Sadness
Auto-translated
Again I couldn't break through to the mines - got stuck somewhere deep in the adjacent zone off the road.
At a certain point, I stopped maining Valeska, switched to Alkin, who got both needed spell schools, but both took a very long time to level up. I could only find my first Griffin Conservatories deep in the central 23rd zone, a three-day trek off-road.
Consequently, due to the near-total lack of resources and objects, I entered the Dragon Utopias without magic, without a properly built Mage Guild, and with a rather modest army, at a time when the opponent with Dimension Door had already seized my main. Because of this, I had to abandon the nearest Dragon Utopia for the opponent to take, and go off-road into the orange player's territory, where a minimal-level Treasure Zone yielded a Town Portal spell scroll.
The opponent had 10+ Angels visible, while all I had was attempts not to lose villages, build/rebuild the Mage Guild, and try to catch up.
In the end, after three Dragon Utopias, my stats were significantly higher than the opponent's, but everything was ruined by the opponent's Fire Captain and his 17 Archers.
On turn 144, realizing the hopelessness of my situation, I decided to try my luck and engage Grindan in my main.
In the final battle, very sweaty, with Anti-Magics, a Mass Berserk hit, etc., I somehow barely managed to send the Gold specialist to Avalon, or wherever, on a wing and a prayer.
We played with the Fresh Mod; the road changes are certainly significant here, especially regarding the replacement of one-way portals.
Thanks for such a tough game, I thought it would be a bit easier!
Thanks for the game!
--
From day one with Grindan, but the start turned out quite poor.
The game started for me somewhere around the end of the second week; all this time I was running down the road of life towards my Castle. I started building the Mage Guild in a nearby village, since the Fresh Mod allowed skipping levels, I decided to first find Town Portal or Resurrection. Around turn 127, I broke two Griffin Conservatories (level 2 and level 4), and the Mage Guild gave me Resurrection; I ran to learn it and immediately decided to dive into the Dragon Utopia in the same zone. It was a mini Dragon Utopia, but it immediately gave the Helm. After 4-5 days, I built Angels in my ally's Castle and captured the opponent's main, after which I tried not to give it back until the end of the week, while also picking up whatever I could reach. I had an indecent amount of gold, so I put Angels in the second Castle as well. In the end, at the start of the 4th week, I had 16 Angels, sold all scrolls and artifact junk to rebuild Archers, and decided to rush at the opponent, because it was at least a two-day run to any treasure zone.
In the end, while I was hanging around in town, the opponent decided to attack. My mana pool was twice as large, immediately put Anti-Magic on the Archers and it seemed like the game was in the bag...
But in the end, I played the Fireball like a hose. Missed a couple of hits to the face from Angels and Birds, a couple of Luck/Morale rolls for the opponent, and in the end only two Archers remained. Well, and the final mistake on the wait phase, after which the opponent finished off the remnants of my salary and killed the Archers in one turn. My own fault overall, but I managed to play tempo, and it's not like it was all sunshine and roses from the start.