Ok I followed some advice on forums regarding this one and managed to have a healthy economy when the 30 minutes counter started to roll. Oh boy…hordes of enemies quickly dispelled any illusion I might have harbored of ever beating this in moderate. As is usual with my threads in this forum, I will ask: maybe someone made a mistake and moderate is behaving exactly like hard? I do hope so because otherwise playing this thing in hard is akin to self harm. Not really much else to say except that the number of troops of the enemy is beyond ridiculous and the timer is a joke, I reckon at least one hour would be needed to clear the royal fighters since they are embedded in that ocean of troops. As it stands now it seems that campaigns are designed to be more like special challenges for those who find the game too easy in random map, a luxury of those who happen to sit on top of the intelligence scale, the MENSA members and the likes of them. Us mere mortals are not invited to this exclusive club. That is fine really, I was too naive to think that normal people are supposed to have fun with these campaigns, my bad, an incorrect assumption.
You are a bit overly dramatic, many campaings are challenging but doesn’t require you to be a “MENSA” member. I don’t consider myself a master in the game and I have beaten all the campaigns I have played and on Hard (i’ve played most of them already). The main principle of campaign is that AI cheats a lot but it is dumb, you can defend and bait them into chokepoints easily.
Just keep trying, read guides and tips about it and you’ll get it eventually, or change to another campaign or activity to relax and come back later. Stress makes you play worse