Which Castle do you prefer to play as?

To be honest, it's a bit annoying that you call everything "cheats" here. A cheat is something that can't be obtained by playing the game normally, without using cheat codes or other hacking methods. Diplomacy is just a regular secondary skill. Well, of course, if you've only been playing Heroes for a couple of months, then increasing the number of Phoenixes in a Conflux might seem like a cheat to you. (And according to you, skills like spellcasting are also cheats?)