slavi-t
Auto-translated
Nightly Edelweiss, IMHO, preserving artifacts is not a very good idea. It's better not to risk it. If you kill Nicholas without getting the Phoenixes before defeating all the dragons, he might disappear forever. And some of the dragons are on his territory. He can also attack you himself.
slavi-t, it has already been written that in versions 1.0-1.5, under certain conditions, a script is triggered that causes Nicholas to rapidly multiply dragons. There is an opinion that it is due to the time spent in the game. I suspect that, in addition to a long playthrough for this script to trigger, something else must be done. For example, not fighting him for too long, or something else. I played for a long time, but I fought him regularly. The script did not trigger.
Added after 49 seconds
otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to catch him with his logistics skills))
Added after 2 minutes
Congratulations on your victory. Another option besides the Phoenixes. Shackles of War. No one escapes from them. Or a battle in the castle. As far as I know, there are no black moves in Heroes 5.
Should I send you a save file? Then you can see under what conditions I won.