kolotok
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Map: "Jedi Strike Back" 绝地反击（铁人版）
1. Chinese map as is
There are 2 versions of the map that I uploaded to this forum on 19.02.2018: 绝地反击（大众版）- the popular version, and a second variant "Iron Man Edition" 绝地反击（铁人版）. I didn't perform an analysis of the differences between the maps, but superficially I see that the starting objects differ in favor of easier initial capture (possibly easier guards as well). I will say that I played the second, more hardcore version (see the archive file – the map, and the second file – the starting save). The map was downloaded randomly along with two dozen others from the well-known gamerhome DOT com. Effectively, it was a pig in a poke.
There are no links or descriptions, everything is in Chinese, but I really wanted to play through some Chinese same-old brutality, so to speak, on skill :) No interest appeared here on the forum (except for 13 people who viewed the map); the map is unknown. But that made it even more interesting to play.
Everything is in Chinese; I didn't do any translations: no events, no inscriptions, nothing. I very actively used Prospector and the map editor. The map is beatable without reading the texts; it's not that important.
Searching for the map or its translation on Google yielded nothing; there was nowhere to look for hints. But I don't remember where or when, but I saw a similar start on Chinese YouTube; I searched by the key name of the map and here it is: a guide for the first 6 weeks.
http:// v.youku. com/v_show /id_XMjk5ODcwMjc0NA==. html?spm=a2h0j. 11185381.listitem_page 1.5!19~A
For those who cannot manage on their own, you can see how it should be passed.
2. General impressions
The map was completed without cheats, without bug-using, with a loss of a great deal of IRL time, although the author for some reason provided 2 ways to pass it dishonestly:
1) in the second half of the 2nd month at point 125-20-1, you can open a pillar with any of your heroes, take a free air book, 1500 azure dragons, 1500 magic dragons and "tear everyone on the map apart," but I discarded this option immediately
2) closer to the second half of the game at point 17-40-0, you are given 1 azure dragon for free, but they give it an INFINITE NUMBER OF TIMES, so you can daily use 3-4 idle heroes to collect from 50 to 100 azures. I didn't use this either.
I recommend playing without this; it's more interesting.
I would give the map a solid 10/10, even despite a couple of flaws or misunderstandings of the author's idea.
It is almost a classic Xiedu or the recently discussed map 6424 Heroes. Everything is similar: ideas, implementation, claims that the player knows mechanics at an advanced level, and tight timing at the start.
I give the map a high rating for: 1) atypical start, everything needs to be thought through, really like in chess down to every movepoint 2) emphasis on completing 85% of the map with archdevils as the main striking force (which is not often found on author maps) 3) beautiful and complex final battles (different strategies) 4) complete ban of some spells: BERSERK IS MISSING (unless you manage to "steal" someone else's hero from prison with this spell – a speedrun is possible), blindness in a single copy in a scroll, clone appears only at the end of the map almost 5) absence of standard easy solutions for completion (there will be no ranged stacks until the end of the game, when we take titans for a couple of final battles, the arch stack forms only at the end). In short, gathering some archers behind a forcefield, doing blind/clone/resurrect - this is not that kind of map, definitely. Which is why I give it 10/10.
The map took a lot of time and effort, but brought a sea of pleasure, primarily from the decisions made.
If you played Xiedu and 6424 Heroes and liked them, feel free to play this map too.
You can play with HD+, but especially for the first 1-3 months of battles it is desirable to use either the SoD_SP utility or no HD+, so that battles take place on the original landscape. In general, play around with the landscape as you find most convenient
TIMING is very harsh until about 137, and important afterwards (for example, enemy heroes coming out to your respawn on 31X), but less and less.
Overall, a War Strategy for archdevils is something new for author maps for me, which is why the map clicked. Although Kreg clearly lacked knowledge and mana, all battles are based on some strategies.
3. Starting save
The start of the map implies that you will go through it like clockwork at a VERY FAST pace. Therefore, it is important to generate the correct starting save. I would even say: if it's wrong, you won't pass the map. In all seriousness, it will simply be impossible. I am attaching a file here with the correct starting save; use it, as the requirements for the save are as follows:
1) most important (!!!) in the castle 118-103-0, which you capture on 1-3-5, there must be "anti-magic" and "quicksand" spells. There is only one passage there, and killing Kirri's 1000 hellspawn with your 20 vampires and 5 ghosts without this magic is impossible by any other means.
2) a bunch of requirements for leveling in the save: main hero Kreg must catch "morale" immediately, and support must catch navigation immediately as well (and preferably earth)
3) Dragon Utopia at point 26-6-0 should be minimal or level two (stronger ones simply cannot be handled at the start)
An immeasurable amount of time was spent on this save; do not try to repeat it in real conditions :)
4. Beginning 111-137
The goal starts in the corner of the map and can free only one of 4 dungeons: from the fathers you can choose Orrin, Kreg, Tazik or Malekith. I took Tazik, progressed to 1000 hellspawn, but couldn't kill them. Then I replayed and realized that you must take only Kreg; he is the best candidate.
For Kreg, from 2 free slots we catch "morale" and "fire magic". Morale is mandatory; in the first month we won't win battles because our troops are from 4-5 castles, including undead. Morale will help more than once later in difficult battles. For support we catch navigation immediately + earth, this is also mandatory.
Timing is VERY TIGHT, as you need to kill Gurnisson on the starting respawn as quickly as possible (I killed him on 125), and Kreg must manage by 126 to open the pillar at point 47-14-0, and below via an event "eat" the event for +999 mana. Without this, it's impossible to kill Kirri the mage's 1000 demons later.
Count your moves here, think through, but on 126 you must take these 999 mana and then immediately leave the respawn, as an enemy is landing from the sea whom we cannot kill yet. On 136 we take the castle and learn anti-magic + quicksand; mana should be as high as possible (I had something around 650 left, which might not be enough).
On 137 we kill Kirri and her 1000 demons. For battle we take only 1-2 birds, 20 upgraded vampires, and ghosts to drain Kirri's mana. The battle took a couple of hours (20 vamps and Kreg's 22nd attack against Kirri's 1000 devilspawn with 68 defense!). One misclick – and you could burn your computer out of anger!
5. New respawn (141 – 247)
We reach the central Inferno castle 72-71-0, build gates, teleport to our castle in the underground, after which it is very important to free your resource heroes from prisons as quickly as possible. They should collect more money on the sea and resources; building needs to be faster. Kreg's task: take "water walking" at point 59-0-1 and "resurrect" at point 52-24-0 as quickly as possible. And then go very quickly to the Inferno zone in the northwest and take 2 castles there (and later with strength, a third).
Kreg's knowledge is meager (100 – 140 mana), so we fight without losing archdevils; not a single one can be lost.
After capturing the Inferno zone, you need to visit the green tent at point 136-48-1 as quickly as possible + take the last piece of cursed armor there – this is our key artifact until the end of the game. Just like the "mage's ring" artifact for 50+ turns of magic action (which I used very often). The faster you pull all this off, the better: soon enemies will open pillars, visit the green tent and come to visit you. Therefore, you must do it yourself and capture their castles with all unbought growth.
5. Trip for town portal (311-347).
From 247 (or better even earlier) you need to break the anti-magic garrison at point 122-55-1 and travel through the desert south, killing whoever you can along the way. The task at this stage is to kill Yoga; only after that can you get the town portal via quest, without which enemies will take all your castles. At this stage, instead of a fast breakthrough, I started saving money, reclaiming captured castles, and killed Yoga only on 333, although everything should be done and can be done earlier.
And meanwhile, enemies are pushing from all sides toward your central Inferno castle at point 72-71-0. While Kreg is traveling to settle scores, your pawns can make ransoms, transport and sell ransomed forces in Dragonspire, i.e., distract enemy forces. As soon as Kreg gets the town portal, Khalid retrains him in everything, and playing becomes easier.
MILLION DOLLAR TIP. Enemy heroes can be killed, just like in XIEDU, by finding a "safe point" for single-hex archdevils. This way you can kill almost any opponent with almost any forces. An archdevil, mage and pegasus go into battle. We enter the safe point with archdevils, cast anti-magic, kill the enemy's single-hex units, the enemy spends all their mana, we then slow everyone down and kill them one by one. This point is 80-71-0.
6. Killing legions, leveling Kreg, killing Torgrim, killing Nella and getting the medal of vulnerability (411-511)
You can level up Kreg well on the peninsula in the southwestern part of the underground, near Zeron's castle. If speedrunning, you can arrive very early, open the guards before Zeron and eat all the millions of gold and resources yourself. But I didn't arrive that fast.
Torgrim is a key kill because magic almost doesn't affect him; this is a quest kill and later we will finish the map with this hero (spoiler :)
Immediately after, Nella, because without the medal of vulnerability you cannot deal with titans (blindness, forgetfulness) and other dangerous and magic-resistant units.
Don't forget to use the "safe point", see above.
6. Capturing castles, leveling Kreg (511-711), killing enemy "fathers"
We kill one by one everyone who is still left on the map and whom we can kill.
A good strategy against Rion's and Sorcha's angel castles. For battle we take archdevils and a couple of azures. We cast forgetfulness on shooters, then loop the enemy into repeating casting slow / you wait and then healing. After healing, archdevils fly into the garrison, strike, at the start of the turn – retreat. And so 100 times.
Example battle with Sorcha: killed with stats 77-93-79-83, forces: 1857 archs, 1200 rust dragons, 3558 horses, 5091 zealot, 7126 knight, 5265 griffon, 8000 archers. Kreg's stats are 62-47-45-48 and army is 1 azure, 717 archdevils, 1 archmage, 1 pegasus and 3 dragonflies (for burning).
At this stage the hardest battle was with Lacus and his phoenixes and azure dragons (about 100 battle attempts); it was necessary to catch the right placement, the right fear of enemy units before your azure and double morale of your archdevils under frenzy. It takes a very long time to catch such a coincidence, and then loop Lacus into resurrecting his forces while being behind a forcefield (since almost always Lacus instead does either speed or healing for everyone, and our units cannot keep up with the phoenixes).
7. Game finale.
On the "trees" island we raise Kreg to level 88, open pillars, capture everything possible, and free 2 heroes in the only tavern: "broken" Dessa with negative experience (trinket) and Torgrim. The latter we pump up to level 88 for 100% magic resist, preparing Torgrim for the 2 final battles.
I can say that I haven't seen such exciting battles in a long time. I won't tell all the secrets, only the order of killing the final enemy heroes (where you can choose):
3 – Gundula,
2 – Gird (killed by Torgrim)
1 – Mephala (killed by Torgrim)
Map completed on 825 (although the last 2 months are just a trip to level-ups, it could be faster).
8. General recommendations and tips.
Start of the game, speedrun the first 1-2 months as much as you can; this will pay off a hundredfold. You cannot sit on your respawn or do everything slowly. Kreg doesn't necessarily have to visit all level-ups that are specifically placed inconveniently to waste time; it is more important to get key spells and intercept artifacts from the computer, because he will come out anyway and might eat your artifacts first.
It is desirable to combine troop buying and money accumulation so that the only treasury in your castle with +10 income starts bringing good money due to accumulation.
Do a full buy-out of all external dwellings (especially angels, devils, titans). Azure, Rust and Fairy dragons will be needed for final battles, but I recommend buying them only at the end when you have 5-6 million money (no less).
As soon as you dig up the Grail (which will happen almost immediately in the 2nd month), put it immediately in Kildar – the human castle for archangel growth and +2 morale. The grail cannot be placed in flux, and in other castles (Tower, for example), it is less preferable. I carried the grail in my bag until the 6th month because I didn't know which castle would need it more :)
ALL quests can and should be completed; there will be no losses from this. The only quest I didn't turn in was the titan's thunder collection in exchange for 100 archdevils and the "clone" spell. You get clone from Torgrim and Dessa bought in the tavern, and 100 archdevils are not as important as the helmet knowledge of +9 knowledge in battles. I didn't believe myself, but still exchanged 2000 archdevils via quest for 1000 titans. The exchange looks uneven, but devils in the final battle against Gird are useless because they die immediately from his magic and fire shield, all 2000, so ranged 1000 titans are better here. And against Mephala 2000 devils are unlikely to kill even 5-6 azures (there are 1500 of them), so it's better to blast Mephala with clones of your 500 fairy dragons (tactic used by me for the first time) – this is the key stack against Mephala, she cannot be killed otherwise, even with Armageddon's Blade, as there won't be enough mana to kill 1500 azures.
Use all pawns for collecting resources from external objects, for buying growth from external dwellings, and also for diversions against the computer: attack a castle, buy out growth, sell this growth in your own stronghold (no money lost, but computer is without growth). I leveled Sephinor to the rank of "father's deputy": with intelligence and over 1200 mana she could conduct medium-difficulty battles and was also raised to level 88.
A couple of computers can be lured into water and blocked for a couple of weeks/months so they don't interfere (lured Turis this way).
On the map I noticed that enemy heroes didn't always come out for quest pillars. For example, Lacus didn't want to give up 34 fire birds, but simply accumulated them, coming out only when I placed a pawn nearby as bait.
In general, thank you for your attention. The map is recommended to everyone who has time and patience! Liked the Chinese brutality :)
And a couple of strategic pictures of memorable battles
1. Chinese map as is
There are 2 versions of the map that I uploaded to this forum on 19.02.2018: 绝地反击（大众版）- the popular version, and a second variant "Iron Man Edition" 绝地反击（铁人版）. I didn't perform an analysis of the differences between the maps, but superficially I see that the starting objects differ in favor of easier initial capture (possibly easier guards as well). I will say that I played the second, more hardcore version (see the archive file – the map, and the second file – the starting save). The map was downloaded randomly along with two dozen others from the well-known gamerhome DOT com. Effectively, it was a pig in a poke.
There are no links or descriptions, everything is in Chinese, but I really wanted to play through some Chinese same-old brutality, so to speak, on skill :) No interest appeared here on the forum (except for 13 people who viewed the map); the map is unknown. But that made it even more interesting to play.
Everything is in Chinese; I didn't do any translations: no events, no inscriptions, nothing. I very actively used Prospector and the map editor. The map is beatable without reading the texts; it's not that important.
Searching for the map or its translation on Google yielded nothing; there was nowhere to look for hints. But I don't remember where or when, but I saw a similar start on Chinese YouTube; I searched by the key name of the map and here it is: a guide for the first 6 weeks.
http:// v.youku. com/v_show /id_XMjk5ODcwMjc0NA==. html?spm=a2h0j. 11185381.listitem_page 1.5!19~A
For those who cannot manage on their own, you can see how it should be passed.
2. General impressions
The map was completed without cheats, without bug-using, with a loss of a great deal of IRL time, although the author for some reason provided 2 ways to pass it dishonestly:
1) in the second half of the 2nd month at point 125-20-1, you can open a pillar with any of your heroes, take a free air book, 1500 azure dragons, 1500 magic dragons and "tear everyone on the map apart," but I discarded this option immediately
2) closer to the second half of the game at point 17-40-0, you are given 1 azure dragon for free, but they give it an INFINITE NUMBER OF TIMES, so you can daily use 3-4 idle heroes to collect from 50 to 100 azures. I didn't use this either.
I recommend playing without this; it's more interesting.
I would give the map a solid 10/10, even despite a couple of flaws or misunderstandings of the author's idea.
It is almost a classic Xiedu or the recently discussed map 6424 Heroes. Everything is similar: ideas, implementation, claims that the player knows mechanics at an advanced level, and tight timing at the start.
I give the map a high rating for: 1) atypical start, everything needs to be thought through, really like in chess down to every movepoint 2) emphasis on completing 85% of the map with archdevils as the main striking force (which is not often found on author maps) 3) beautiful and complex final battles (different strategies) 4) complete ban of some spells: BERSERK IS MISSING (unless you manage to "steal" someone else's hero from prison with this spell – a speedrun is possible), blindness in a single copy in a scroll, clone appears only at the end of the map almost 5) absence of standard easy solutions for completion (there will be no ranged stacks until the end of the game, when we take titans for a couple of final battles, the arch stack forms only at the end). In short, gathering some archers behind a forcefield, doing blind/clone/resurrect - this is not that kind of map, definitely. Which is why I give it 10/10.
The map took a lot of time and effort, but brought a sea of pleasure, primarily from the decisions made.
If you played Xiedu and 6424 Heroes and liked them, feel free to play this map too.
You can play with HD+, but especially for the first 1-3 months of battles it is desirable to use either the SoD_SP utility or no HD+, so that battles take place on the original landscape. In general, play around with the landscape as you find most convenient
TIMING is very harsh until about 137, and important afterwards (for example, enemy heroes coming out to your respawn on 31X), but less and less.
Overall, a War Strategy for archdevils is something new for author maps for me, which is why the map clicked. Although Kreg clearly lacked knowledge and mana, all battles are based on some strategies.
3. Starting save
The start of the map implies that you will go through it like clockwork at a VERY FAST pace. Therefore, it is important to generate the correct starting save. I would even say: if it's wrong, you won't pass the map. In all seriousness, it will simply be impossible. I am attaching a file here with the correct starting save; use it, as the requirements for the save are as follows:
1) most important (!!!) in the castle 118-103-0, which you capture on 1-3-5, there must be "anti-magic" and "quicksand" spells. There is only one passage there, and killing Kirri's 1000 hellspawn with your 20 vampires and 5 ghosts without this magic is impossible by any other means.
2) a bunch of requirements for leveling in the save: main hero Kreg must catch "morale" immediately, and support must catch navigation immediately as well (and preferably earth)
3) Dragon Utopia at point 26-6-0 should be minimal or level two (stronger ones simply cannot be handled at the start)
An immeasurable amount of time was spent on this save; do not try to repeat it in real conditions :)
4. Beginning 111-137
The goal starts in the corner of the map and can free only one of 4 dungeons: from the fathers you can choose Orrin, Kreg, Tazik or Malekith. I took Tazik, progressed to 1000 hellspawn, but couldn't kill them. Then I replayed and realized that you must take only Kreg; he is the best candidate.
For Kreg, from 2 free slots we catch "morale" and "fire magic". Morale is mandatory; in the first month we won't win battles because our troops are from 4-5 castles, including undead. Morale will help more than once later in difficult battles. For support we catch navigation immediately + earth, this is also mandatory.
Timing is VERY TIGHT, as you need to kill Gurnisson on the starting respawn as quickly as possible (I killed him on 125), and Kreg must manage by 126 to open the pillar at point 47-14-0, and below via an event "eat" the event for +999 mana. Without this, it's impossible to kill Kirri the mage's 1000 demons later.
Count your moves here, think through, but on 126 you must take these 999 mana and then immediately leave the respawn, as an enemy is landing from the sea whom we cannot kill yet. On 136 we take the castle and learn anti-magic + quicksand; mana should be as high as possible (I had something around 650 left, which might not be enough).
On 137 we kill Kirri and her 1000 demons. For battle we take only 1-2 birds, 20 upgraded vampires, and ghosts to drain Kirri's mana. The battle took a couple of hours (20 vamps and Kreg's 22nd attack against Kirri's 1000 devilspawn with 68 defense!). One misclick – and you could burn your computer out of anger!
5. New respawn (141 – 247)
We reach the central Inferno castle 72-71-0, build gates, teleport to our castle in the underground, after which it is very important to free your resource heroes from prisons as quickly as possible. They should collect more money on the sea and resources; building needs to be faster. Kreg's task: take "water walking" at point 59-0-1 and "resurrect" at point 52-24-0 as quickly as possible. And then go very quickly to the Inferno zone in the northwest and take 2 castles there (and later with strength, a third).
Kreg's knowledge is meager (100 – 140 mana), so we fight without losing archdevils; not a single one can be lost.
After capturing the Inferno zone, you need to visit the green tent at point 136-48-1 as quickly as possible + take the last piece of cursed armor there – this is our key artifact until the end of the game. Just like the "mage's ring" artifact for 50+ turns of magic action (which I used very often). The faster you pull all this off, the better: soon enemies will open pillars, visit the green tent and come to visit you. Therefore, you must do it yourself and capture their castles with all unbought growth.
5. Trip for town portal (311-347).
From 247 (or better even earlier) you need to break the anti-magic garrison at point 122-55-1 and travel through the desert south, killing whoever you can along the way. The task at this stage is to kill Yoga; only after that can you get the town portal via quest, without which enemies will take all your castles. At this stage, instead of a fast breakthrough, I started saving money, reclaiming captured castles, and killed Yoga only on 333, although everything should be done and can be done earlier.
And meanwhile, enemies are pushing from all sides toward your central Inferno castle at point 72-71-0. While Kreg is traveling to settle scores, your pawns can make ransoms, transport and sell ransomed forces in Dragonspire, i.e., distract enemy forces. As soon as Kreg gets the town portal, Khalid retrains him in everything, and playing becomes easier.
MILLION DOLLAR TIP. Enemy heroes can be killed, just like in XIEDU, by finding a "safe point" for single-hex archdevils. This way you can kill almost any opponent with almost any forces. An archdevil, mage and pegasus go into battle. We enter the safe point with archdevils, cast anti-magic, kill the enemy's single-hex units, the enemy spends all their mana, we then slow everyone down and kill them one by one. This point is 80-71-0.
6. Killing legions, leveling Kreg, killing Torgrim, killing Nella and getting the medal of vulnerability (411-511)
You can level up Kreg well on the peninsula in the southwestern part of the underground, near Zeron's castle. If speedrunning, you can arrive very early, open the guards before Zeron and eat all the millions of gold and resources yourself. But I didn't arrive that fast.
Torgrim is a key kill because magic almost doesn't affect him; this is a quest kill and later we will finish the map with this hero (spoiler :)
Immediately after, Nella, because without the medal of vulnerability you cannot deal with titans (blindness, forgetfulness) and other dangerous and magic-resistant units.
Don't forget to use the "safe point", see above.
6. Capturing castles, leveling Kreg (511-711), killing enemy "fathers"
We kill one by one everyone who is still left on the map and whom we can kill.
A good strategy against Rion's and Sorcha's angel castles. For battle we take archdevils and a couple of azures. We cast forgetfulness on shooters, then loop the enemy into repeating casting slow / you wait and then healing. After healing, archdevils fly into the garrison, strike, at the start of the turn – retreat. And so 100 times.
Example battle with Sorcha: killed with stats 77-93-79-83, forces: 1857 archs, 1200 rust dragons, 3558 horses, 5091 zealot, 7126 knight, 5265 griffon, 8000 archers. Kreg's stats are 62-47-45-48 and army is 1 azure, 717 archdevils, 1 archmage, 1 pegasus and 3 dragonflies (for burning).
At this stage the hardest battle was with Lacus and his phoenixes and azure dragons (about 100 battle attempts); it was necessary to catch the right placement, the right fear of enemy units before your azure and double morale of your archdevils under frenzy. It takes a very long time to catch such a coincidence, and then loop Lacus into resurrecting his forces while being behind a forcefield (since almost always Lacus instead does either speed or healing for everyone, and our units cannot keep up with the phoenixes).
7. Game finale.
On the "trees" island we raise Kreg to level 88, open pillars, capture everything possible, and free 2 heroes in the only tavern: "broken" Dessa with negative experience (trinket) and Torgrim. The latter we pump up to level 88 for 100% magic resist, preparing Torgrim for the 2 final battles.
I can say that I haven't seen such exciting battles in a long time. I won't tell all the secrets, only the order of killing the final enemy heroes (where you can choose):
3 – Gundula,
2 – Gird (killed by Torgrim)
1 – Mephala (killed by Torgrim)
Map completed on 825 (although the last 2 months are just a trip to level-ups, it could be faster).
8. General recommendations and tips.
Start of the game, speedrun the first 1-2 months as much as you can; this will pay off a hundredfold. You cannot sit on your respawn or do everything slowly. Kreg doesn't necessarily have to visit all level-ups that are specifically placed inconveniently to waste time; it is more important to get key spells and intercept artifacts from the computer, because he will come out anyway and might eat your artifacts first.
It is desirable to combine troop buying and money accumulation so that the only treasury in your castle with +10 income starts bringing good money due to accumulation.
Do a full buy-out of all external dwellings (especially angels, devils, titans). Azure, Rust and Fairy dragons will be needed for final battles, but I recommend buying them only at the end when you have 5-6 million money (no less).
As soon as you dig up the Grail (which will happen almost immediately in the 2nd month), put it immediately in Kildar – the human castle for archangel growth and +2 morale. The grail cannot be placed in flux, and in other castles (Tower, for example), it is less preferable. I carried the grail in my bag until the 6th month because I didn't know which castle would need it more :)
ALL quests can and should be completed; there will be no losses from this. The only quest I didn't turn in was the titan's thunder collection in exchange for 100 archdevils and the "clone" spell. You get clone from Torgrim and Dessa bought in the tavern, and 100 archdevils are not as important as the helmet knowledge of +9 knowledge in battles. I didn't believe myself, but still exchanged 2000 archdevils via quest for 1000 titans. The exchange looks uneven, but devils in the final battle against Gird are useless because they die immediately from his magic and fire shield, all 2000, so ranged 1000 titans are better here. And against Mephala 2000 devils are unlikely to kill even 5-6 azures (there are 1500 of them), so it's better to blast Mephala with clones of your 500 fairy dragons (tactic used by me for the first time) – this is the key stack against Mephala, she cannot be killed otherwise, even with Armageddon's Blade, as there won't be enough mana to kill 1500 azures.
Use all pawns for collecting resources from external objects, for buying growth from external dwellings, and also for diversions against the computer: attack a castle, buy out growth, sell this growth in your own stronghold (no money lost, but computer is without growth). I leveled Sephinor to the rank of "father's deputy": with intelligence and over 1200 mana she could conduct medium-difficulty battles and was also raised to level 88.
A couple of computers can be lured into water and blocked for a couple of weeks/months so they don't interfere (lured Turis this way).
On the map I noticed that enemy heroes didn't always come out for quest pillars. For example, Lacus didn't want to give up 34 fire birds, but simply accumulated them, coming out only when I placed a pawn nearby as bait.
In general, thank you for your attention. The map is recommended to everyone who has time and patience! Liked the Chinese brutality :)
And a couple of strategic pictures of memorable battles