newbie questions (lots) - mid/late game logistics

[Neophyte]

Ok, I've had Dom II for about a year, but haven't played too much. I've decided that I like Arco, and have experimented with several pretenders using the Talis map.

I think I'm happy with Phoenix, F4A4D4, T1P1-G1F2M1, Dom 4 with fortress. This gives me a decent bless force (even just CotH is a good centerpiece unit) as well as a decent friendly dominion solo mage-pretender. I haven't done much with mercenary forces. Using this pretender I just won my first game against normal AI Man on Talis using indies 9 and sites 75.

I was able to get a vine ogre factory reasonably close to Man's main territory (6 VO/turn 2 turns with a 2 start move cmdr away). One of my conceptual issues is logistics - if everyone is going to be attacking you, where should you set up your bigger summon mages - for things like Drakes it would be hard to move them from capital to the front?

Or should the stay at home mages be strict researchers and you make labs on the front to summon those drake type units?

Should you empower your summon mystics to S3 for teleport?

Does teleport move the mage and associated troops, or just the mage (my manual has teleported)?

Another logistical question - against multiple opponents, how many armies (army meaning a main force group of cmdr's and troops) should one have per front (i.e. moving toward any given enemy)?

How many fronts do people tend to have at a time?

Granted this is very subjective, but when do you want to go from initial expansion to border defense and back to expansion?

I'm intrigued by the large Faerun map, but should probably use Orania to learn larger map issues. I tried some searches and found lots of god\od stuff, but maybe I didn't search correctly.

Thank's!