It sounds to me like you're aging up too quickly. I understand that everyone plays the game differently and wants to experience it in their own way and all
BUT
It might be best for you to slam on the breaks a bit and power level what you have before hitting the big leagues. Remember, you can't age down later once you've entered into a scenario where you're secretly outclassed by your hood.
I appreciate the advice but I'm looking for input about how bad I need a high Chateau when I move up to AF. Hoods don't matter. Just collect on time. Plus all that space spent on city defense will benefit you more if spent on FP and attack. Being scared of moving up because you can get plundered by hoodies is probably the biggest thing that needs to change in this game. The biggest bullies will get in no matter how high your defense and if somehow your defense is high enough to keep them out, you are spending so much space on defense that you are stunting your own growth because you can fit a boatload of attack and FP into that much space instead.
What I am concerned about is spending too many goods in GE because my attack isn't high enough. So I'm trying to get it as high as I can before lack of space forces me to age up. I could delete lower age SOKs for new event buildings, but I'd rather not lose the FP.
Thus my conundrum. It seems 350 is about the minimum attack needed to get by in GE 4 in AF and I can get there before running out of space, but I probably don't have time to also level my Chateau. Is it more important to have 350 attack and lvl 17 Chateau or 325 attack and lvl 60 Chateau?
Counting 6 diamond expansions I can buy I have 9-10 expansions worth of room. Maybe I'm overestimating and this space won't be taken up by event buildings from Forge Bowl and Carnival events and thus I can hold off aging up at least another month til the end of Spring event. But I also plan on adding more attack buildings through the auction over these months and that will take up space.