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I don't really have an issue with carapace when I'm painting the little guys, but on the bigger MCs I get intimidated by all that surface area. I'm painting a Tervigon at the moment and I've just laid down my base coat of Stegadon scale green, and applied some coelia Greenshade into the recesses of the plates. Do I go straight to edge highlighting now or should I lay down a layer or 2 of something else first?

It really depends on your scheme. If you have pics of y9ur smaller models I could maybe suggest something but without knowing your scheme its incredible difficult.

I for instance drybrush Enchanted Blue (Caledor Sky) onto all my nids. on the biggies, it gives a subtle mottled blue effect on the flat surfaces.

As above, without more information this is tough. Do you want those large armored plates to be smooth colors? Mottled? Show a subtle but recognizable pattern (even if it's just color shades). That is what you need to decide. Even multiple washes of your current colors can create subtle variation that is more natural (which in a sense nids are creatures). The larger the carapace, the more gradations I would add for the edge highlights as well (again, this can be as simple as a watered down edge highlight applied in progressively smaller areas working to the edge, maybe 3-4 washes)

I am no expert. I paint leviathan and feels I habe it down.

Darkest purple. (Nagarot night.) Then a wash of black. (Nuln oil.) Now you have a colour somewhere between black and purple and it works well. This is your main colour. Since the eye is not drawn to black this means you do not need to focus on this a lot.

Then i drybrush this with the next purple. (Xerxos purple.) This is just very light. You are not looking to make it purple, just to break up the black a bit. I try to have it more near the edges to sort of 'colour inn' the black.

If you want to you can either colour inn this again with genestealer purple, or do some feathering with genestealer purple. But mostly I do not bother with this.

End step you mix a purple with a lot of light grey. Feather with this near the back end of each 'shell'. This represent where the shell has groqn so big it had started to crack and wear and tear. Imagine a human nail, or a turtle shell that has grown long as has startes breaking off. Works fine.

Leviathan really has a light/dark contrast. The fleshy white contrast with the dsrk purple. The colours do not really apair in nature. Purple/Grey/Black/White. Also the sharp bone weapons are red. On an individual model the eye is drawn to the red. On the army as a whole theye is drawn to the grey patterns on the back shells, as they repeat so many tiles on every model. Looks fine.

I have white guns, so they are a bit more aøbino then regular leviathans.

My GDC use the same pattern. But yellow/Orange instead of the red. I wish I did this as my main nid colour scheme as I like it.

Follow Duncan's technique with the colors you're using (starts at about 10:15)

I do black carapace.

Feather a medium color (dark purple) in large strokes.
Feather lighter color in smaller strokes (genestealer purple).
Edge highlight with a light grey