The Tips and Tricks thread! How to reduce that micro and more!
Here are some tips:
1) Setting your "questing" squads that explore the dungeons to FOLLOW Baal command really makes it a lot easier. Just press TAB to select Baal and have him be the first into combat and your squads will be right behind you. Let him soak the initial hits since he has 500 life or so and if he gets low either drink a potion that you get from the special room OR just teleport him to saftey.
2) Create at least 1 squad and set it to PATROL. Patrolling squads will auto-attack ladders so all you have to do is enter management mode and teleport them near the ladder, you won't even have to zoom in this way. Wait for them to kill the ladder and then teleport them to the next if its not nearby.
3) To unlock the 4th squad you're gonna need to build 2 more Treasure rooms for a total of 3 of'em as you need 150 treasure and one treasure room only stores 50 treasure. This means you're gonna also need 1-2 additional storage rooms because a treasure room takes 150 materials WITHOUT the special rune that lowers building costs (Master Builder rune, lowers building costs by 25%) and one storage room only takes 50 (but you do start with 100 total storage) shrooms/materials. You can trade shrooms for materials at any storage room and you'll probs want to do that as shrooms are a lot easier to get.
4) Heroes always invade around 30 seconds after ladders appear but if you kill all the ladders then they'll always use the entrance. Teleport Baal as deep into the entrance as you can so he'll soak initial hero attacks. Then just teleport all your other squads to Baal and they'll decimate the poor heroes. Have Baal chug a potion or bail out via teleport if he gets low on life.
5) AFTER A HERO INVASION, FEEEEED! After an invasion of heroes is a perfect time to feed all your squads. I find that having 2 Kitchens is a must when you have 3-4 squads. Now then, once all your squads are fed, send the patroller squad on a raid for w/e resources you may need and then just teleport Baal back to the questing regions and his squads. Now just press tab to select Baal and move along - the squads set to follow Baal will be right behind him.
6) Once you can get a Dive you can have your workers play gamble in it for free. I set 2-3 free workers in the Dive and with that you'll get a free random unit about every 5 min or so... thats more than enough to keep constant replacements ready in case your questing squads loose a few. From the squad menu you can select those free units and send them to the training room to get level 2 and then once they are level 2 you can equip them with the armor/weapon upgrades - YOU CAN DO ALL THIS WITHOUT ever having to zoom to them and click them around - its all done via the squad menu, very, very handy.
7) While your squad limit is rather low your actual unit population is far higher and you should absolutely use every slot! While units that are not in squads are quite a bit harder to control in combat they make EXCELLENT patrols. Use your squads for raids, exploration and large hero killers, don't use them for patrols. Instead fill up your population cap and then place the extra units all around your base, in twos, and set them to patrol.
Whenever ladders appear you're almost guaranteed to have one or more patrols nearby that will quickly dispatch them; and if they don't, adjust your patrols accordingly. While you will still have to make sure to feed and upgrade/train these lose minions from time to time the benefits they provide far out weigh the extra bit of micro managing you have to do. The best part of this is that when a unit in your actual squad goes down you have a plethora of already summoned, and likely trained, minions ready to take his spot.
Using this method ladders will very rarely last long enough for hero's to spawn behind your lines and if they do there is likely a guardsmen nearby to grab their attention from your rooms.