kolotok
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It's funny that speedruns of Heroes on such complex maps take months of real time, while a leisurely playthrough, a couple of hours after work, takes much less.
And, in my opinion, maps like Xiedu wouldn't be popular in this genre because there's a lot of randomness.
It would be much more interesting to create a map where all the computer heroes are immobilized, locked in castles (in extreme cases, some characters could be allowed to move, but along a clear route, and everything should be carefully planned). Also, all units should be placed manually. And then there would be room for creativity in how to distribute artifacts across the map and what bonuses to give. For example, give a tower with a grail at the start and lock the hero in the center of the map with 99 cold resistance and one leadership skill. So that the hero can see the map, know the exact size of the army. Let the player think for himself what, where, why, and how. You can plan logistics, realistically assess your strength in battle. And then it would be interesting to see who could complete such a map in the shortest time. Some might need an extra week to capture the Azure faction, while others could complete it without them. If you spend as much time on it as on Paragon or Xiedu (+ if the author is someone like Rinse or Season), you could create a pretty good map.
In my opinion, it's all a matter of taste. Static maps, where all the computers are locked up, are not always interesting. Usually, over time, forces accumulate, and sooner or later, the enemy is defeated in the same way. A map with freedom (complete or relative) of movement for the computers looks much more complex, dynamic, and interesting. Again, I'm not claiming that one is "right" and the other is "wrong." I'm just saying what I like more and why. So, dynamic maps, in my opinion, are much harder to create, and even harder to make interesting. Most of the maps that I wrote reviews about here were dynamic, and I can't even imagine how the author calculated the forces and how much time it took him.
