Hellish Rift

I played the map, chose the knights in the yellow castle. The landscape design is impressive – it’s both beautiful and very intricate. However, the gameplay isn’t very interesting. The AI opponents were noticeably weaker than my main hero, and the computer generally avoided engaging with him. I had to fight with secondary and tertiary heroes. Even in this mode, I rarely let the battles play out automatically – the development advantage was too significant. For the AI, processing maps with such complex paths and large sizes is always a difficult task. Organizing hero logistics is a perpetual and unsolvable problem for the AI. The map isn’t well-suited for playing against a human opponent. The lumber mills and quarries placed in remote locations and heavily guarded create extremely uneven starting conditions for different castles. In some cases, it’s impossible to leave the castle grounds. Random dwellings also provide bonuses that don’t benefit every castle. I can hardly imagine how to develop dwarves on this map. Changing the underground castles to those native to the player won’t add much to the game’s interest. The AI won’t gain any strength from these castles; it won’t rush to capture them, and it will spread its troops among three or four of its heroes. In one case, the AI controlled such a pair of castles, and there were a total of five identical castles under the computer’s control on the map – the result was negligible. This map turned out to be a good exploration map; it’s interesting to wander around and look at the surroundings, but it wasn’t possible to organize a compelling combat experience.