MasteR
Auto-translated
It all depends on how you look at it. Some might say it's a random mess.
For example, to build a Dark Energy pillar, you need to find 5 sulfur. In some playthroughs, sulfur is found nearby with light protection, while in others, it's nowhere to be found.
I had a playthrough where I turned neutral creatures (like peasants and goblins) into skeletons and raised a group of vampire riders. Nearby, more riders spawned, and by the second week, I had a completely different army of vampires that could easily defeat everything nearby in auto-battle;
compared to if I started with fairies, imps, etc., and lacked the necessary resources, and couldn't move more than a day's journey from the castle.
So, in summary, the gameplay at the beginning boils down to finding the best conditions for a start.
Or, if you don't look for the best conditions, how should things unfold so that it's balanced, challenging, and interesting, rather than easy and simplistic, or, conversely, impossible. And in this case, it also comes down to restarting the game)) No matter how you look at it.
I prefer to look at it more philosophically. Because I used to play a lot of online games, and you can't ask your opponent to restart just because assassins are guarding a mine instead of peasants, and crystals are scattered everywhere instead of mercury, for example. If you're unlucky with the guards, then you'll be lucky with something else. And another reason for this approach is that players with the EWA mod or similar mods are probably not very interested in scavenging standard neutral creatures on the map.