if you have no military buildings where do you get your army - is it a combination of GE & rogue hideout?
Yes. Essentially, you can fight with one or two unattached, specialized units, and the rest Rogues. Rogues can fight in all positions, so one Rogue Hideout can replace multiple types of other military buildings; you won't need duplicate military buildings, and with enough unattached, you won't need any. You protect the unattached units, and fight mainly with Rogues. They can handle one extra hit, and untransformed Rogues draw fire from the transformed ones. Move damaged Rogues out of range, to keep them alive; several units from a building can heal simultaneously, but a building can only recruit one at a time. One point away from death takes nearly as long to heal as recruitment takes, but is still much better than having to recruit. Rogues take a long time to recruit/heal, but, with low enough losses, and several Hideouts, that's manageable.
Even so, it's not unlikely that your neighbor uses some diamonds to heal/revive units, especially the most valuable unattached ones.
Odds are that your neighbor also has units from the next age; you can acquire one age higher units through quests. Combined with Rogues, they can really make way in the GE. If he also has the higher age tower, he's competing on that, and likely to win that tournament. It explains why he didn't do more than fifteen IA fights. Higher age units are hard to come by; almost certainly he's using diamonds on occasion, to keep them alive, and possibly doesn't use these units at all, when he doesn't have enough diamonds to revive them, in case "disaster" strikes. Depending on how many Hideouts he has, he has probably opened the expansion slots, which requires diamonds. This doesn't necessarily mean that he spends money; diamonds can be won in events, quests, some buildings, and on the higher GE levels.
Obviously, higher age troops are ideal for defence, along with other unattached units, as you don't risk losing them in defence. Just make sure to never use more than two Rogues in defence; skilled attackers will know how to get around them.
there perhaps comes a time when medals needed versus weekly PvP allowance is maybe not worth it anymore.
You can't stay in an age forever. Well, if you're stubborn enough, I guess you can, but it defies the purpose of the game. At some point, you should move ahead. Just make sure you're prepared. You want to have the necessary GBs at their necessary levels, along with enough space for new buildings. This goes, whether you're fighting in the neighborhood, GE, or GvG.
1) not advancing the continent map other than when quest like may day asks for it - eventually though a time would come when the goods were not owned for early middle age maps and level up needed if prize worth it.
Advance on the map, but make sure not to overdo it. Always feel confident that you have the combined strength and skill to conquer the next three provinces, even if you haven't scouted them all. Ideally, time your advancement with quests, but not exclusively. You should always have the goods deposits for your age.
2) Collecting bps for great buildings and not building them until feel like enough medals have been gained - not sure what that number would be, i am close to 200 medals but collecting 5000 medals at iron age could get tedious.
Some GBs will save you space. Babel and LoA are examples of that. Others are plain necessary, especially if you do a lot of fighting, such as Zeus.
3) Deleting buildings: i have a few happiness buildings quests told me to build
In quests, either build what you need anyway, or build the very cheapest option to satisfy the requirements (reward buildings being the cheapest of all). That way, you'll either not need to delete them, or doing so will be cheap. Abort quests that will cost more than the reward. Never abort quests with unknown rewards; these may be lousy, but are also where the really good rewards are.
Generally speaking, you should replace all buildings with more efficient ones, as soon as you're able. The buildings will quickly pay for themselves; if they don't, that's a sign that you're advancing to quickly. Exactly what buildings are more efficient for you, depends on your style and strategy. For instance, if you log on infrequently, long production time for residentials is more efficient. If you don't have the goods deposit for a goods building, a building from the previous age, for which you have the deposit, is more efficient.
However, don't delete a building that you're not ready to replace. The exceptions are decorations, which can steal polishing from larger cultural buildings, and surplus residentials, if you can't reach enthusiasm in any other way.
i was hoping to stock pile goods and then sell the buildings - i can count out what is needed for continent maps, future researches - but other areas like seasonal quest demands or GE negotiations, possible donating to guild make it hard to set a target?
You should always have some production buildings, and always produce more than your immediate need. For one thing, it's cheaper to produce at a steady pace, as you'll build fewer buildings, and delete fewer. Trade for goods that you don't have the deposit for, to make sure you have a stockpile of all goods, from all ages.
I have a few hammers buildings, an absolute ton of cottages
You need a balance, here. Don't have more residentials than necessary to crew other buildings and earn enough coins. At the same time, have enough supply production buildings to almost keep up with the coin production;
almost is good enough, as you will occasionally spend coin on FPs. Make enough coins and supplies that buildings for quests will always be affordable, and stockpiles increase; by the time you advance an age, you should have enough to replace outdated buildings immediately.
2 bronze age military buildings (so i can compete on bronze age tower - in GE i do as many level 1 fights with BA units and then use them again on those that defend with 2 spearmen)
You'll need a Rogue Hideout; having duplicate buildings will be unnecessary, and the extra firepower and resilience of the Rogues will mean that one unit type will be enough.
I am considering deleting the zen zone - no other parts of set, it makes 300 gold a day and i don't need gold with all my houses i am drowning in gold.
Don't delete it. There are indications that the Cherry Garden set will be made available again, even before the next Spring Event. If you have a "Store Building", use it. If you get two more unique Cherry Garden buildings, it'll be worth it, if you get the full set, it'll
really be worth it. It's a splendid set.
Today's solution was to negotiate - a few goods etc is probably worth it for chance to win bps etc. Maybe that is the better solution for all the harder fights (though today lots of battles but mostly won junk goods)
It's a cost/benefit calculation. If you're fairly sure you'll lose, or that victory will be excessively expensive, then negotiate. Sometimes you won't have the right unit types for the battle, sometimes you don't have enough boosts, sometimes there will be an opposing army that you haven't yet figured out how to defeat without great losses, sometimes there will be a terrain that you don't yet master. In the last two cases, you should try, if you have the troops to spare; it's how you learn. If you don't have troops to spare, negotiate. It even pays in the PvP contest; negotiating past a difficult encounter can gain you several victories in the next few.
It is tempting to delete a lot of buildings to see if that helps get an easier neighbourhood
It won't. The difficulty is decided by your age and technology, not your ranking, and not by your GBs. At the higher ages, they intend for players to have high level GBs, and therefore they increase the difficulty; they do that for all players in that age, including the ones who don't have high level GBs. This is intentional; they penalize poor strategy. Underdeveloped GBs will eventually make the game essentially unplayable.
I can see that GB adds a lot of power but if the main focus was not so much PvP as GE it could make a lot of difference - however you say that the strength of enemy units gets scaled in line with your power so maybe the Zeus attack boost would be negated and only relevant in pvp?
As I wrote above, the enemy strength is determined by your age and technology, rather than your total strength. It's not influenced at all by your GBs. Boosts are always an advantage. Great Buildings are at the core of the game, and everything is designed to make them advantageous. Some have purposes that won't suit your strategy, but the ones that do, will be a great help. That's especially true for the offensive GBs.
If you played like me, my advice would be to bring your Zeus to around level five, then get either CdM or CoA, bring it to the same level, then get the last one. By CA, you should be working on the last one. You won't regret a single FP put into them, nor a single tile occupied by them. It does require space, though; if you don't have that, the alternative is to level higher the GBs you have. It's a matter of a balanced strategy, in this case a balance between tiles and FPs. Level five for three buildings costs more tiles and fewer FPs than level seven to eight for two buildings. Whichever you're shorter on is the one you should save. Remember to take the time to bring up some other GBs, as well, especially ToR.