kolotok
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Map Name: Abelia
Author: Grigor Minchev
Downloads: from the maps4heroes map catalog
I also completed this map.
I managed to capture the first Companion town on day 7, not 8, a little earlier.
I didn't think of farming skeletons with a Necromancer as an addition to my army when I played the map almost 2 years ago. Nor did I think of splitting my forces into 2 parts.
As for magic, I also bought heroes one by one and retrained magic with a Scholar. Although, when facing the computer, this magic is clearly not enough.
In my playthrough, the most important goal was to reach the brown town as quickly as possible. After capturing it, here are 2 good tips:
1) It's better not to "block" the one-way road (because the computer will still accumulate significant forces). It's better to place a hero with some superior forces and knowledge of Logistics + Pathfinding near the exit of the one-way road. Put a couple of Djinns in the hero's stack, and all the Titans in the castle. As a result, the computer will jump out at the beginning of each week with an increase, and you will catch up to it in one turn (very rarely - in 2 turns). This allows the hero to constantly level up and prevents the computer from accumulating large forces, because sooner or later it will jump out anyway, so it's better to do it in a controlled manner.
2) when capturing the brown town's spawn, you do NOT need to capture ALL the outer Giant dwellings, because the growth in your castles will increase significantly, and there will NEVER be enough money to buy them all. And the computer's logistics heroes can recapture your castles and then buy a lot of Titans. To prevent this, it's better to take almost no outer dwellings at all, but buy what's in the castles.
I remember that it's desirable to eliminate at least some of the computer players completely. It's easiest to do this with red and, probably, blue. Fighting everyone at the same time is unrealistic. Also, a good trick: we capture castles, for example, of blue, and immediately "give" them, for example, to orange. This way, you can leave the computer without any castles at all, if you can't catch their logistics heroes, for example, Gunnar.
And, an IMPORTANT point: you need to get the ability to walk on water. As far as I understand, this can only be done by buying a Scholar in a tavern who has retrained this spell. In my 3rd playthrough of this map, I was lucky enough to buy one. Otherwise, catching Gunnar with the ability to walk on water by disembarking/embarking him in a boat is simply impossible.
Also, ideally, everyone should know Logistics + Pathfinding. And it's also not bad, surprisingly, for some to upgrade Navigation, because you will have to sail in some places quite a lot.
But the most important thing is the speed of the playthrough. At some point, the enemy heroes will accumulate so many Titans that it will simply be impossible to kill them.