In response to the question "What should I play?", I recommend trying Siege tricks. Has anyone else played it besides me? I didn't mention it, thinking it would be a nice surprise, but it uses a very good mechanic that hasn't been described or used anywhere else. It's worth trying just for that. The current version allows you to bypass the author's intention at some point, but I wouldn't say it breaks the map; rather, it allows you to skip a couple of battles if you want and go a different way.

I agree with the recommendations about this map. It's much more interesting than the author's two previous works. Those were also good, but the tasks there were too straightforward. Here, there's something to think about. After the point where you're asked for 2 armies, I suspect I didn't quite follow the author's intention in a number of battles, but that's okay. I only figured out the new mechanic on the 4th castle; I brute-forced the three castles before that, where it needed to be applied. I was even a little surprised that it was so difficult, especially where I was running away from horses with angels and griffins :D After understanding the original idea, I optimized a bit. I would rate this map on the same level as "Deeply Inundated Dungeon".