1. The first wave is very much defensible. You can protect a large quantity of collectors to keep a good pace before the 2nd "wave of tedium" comes in. I used a lot of cannons to accomplish this.
2. It is possible to destroy all dormant emitters before the 1st wave hits them. This also gives access to the totems. Most of the power zones are best used later after the wall emitter is down.
3. The 100 Aether can be used on top of what ever you farm for the forge weapon. making the adaptive emitter in front of the creeper wall emitter much easier and quicker to deal with. After that goes down its just the usual creeper world grind. I accomplished this before the 4th wave arrived. but looking at the scores i can see some people were able to do it much faster.
4. avoid reactors completely. If you take out the dormant emitters quickly there is more than enough room for a ton of collectors. Before the wall emitter goes down energy is not that critical anyway.
5. a good point speef made - your cannons, mortars, forge, and command centers will live threw a wave no problem. however the collectors, relays, and beams will not. you'll have to rebuild collectors and relays. the beams can be lifted and moved before the wall hits them.
6. This is the tedious part... the wall is rather slow. you can rebuild collectors and relays in such a fashion as to maintain power connections across the creeper wall as it moves. Doing this keeps a decent amount of your power up even while the wall is passing threw your base.
7. beams on the 2 power zones next to the totems will completely shut down spores from entering the east side of the map. Allowing you to take out the creeper wall emitter undisturbed (besides the wall of course).
8. If you find taking out the adaptive emitter in front of the creeper wall emitter is too difficult due to the confined space. taking out the adap. emitter to the left makes a clear shot to nullify the walls of tedium. The adap. emitter in the center right had its range shortened to allow this.
9 This pointer is hidden because it really breaks the map but for those that really don't care...
Spoiler
the shortened center right adaptive emitter range helps in ways not intended HINT HINT. I only noticed this when testing out cheap tricks to beat the map (again more time than i want to admit tweaking). But decided to leave it there as a reward for the clever player. I made sure the map was beatable even with out using it.