Liberation

I played through the first "Liberation" map, and it took about 70 days. My main impression is that it feels empty. It's like crossing the Pacific Ocean alone. There aren't many things on the map: few objects, artifacts, random resources, and even monsters are scarce, almost like they're endangered. In the starting area (it takes about 2 days to travel 3 days' distance), there are only a handful of objects between the castles. With such a large area, I could only get two heroes to level 10. It takes 5 days to reach the nearest enemy castle, and there are only 2 buildings in that direction, and it's the same everywhere. I didn't like Christian's starting skills. They're awkward. It's better for the "Engineer" to take "Darkness"; the initial "Leadership" is a reference to the "Light" magic. This useless skill eats up level-ups, making it difficult to reach the "volley fire" system. I could have tolerated this if "Hotabych" were nearby, but he isn't. It's detrimental. I played the hard version on "Hero" difficulty. If the "Difficult" version is like "Warrior" difficulty, I can't imagine what it's like on normal difficulty. The AI organized three decent sieges of my castle, which took a week of game time, after which destroying the AI heroes became purely a logistical challenge. Fortunately, I managed to buy Rutger from the AI, who was the same level as my main hero; otherwise, the battle would have been endless. In the early battles, it became clear that Christian was a detriment to the army. He was dismissed. I had to go back and find Dugald in the tavern. I managed to level him up on neutral creatures. By the time the AI heroes arrived, he was one level lower than Christian, but he was able to defeat them all without difficulty. In the end, Dugald is level 26, Rutger is level 25, and Christian is level 20. Because the map is so empty, it's not even possible to feed him on neutral creatures.