I downloaded this campaign a while ago and kept meaning to play it (for nostalgia's sake). Finally, last weekend, I found the time to complete the first mission (with/without a hero) – it took 57 days. It was only interesting to play for the first two or three weeks, when I captured the first two upper Castles and freed the general. After that, the whole game boiled down to constantly (and tediously) managing caravans and positioning support heroes to ensure a timely supply of troops for the main hero. Throughout the entire game, there wasn't a single truly challenging battle with an enemy that I wanted to save. In most cases, their heroes simply fled at the very beginning of the battle, and the outpost also fell quickly and without losses. I enjoyed the only battle with neutrals – the very first one (for the Traveler's Boots). P.S. The freed general turned out to be completely useless (and even passing skills from him is not a good idea, because you can't improve his logistics skills). It would have been better if a "rogue" (similar to Diman's Grokh, I don't remember the name) was imprisoned instead. As a result, I used the general with his ballista and a large number of peasants as a guard for a frontline Castle (it turned out to be pointless – no one ever reached it). P.S.S. And also – the Castles of other factions on the map turned out to be almost useless. If the Mage Castle can still be used somehow, at least for hiring gremlins (because it's available from the very beginning, and with the creature generator, you can accumulate a decent number of these creatures, so you can replace almost useless peasants with them), then the Elven and Diman Castles remain completely "out of the picture." At least I had to take the Diman Castle from the enemy; after that, I only used it to earn money through the magistrate. As for the Elven Castle, I didn't even bother with it because the enemy wasn't interested in it either, and going there would only waste time. P.S.S.S. In general, if there was an option for an alternative scenario – to complete this map not as the heroes, but as the bad guys, IMHO, it would be much more interesting.