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lvl 22: It became inevitable to add one more lvl to rhino making it lvl 8. Used lightning support, but probably other type of maces are equally valid.

lvl 23: rhino + rabbit + turn undead. Lightning was here a little bit weaker, making me loos against the final wave.

lvl 24: the infamous level of The Duck. The Duck is told to eat / kill any of your troops as 1HKO, and therefor maxing rats is a must, as only them can you spam out faster than it eats, so only they can damage it.
But first you have to reach The Duck, and that is serious trouble on Hell. Only one type of unit is on this map, it is ranged, and hits insanely high. In theory you'll only need rats, rabbits and spells (lightning) for this, but telling so is easier than doing. The rats will all be massacred by the way, damage it delt by the archers and your spell as support.
Also in theory the other mace you should have is poison, used on TheDuck for DoT.

I'll let you know if I succeed.

lvl 3-24 Hell difficulty, The Duck:
Well, again turns out hearsay is not necessarily true, and what works on lower diff might not work on higher diff.
The solution is albeit a little slow, but work, and that's what counts on the end, especially that the 5:42 I did this level worth 3 stars.

So: get maxed archers, and lvl 13 tortoise, a lightning mace, and a poison mace (finally some use of this!).
Go ahead where the monsters come, and shoot down the first / first two thingy. If it is a BIG unit, restart.
When you start to reach back to your side, summon a turtle + archer combo. Preserve your mana until either your animals start to fall back, or - hopefully - the enemy starts to accumlate. Then release your charges. For this map it is important to have SOME manaregeneration and cheaper casting (I think I have 6 in manareg and 3 in cheaper, but not sure).
The majority of the level is about sending ahead enough turtles/tortoise to hold the horde, while accumlating enough attacking power that even monolith-heads don't cause too much trouble. No ,you won't heal your turtles, but yes, it is extremely important to have both the turtles and the bunnies in your aura. Biggest size aura is comfy.
Also keep lightning down hugh crowds before they kill your troops or make them fall back behind your archers, when you'll loose. I found ca. 3 rabbits after 1 turtle a good ratio.

When you settled at the cave, PRESERVE MANA! You won't really see how many enemy is in there, so you'll have to guess it. It is also crucial, or at least very worthwhile to electrocute the hugh wave when it happens!

HOW TO CAST LIGHTNING: Lightning seems to be attracted to groups of monsters, what is good. It also likes to hit what is closest to you, what is not that good now. It also likes to hit random groups, or the location with the highest amount of monsters, which makes it slightly unreliable, but that's not an issue now.
An important aspect though is, it seems to have some kind of "minimal range", meaning if you are close enough to a monster, it might pass it, and hit the group behind it. This is extremely important here, as you don't want to waste mana on the giant heads, but on the ranged units behind.

Than comes The Duck. The Duck does NOT eat any of your units as 1HKO! It only damages them! A good number of turtles will hold out for a very long time (some replacement is needed of course, ca. 1 turtle after 5 rabbit is a reasonable ratio).
Also: HIT THE DUCK WITH POISON! It is practicaly free damage, and at this point it is VERY cheap (for me it comes for 3 mana per shot). You can see if it is still effective by small poison-bubbles coming from the nom-nom. Recast when expires.
Try not to waste lightning on the duck/nom-nom, it not worth it, you are better off clearing the monsters behind it (raged units and all), although your archers should be in such a number, they can knock them out of their range most of the time.
EXTREME CAUTION: never let the duck hit you! That is instant death! (at least it was for me, who don't really have any incrise in Paladog's hp or dmg-reductionon 'im).

dark Cave (map 4) lvl 1:
The proven rhino + archer strategy still rules here. Unfortunately not works for the next mission, so I decided to stay here for a while and unlock the dragon on why-not basis. I gain here almost 15K old per run in reasonable time (the usual 3:30 in opposite the duck's 6 minutes).

my Paladog's current lvl: 59

I am farming:

I rose my rhinos one more (to lvl 9), and unlocked the penguin. The main point of the penguin is its rapid freezing ability, its damage is mostly secondary issue.
With 3-4 rhinos running the front, 4-5 rabbits shooting arrows, and 1 penguin doing its stuff, you can switch to the slower, but AoE monkeys to kill more. On lvl 1. On lvl 2 you'll need 2 penguins.

lvl 3:
maces: flame, freeze, turn undead
units: monkey, turtle, penguin
Hate to say this, but the freeze wand is not really good, and the turtle being the only melee-ok unit will likely have to be maxed or close.

Oh well, back to farming!

lvl 3 was done with lvl 15 turtle, lvl 10 monkey and lvl 1 penguin.
max sized aura seems a must, and the first wave will advance towards you a lot, so count with that.
The perfect scenario is if you can at least hold all your ranged units within your aura for buffs.
After the start store units, turn undead maces, and maybe flame maces holding for the wave, and spam the freeze maces.
Beware, that none of your unit is particularly fast, so plan releasing the tortoise accordingly!

grinding for gold:
I tried out a new way of grinding: go against map 2's final boss with turtles and archers. Always summon turtles when you can, and have just as many rabbits to keep up with the damage they cause. If you feel trouble (need to heal the turtles), call in 2 new rabbits. And yes, you have to have a healing mace for this. Wield 2 gold rings.
Takes a long time to win the level, but you end up a LOT of gold this way (20-30K). Ok, the exp is not that great, and you won't gain any items, but for gold-sake this is cool with minimal attention.

A note on exp-skill: as the only benefit for a level is a special ability, I don't see why anyone would take this skill if there is not some really disasterous choice, like haste to both paladog and the crew (happened with me once, so I actually have 1 point in the more-exp skill).

lvl 4-5: accumlate mana and spam out a dragon (lvl 1) and a penguin for start, than you decide. Rabbits are good support, just like an additional dragon (which you should have to ease the hurt on the first dragon).

lvl 6:haha, this level has a Guest Star! What you'll need is ranged units as the enemy again comes en-masse, so you better not get hurt (too much). This means dragons at the front supported with rabbits, monkeys and/or penguins. I found spamming archers is the least complicated.
From the second half of the map try rhinos, as they are fastest, so they can actually reach the front before the level ends.

SPOILER
the level has the kicker-boss from the second realm. It comes out at regular intervals. Not that much of an issue if you don't use rhinos.

lvl 7, 8: dragon-penguin-dragon-rabbit horde

lvl 9: purple

lvl 10-11: upp the drago once (it's the only acceptable cost, even to lvl 3 it'll cost 80K gold!), than do the same as for lvl 7-8.

lvl 12: now THIS is an interesting level to start with. Best raise your dragon to lvl 3 and penguin to lvl 2 for convenience-sake.
The strategy is pretty simple, but there are a couple of surprises everyone seems to forgot to mention, so here you go:
pretty regularly and in short intervals kicker-zombie-boss will appear. So at the start it isn't a surprise if you end up with a very mixed army, my favorite flavor being kangaroo. Yes, you hear right. The kicker arrives so soon, you need a lot of units fast which can do a punch, and thus kangaroo is valid.
Second surprise is, YOU have to dispose the boss! Your units won't notice or damage it (definitely not notice, some AoE might cause some damage, but who can notice in this fuss?).
So you HAVE TO bring these three maces: lightning, poison and food.
Food is to be able to start the level, poison to do a nice amount of cheap harm to the boss, and lightning for finishing off the boss.

Now an interesting thing about this level is, that as the boss is immortal (your troops won't kill it), but infinite amount of enemies DO arrive, you can camp here for farming purpose.

A note though: the boss uses Fist Mace which hits 3 units - including you if you don't have anything to cover you. So you'll need a continuous supply of troops for safety (you can't shoot spells backward). Those fists don't hurt THAT much, so kangoo, turtle, rhino are all valid covers.

lvl 13-14: easy levels which hint I should at the next occasion expand my food-pool one more further.

lvl 15:
maces: poison, lightning, meteor
units: rhino, turtle, penguin
All what comes are very hugh things, so I'll likely have to upp my units, but that'll be on another day, where I'll start with what level of stuff I won with.
Now just settle with the fact that my Paladog is lvl71 at the moment.

Ok, this is here already "another day". Well, I was just impatient and lucky.

for map 4 lvl 15 just too many things can go haywire. Like you only get poison mace. Or only get spells and turtles. You only get rhinos at the beginning. You don't get AoE maces.

So this level is just awfully designed.
Here is the BARE MINIMUM you'll need:
lvl 17 turtle
lvl 10 rhino
lvl 3 penguin.

Who says you can do it lower, lies.

As there is no useful ring here (if the cyclopses reach you you die, if the skeleton with the javelin reach you - it can hit from ca the edge of the widest aura - you die 1HKO), just equip two exp-ring.

So yes, those are the bare minimum. Anything less and your units will not have enough HP (in case of tortoise) or won't do enough damage (for the other two).
If you have them, you just need to draw the right stuff from the sack of random.

Oh, some additional tips:
- use the poison correctly! Wait until it wears off if there is no chance of casting on other unit, and really try to hit fresh units with it. This be tricky as poison only hits the first unit in its way. You might spam it though when a group is not going away soon and you're desperate, or you need space to accumlate better stuff.
- at all cost keep your penguins in your aura!

lvl 16-17: dragon + penguin combo. If you have like 3 dragon + 2 penguin running, you are guaranteed to win.

lvl 18: dragon + penguin, and when you're established add rabbits.

lvl 19-20: same

lvl 21: purple

lvl 22-23: same as before

lvl 24: the so-called special-ability of this boss is to freeze your units. It has as much, or even less effect than the witch's frog-spell. I expected a LOT more from this boss, but it couldn't even freeze all my dragons (like 5). Now what was its plan with my 1000 orcs, I mean rabbits?
Oh, in case someone gets lost, the start of the levels goes this way: dragon-penguin-penguin-dragon-whatever

Realm 5 (last realm) level 1:
A slight change. Here zounds of bombs incoming with occasional beholders. So have rhino as tank, more penguin than usual, and when you're sure you're not dying at he start add rabbits for knockback-effect. Some monkeys here too add to your power IF you leveled them as much as I (that's lvl 10 if you forgot).

Btw, if you'd ever want higher equipment, I suggest go back kill the final boss of realm 4, as that drops lvl 12 stuff.

lvl 2: rhino - penguin - rabbit - monkey - dragon. Before you ask this is not the order of units, but hordes of units you should accumlate. 3 rhinos should be enough for basic meatshield, 5 penguin to disable the bombs (don't forget to stand the way of the initial bombs to make them harmlessly self-explode and thus gain time), then you'll need crowed-control for mummy-boss(es) will arrive. That time rise the rhinos to 5, and start summoning dragons (they attack ca. from the same range as monkeys).

lvl 3:
maces: fist, flame, turn undead
units: turtle, rhino, dragon
oh, and during the end a kicker-zombie-boss will arrive...
But unless disaster happens you should be fine. Just don't waste your dragons too soon, and try to keep the battle at the edge of your (widest) aura.

Oh, and the Chapter 4 ending wallpaper:

lvl 4-5: the usual all-out assault

lvl 6: use 2-3 rhino as meatshield, starting with 1 and incrising the number. Support them with all kinds of ranged units, starting with penguins, but mixing everything. The only unit coming are bombs.

Oh, and as I missed to show it yet:

lvl 7-8: the usual

lvl 9: the enemy units are ghosts. This makes you to concentrate instead of just mindless spamming. If you do, you won't have trouble.

lvl 10: guest star is ghost-boss. It IS annoying as it blink from here to there, but actually not much more. During the big wave of cave-destruction multiply number of it will come at the same time, but as they blink out of your way, as I said they are hardly anything more than annoyance.

lvl 11: instead of some late-level feature, multiboss appearance comes at the beginning. No fear though, just some mummies.

lvl 12: interesting fact is, that here be only one type of enemy: beholders. Oh, and naturally the boss. The boss poisons your troops making them being 1 hp creatures. She never kills them. The solution might be surprising to some, but it is funny: leave the melee units at home. I mean what can they do against an infinite number of archers? Especially if they are first frozen?
PS: help your units with poison mace and some direct damage mace. No need healing here, your troop won't suffer damage (and what they will do, they'll regain it as long as they are in your aura).

Unfortunately this boss has a lot of life, making the battle too long for farming, and I got only lvl 11 stuff from it, while the chapter 4 endboss, which went down way faster, gave lvl 12.