help cutoff some of the last hour or so.  Deklan cuts off a bit more time while Zia adds a bit more orichalcum.

Navigation Hailey is not worth considering.  Any crew where she'd theoretically surpass other options is already at minimum trip time.

Note that once you have your time assistance somewhat levelled it may occasionally be worth including good orichalcum increases over some of them if the collection time with a full-time-boost is inconvenient and you won't take advantage of the savings anyways.

Beta Space Race Update II

Ok, since I last posted on how my beta city was doing I've advanced to Future Era.  Halloween event was great for goods which enabled me to get moving forward, but in Tomorrow Era, supplies very much became the limiting factor now.  So I remodeled my city with as many TE supply buildings as I could and have been sending my spare FP to Lighthouse of Alexandria for now.  

I'm all set on goods up to TE now I think and am just waiting to make enough FE goods and supplies to advance to the Arctic Harbor.  

I suspect it's now too late to make it to SAJM in time for Titan, but hope to be in VF+ at least, past the OF blockade.  In other news speaking of a space race I have another big post coming soon about what I'm doing in Dilmun, the new US server :)

Beta Space Race Update

 Ok so it's been a bit over a month since I started working on getting my beta city from PE towards the space ages.  I've had some busy weeks recently and failed to login anywhere close to daily, so I'm falling behind a bit.  I just moved into Contemporary today (so 2 ages forward since last post where I'd just moved to Modern).

Goods have been the main limiter as expected - perhaps even more so than expected.  I'm short on almost everything in terms of PE+ goods, but do have a solid production of most of them.

It's not impossible to get back on track, but I'm going to have to pick up my login frequency.

Beta Space Race Project

Like many, I've historically only played Beta for a sneak-peek at features before they affect live.  One glaring shortcoming of this being one of the things I always want to test most, new ages, has been out of reach because I haven't put the time in to get anywhere close.  I'm going to try over the next 9ish months to fix that - which sounds like an interesting challenge.

My starting point isn't exactly from scratch but it's not a monster city either with the trappings of current optimized gameplay.  No Arc, No Traz, CF is only level 10.  Only settlement GP is a level 4 Ygg Tree.  I'm not guaranteeing any of that will stay that way - but if I opt to improve such things, it will be with mind to making the rest of the journey either shorter or easier overall.  I am not trying to make a monster city, just to get to the end era to test next era.

I do have 540/456 Boost from various events that were running at times when I wanted to test something on beta (which may or may not have been the event itself).  Probably ~200 FP a day in collections.

I moved from PE to ME today - I was in industrial not too long ago, and have not built up much for goods from PE, but I do have 5 PE eagle mountains from last wildlife event and renovated 5 stage of ages to ME.  I reno-ed other older event buildings to ME to produce ME goods.  I expect goods to be the biggest challenge to me blitzing the ages.  

Features, and my intended use of them:

• Events - Probably the most important aspect to getting things off the ground is improving my event buildings.  Similar to a new city, pretty much any event has to be considered a good event, even if the prize isn't perfect - because it's competing with either empty space, or prizes so old that any modern prize is an upgrade.
• GE - I should be able to handle diff 4 without issues.  And it's a significant source of goods, so it'll be a priority.
• Settlements - We'll see....  I'm going to be treating beta as "usually-once-a-day" still as opposed to my live worlds - and settlements are pretty slow at that pace.  But I probably should do something in them, even if it's slow.
• GBG - probably a little now and then time permitting.  But it'll be in my 1-man guild with a city that isn't really built for it.  So likely top out at gold.
• Arena - have signed up again to it.  Easy rewards.

So, my hopeful stages/timeline

1. The race to Arctic + Oceanic Future - Hope to be done this in 1-2 months, because getting the harbor and terminal operational as soon as possible is a huge priority if I'm going to make it into the space ages anywhere close to Titan's release.  200 FP/day is way more than enough for this phase, and I'll likely be blocked by goods frequently, so I will have a little ability to work on GBs somewhat still.  I'll be starting with Temple of Relics which I'd not built this far on beta because it's not like I GE-ed much here.  But it offers additional current goods as I move up.
2. The promethium/orichalcum grind.  I expect this will take 4 months at best.  ~1 month for AF and 3 months for OF.  
3. Higher ages - ~4 weeks each.  I hope.  I'll need a lot more FP and goods production by the time I reach this point - so hopefully I've kept up on events!

Understanding Obtaining FE+ Troops In Ages before Contemporary Era

This might be a bit of a long post, because there's a lot involved with how this works and rather than saying "just do this" I'm going to try and explain everything that's going on.

If a "just do this" post *is* what you want, look here: https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/higher-age-units-guide-v1-22.37109/

Ok so the process of getting these troops in Contemporary Era+ I've explained before and is relatively straightforward.  Save what you can for techs, and only progress the continent map and research tree when the story tells you you have to.  The reason you can't do this normally in PME or earlier is because of "hard tech blocks" that once they come up you cannot pass without progressing to the age in question.  At the end of each of the CE and PME continent maps there is one of these blocks.

So how do you get by these quests?  You have to stop them from appearing at all.  Starting in Contemporary Era the story occasionally "breaks" depending on your actions.  Story quests have prerequisites and if you've done something unexpected like fighting ahead on the map past where the next quest would be, it skips that quest - if later quests have that quest as a prerequisite, the story can disappear entirely.  This can be useful to get 3 recurring quests in an age that's not the last - but in this case it's going to be used to skip a "hard tech block".  By completing the last province of the CE continent and moving onto the next map while skipping the optional provinces not required before you advance the quests, it'll skip to Dictator's Death, and then the story will disappear.  Presumably "King of the Desert", the CE blocker quest, requires either you to have completed another CE quest that you skipped or to control the whole map.

So your story's gone, that's all well and good - but how do you get the FE troops then?  At various points, the story is eligible to return without you having completed prerequisite quests - just for being at the right spot on the continent map and not having a Story Quest.  We'll call these "resume points".  FE has a few of these.  So we're able to rejoin the story in time to get FE troops.

Now I mentioned that Postmodern Era also has a blocker, "The End of This Chapter".  I also didn't mention the story "breaking" before Contemporary Era.  So...  this one needs to be avoided via an anomaly in the PME story.  At one point near the end of the PME story, they want to give you a choice as to whether to cover up the actions of Colonel Lang or to tell the truth about what happened, "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Apparently in order to make it eligible to abort, they had to flag it as a Side Quest.  This allows "resume points" checking your quests to see that you don't have a Story Quest and as such let you pick up story from that point.  So the core point for getting them before Postmodern Era is to simply never complete or abort "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".

Ok so that's it for the extra complications in terms of quests...  But there is another detail to deal with - you do have to somehow manage to take all these continents!  To take ME through FE up to hover tanks by negotiation requires ~40k PE+ goods!  That's a lot of goods to purchase, so you might want to fight as much as possible.  

But for large segments of the map you'll be using units 1 or more eras out of date.  Accordingly you need significant amounts of boost.  The attack of units isn't much of a problem in my experience (i.e. if you have the 3 main attack buildings that should cover most of what you need to 2-shot enemy units), but given the awkward armies you're often using the defense of your attacking units is of paramount importance.  So in preparation for attempting this, you may wish to focus on stacking event buildings that offer defense for attacking army.  You will also need a source of a significant number of rogues.

To fight with rogues on continent map you need to move your "real unit" to the corner and keep it far enough away from enemy units that they don't pick it to attack.  Continent map does not prioritize rogues over non-rogues like the AI you're used to from GvG/GBG/Neighborhood battles.  But it does prioritize proximity to a large degree - so parking the real unit in the corner while you fling forward the rogues does often work.  Rapid Deployment units have a tendency to occasionally blast your real unit before you can move it.  And that's a big part of where the need for defense comes in.

Overall summary of process:

BA-LMA: 

• Skip some unnecessary techs - not crucial to reach Hover Tanks or if your target age is Progressive Era but the more you skip the easier it'll be to reach OF troops in Industrial.
• Try to build up rogues and defense bonus for attacking army.  
• Be as caught up as you can be on Story Quests before Colonial Age (you should get stuck on a quest requiring you to build Colonial buildings)

Colonial Age: 

• Carefully enter it researching a minimum of techs.
• Complete Industrial Story and as much of Progressive Story as you can until you get stuck (there's some quests requiring you to build Industrial or Progressive buildings).

Industrial Age+: 

• Continue carefully dealing with tech only as fast as you have to to complete story.  Extreme option is to win Police Stations from events, daily challenges, or expedition so you don't have to use up techs on researching them.
• Finish PE+ME story in whatever manner you prefer.
• Only negotiate with Che Guerrero when required to take one of his provinces in PME, don't take the other yet and don't fight any sectors inside.  This is necessary to receive the MG Teams that you'll be using to fight for the next while.
• Proceed with story as directed along the peninsula where you negotiated for a province from Che.  Fighting or Negotiating is fine with the other leader.
• Receive 5 MG Teams (and some commandos).
• After finishing the one side and being directed by story, conquer Che's other province by whatever means you prefer (you can fight him now if you prefer)
• Finish PME story up to "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Do not complete or abort this quest until you are done trying to get units above your age or are in Postmodern Era.
• Complete the Contemporary Era map without advancing story while not scouting the 2 optional provinces (in the north-west) that are unnecessary to get off the map (in the north-east).  Once you've scouted the first province of the TE map it is safe to advance story (possibly earlier, but if it doesn't work out you may not be able to get Hover Tanks til Contemporary Era) - it should just vanish for the time being.  Complete TE map as you please.
• TE story can be resumed at "Meet Miguel Mantos" immediately after scouting Rio Roxo - and possibly other spots.  Doing so may enable you to win troops useful to fight the rest of TE and FE continent with but may also require more techs.  If you wish to skip the entirety of TE story, you should do the same as CE and take only what you have to and get off the map before advancing story.
• Only negotiate with Joy Danba in the first province in Future Era.
• Upon finishing your negotiations for her entire province, FE story should be ready to resume telling you to scout the next provinces.
• Follow story as directed until you reach the point where you need to scout Kalabuye and Bisoraba (the two provinces adjacent to Botuku).
• Do not touch Kalabuye until Joy Danba has given you 3 Hover Tanks.
• Continue on with story as you please.  You will get 1 more Hover Tank and some assorted other troops.  Tech count permitting, you may continue following story until about halfway through the OF continent map winning a great deal of additional advanced troops.