If someone wants to spend the time writing out their face painting techniques here, well fine, go for it. But I think it would be easier to just point you to some that are already written. There are literally dozens of books on this subject, as well as many tutorials on several well known modeling sites. Here are some;
http://www.missing-lynx.com/articles/figures/mbheads/mbheads.htm
http://www.missing-lynx.com/articles/figures/mbface/mbface.htm
http://www.missing-lynx.com/articles/figures/mbpart2/mbpart2.htm
You can't go wrong with starting out with Sheperd Paine's How to Build Dioramas, which has an easy to follow guide to painting figures with oils. Kalmbach Books' How to Build Scale Models has a chapter on painting figures with oils. Osprey publishes several titles on figure painting as well.
I work in at least 5 layers myself, a base color, a highlight, a reddish cheek/lip color, a shadow and a dark shadow. Cutting this down to 3 or 4 doesn't really make sense to me. Which tone would you leave out?