Also, thank you for the Prospector; I'll take a look.
Observing the open map and seeing how the AI consumes everything in the first 2-3-4 weeks, and then simply has to come to your respawn point, I conclude, as with my experience in Xiedu, that you need to rush on the map. A couple of days or a week give the AI an increasingly larger advantage.
Just like in Xiedu, here we'll get to play as Necromancers. And although, under normal circumstances, playing as Necromancers is considered cheating, on this map, it seems, it won't give any significant advantages.