Tanta Simulator

I also used to think about AI in Heroes as a worthy opponent. In my opinion, it's theoretically feasible, but a Herculean task. Even for global, strategic AI. But it would require an enormous amount of man-hours... As for the battles, the core should be a simple enumeration of all possible options for 2 to n moves ahead, based on some kind of tactical "skeleton," with a comparison based on a formula that calculates the ratio of enemy losses to one's own. Of course, before that, you need to analytically derive a real combat algorithm for the AI (dragons) and then you can train a neural network really quickly. The default AI calculates how to inflict the most damage, but only for the current turn, and what would it cost to give it a little more processing time? Three moves ahead, just off the top of my head, is 200x200x200 options – that's peanuts for today's hardware!

aren't you afraid that you might accidentally "kill" the online game in this way?

If you implement the product as new patches and calculators, then yes. But ideally, you should create a bot. And force hundreds of clones of such bots to self-learn in continuous virtual battles.