The most interesting part is the battles against each other and maneuvering at a distance.

Yeah, if the distribution of resources is reasonably balanced... I'm still impressed by the games with Napalm on the interportal. There, clashes started with 1-1-4 units, and sometimes 2-5 heroes were wiped out in a single turn. Secondary units changed hands, kamikaze tactics were used, battles of weak units and battles of main forces with alternating surrenders for money occurred, and as a result, there was a gradual positional retreat, the destruction of strike stacks, or even mutual annihilation of the population, rather than someone arriving with a huge army or powerful magic. Only in the last game did an interesting development occur, but the ending was banal – one player simply found everything, while the other found nothing.