[ТУРНИР - HotA] "Long way"

Everyone universally dismisses this template for various reasons:
A) it's boring
B) it's unplayable
C) endless roads, zones, and passages.

I don't think 8xm12b will change the situation in any way.
The very idea of the template in SoD already proved to be very difficult; in HotA, with the replacement of one-way connections, it turned into a complete farce.

You wrote a review of 8xm12a, I take it? That's like comparing the old HotA 6lm without mandatory roads (with a likely single road in 6k, a low number of utopias, etc.) with the current version.

Not everyone dismisses it. Some of those who dismiss it simply don't want to bother understanding the new scheme. For them, the usual 6lm, Mirror, and Jebus Cross in Heroes are enough, and that's it.
After all, the version with differently defined roads should be tried out in a game, rather than prematurely concluding that the template cannot be revived. Almost nobody tries to make new templates, so at least we should improve the old ones.

Yes, the template was tested in real games during its changes, and some also played it in the tournament.
Previously, it was unpredictably confrontational (like Spider), now it is perhaps too non-confrontational. Although the possibility of reaching the green and brown computer players through roadless terrain still exists. There is also one shared super-Treasure zone, from which those endless mines have finally been removed. Now it is filled adequately.