I will make a full guide eventually, but there’s not a lot to this at all. In fact, if you have 10+ free technologies, you can just fight and/or negotiate your way through the maps as you wish, order isn’t important and you will get all the quests regardless. The story quest will often jump multiple provinces ahead - don’t worry if this happens, it’s expected.

If you have 9 or fewer free technologies, I recommend checking out UBERhelp1’s guide on the US Forum:

• https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/higher-age-units-guide-v2-13.37109/#post-325315

In this guide there is a “combination strategy”, which saves 1 technology by negotiating and fighting a few specific provinces in AF.

If you are interested, you can find the shortest path of all continent maps here, thanks to NoVa: https://imgur.com/a/yaSTO1G

For AF, you need to take all provinces for story quests, so you can’t skip any. For OF, you can leave “Walled Gulf” in the bottom-left of the first OF part (bottom in first OF image), but you need to take all in part 2 (top in first OF image) and 3 (right in second OF image). Part 4 and 5 are not required for higher age units, you are tech blocked during part 3, so for those and maps above you could go for shortest path if you want.