Is there a map before Hex Earth, somewhere in the middle of the super levels which is reasonably doable with good artifacts and a reasonable AP phase spend. [say with Phase 1 to 3, or with boosted hosptials and army cache.
What would be the easier one[s]
If so, what are they and any advice on how to finish them.

If you’re looking to leap frog there are 6 valid levels (starting with Plateau Assault then Rise of Rome, etc.)

In practice you essentially need to burn two IMs on any of these levels, even with Phase 4 advancements. All six have one IM power (except for Dodecahedron of Doom) so you can do each one twice and recover one or two of the two IMs you need to spend.

If you’re planning to do this multiple times, I think the priority list would therefore be:
1. Dodecahedron of Doom
2. Dodecahedron of Doom
3. Plateau Assault
4. Plateau Assault
5. Rise of Rome
…

**Full disclosure, I have played Plateau Assault twice and Rise of Rome once but have not ever opened any of these other levels.**

Most do Plateau Assault with some variation on what they spend on the "Can Skip Level" advancement (CSL). As a general rule of thumb, I would not touch the new levels w/o an insane ACacheB artifact or a combination of army cache advancement + artifact that gives a similar %.

Plateau Assault is a small map (~212 territories) that can be done with a SAC > Clan request >IM granted that you have a 125%-150% AM and at least 64% army cache boost. You get 1 free IM per super (wzib) so at low super ascension counts you use that one here. Hex can be done trivially with 1 IM or with an insane IM arti. With certain combinations of insane artifacts, it can be done with just a legendary IM arti. This means you are at a break-even point of IM usage if you have a high rarity IM artifact and always get the free IM power.

I can do all levels except Thirty Years War and Hex Earth w/o an IM but that does not satisfy your condition of reasonably doable. What I would recommend is CSL @ 10 and do a variation of:

Tutorial > CCC > Old Town > Netherlands > Plateau > Hex
Tutorial > CCC > Scandi > Netherlands > Plateau > Hex
etc (I just tend to favor stages with hardened levels that I have done a lot, do whatever you find easier)

It does not matter which levels you do tbh but the Netherlands > Plateau > Hex jump should probably be constant. You should have probably intuitively noticed (there are old threads with numbers) that there is a noticeable difficulty spike after Netherlands therefore you are better off skipping from there to Plateau. With low +% AP you most likely have to do EH to be able to ascend to get AP efficiently but that only opens up "The Crusades" and "Siege of Pameromon" if you jump from EH. These two stages are easy (no IM) but the solution is non-trivial.

Unrelated, but I really dislike dodecahedron of doom >.>. I did all levels (tutorial to hex) a week or so ago, so I still have them fresh in my mind.

By reasonable I mean without having to wait overtly long for army camps to make up for a merc/cache shortfall or having to wait days to be able to craft something you actually need [6 or 7 hours fine, but when you have to wait for the mines to produce an alloy to use to craft something it's a bit much and yes I know about super mine

So I tried Plateau Assault.
I got all the AP stuff worth getting, including army cache and hospitals maxed out and even improved clan request.

Holy crap on a cracker. I grind to a halt almost immediately. Army camp too expensive to upgrade would take forever to get the armies to get anywhere.
I tried a SAC, FC clam request but it does little, as did IM the first came, some progress but it seems it would take a week or so to gather the armies from army camp income to actually get things moving... maybe.

I assume the rest of the mid post super levels are as bad. If so it seems pointless to bother trying for Hex Earth if you can't 10X a skip level. The time you spend, you would get further by normal scending and hitting the hardened levels and rinse lather repeat.

Or am I missing something, I could very well be special needs.