I would like to see the persimmon tree.

and it's not even clear why all this is needed.

It seemed to me that several Campaigns in the third game were decent in terms of gameplay. The way the story is presented – well, it was interesting to read cool stories about how your heroes are in a camp, doing something there, and something is happening to them, like a little book... But the main thing is that playing on random maps against the AI is too easy; you want a little challenge, and that's exactly what the single-player scenarios and Campaigns are designed for. Although the challenge in them is uneven; sometimes you breeze through, and sometimes you can't find a way to deal with the next wave of "10 enemy creatures arriving in the second week," and you give up.

Plus, the fourth game has better gameplay, specifically in the part where the hero participates in combat, so starting from the second or third mission, a well-leveled hero can solo defeat everything, living or not, and the game becomes a bit more like an RPG.

The upcoming storm was pretty good in this regard; I even created a mini-challenge for myself in one of the Campaigns, to complete the entire map without an army (not counting garrisons), just with the hero, and fortunately, the heroes leveled up quite quickly there. But story-wise, this part is weak, of course...