I've done VF in ~1 year self-sufficiently on a brand new world (i.e. with no free GB goods). Probably with ~2-4 months of "wasted" time where i lost interest at points and didn't try as hard. I think if one were supremely determined SAT in 1 year could be possible without excessive diamonds (there will best be some diamonds used towards the end of the process but in an amount you can make on the world in question doing GE and quests).
Phases:
1) Rushing to AF: It's just FP and goods, the better your event performance, the faster you can get there. You'll need to win a decent number of reno kits and spread out their use appropriately as well. 2 weeks per era or so should be possible before this. So ~6 months. A little less maybe if you get a super-profitable event as eventually you might hit your stride and be ready to effectively skip some of these ages. Make sure to push continent as hard as you can.
2) AF/OF: The biggest most durable blocks, hence you want to get here quickly. Promethium and Orichalcum will take you a few months to get through normally. They're prohibitively expensive to diamond. The only thing you could potentially do to speed it up in a reasonable manner is if you had a large amount of FP and access to SAAB goods and blueprints you could powerlevel, delete, repeat space carrier - but you probably *don't* have the resources for that if you're putting your resources towards rushing and on a new world. Also note you now *need* to be working continent for much of this time or the next step is going to SUCK - hopefully you already were. There's hundreds of provinces between AF + OF + VF to get through with a day or more of scouting time each. It's not awful to diamond some of those scouts (50 diamonds each regardless of scout time) - but you still want to minimize having to do so.
3) VF/Pre-SAM prep: It's pointless to move to SAM until you've conquered or are at least ready to conquer its continent map because you need map for the ore. You should have enough diamonds to scout the last ore deposit before you move up.
4) Rushing space ages: Ultimately you're back to special goods being the limit - but unlike promethium and orichalcum, you can burn your diamonds to rush these reasonably. Use a 30 diamond rush on the most expensive ore scout and you can get 3+ ore per diamond. As soon as you're able to move up to the next space age and have its map ready or about-to-be-ready, move up if you need to minimize diamonds and then build a bunch of synthesizers for the previous space ores you're still missing. How fast you can do a space age depends on the diamonds you've earned to this point - this is where you can spend them well - either on scouts to get the next map ready sooner or rushing ores. Space ages take probably ~a month each without diamonds. But they also have a lot of diamond quests that can (with CF) payout enough to rush the map and ore scouts needed to rush the era. So you could really do them as fast as the pre-AF ages (or even faster because by now you have a lot more infrastructure, even if they are a lot more expensive of ages).
So overall tips:
- keep active at map, keep your scout busy to save diamonds.
- if F2P, target earning diamonds as much as possible.
- - Do GE4 as early as reasonably possible (2nd week is possible, but it might slow you down more than you want at that point as you'll probably be negotiating and would rather have the goods to advance possibly) and consistently.
- - Chateau Frontenac as early as possible and levelled to a good point whenever you have spare FP to maximize quest diamonds. You'll also be able to use it to keep up on coins and supplies that aren't always offered from good event buildings, and will get a good portion of your space age goods from story/side quests. Probably the *most* important GB for the process (though you may want to work in an Arc as well to help target blueprints for it, and Blue Galaxy because it just gets better as event buildings do. Space Carrier and/or AI Core is worth having in AF/OF if you can get the goods and blueprints)
- get to AF as soon as possible as AF and OF special good blocks cannot be efficiently diamonded and building up the resources to speed them through with space carrier powerlevels (multiple tens of thousands of FP and hundreds of blueprint sets) probably is slower than just tackling them head on.
- Target population sources in some events by the time you get to space ages. Being able to move on early and build many synthesizers saves a lot of diamonds (or time). And you need a lot of population for a lot of synthesizers.
