🚀 go-pugleaf

>Well, I am about to give up on this one. 

Don't.  It isn't really any harder than the original.  Every single mission can
be decided the same way:

Move fast early.

I got into the habit of always sending all my troops on pressed march out all
over the map and finding where stuff is and what happens where, and if I got
into trouble, I'd resign and redo the mission based on that knowledge.  Most
missions that was the only time I had to restart (there were a couple that were
pretty tough, towards the end).

Get some settlers out fast, get some zombie regiments (if playing the Ceyah
campaign) out fast - 2 units of zombies can take any independent city, and lots
of zombies means lots of fluff to slow enemy troops down in the midgame, for
practically no cost.

Move fast in the beginning, get your economy set up, and most of the missions
are a breeze ... Vulgari in the Dreadlands was the toughest one for me, it took
several retries to figure out that trying to build a wall of outposts behind
which I could build up just wasn't going to work.