Well! I have never had a more exhausting and nerve-wracking game before. We played with saves, the first and second time from 11 PM to 5 AM.
It started out pretty decently:
I spawned in the underground on slow roads. Shakti with 3 stacks and the first week went great. I took Barbarian secondary skill, the Dwarf dwelling. I Experted Earth Magic. At home, Manticores in the castle, in the secondary town +1000 and birds with Orcs in the fort.
On the second week, a secondary town, Griffin Conservatory 3, lots of gold, I find a good treasure zone with Dragons (Dragon Utopias, as it turned out, were also there but off to the side, closer to the opponent).
So by the end of the third week, with a significant army, Speaker's Hat, Sphere of Earth Magic, Golden Bow, and stats around 10 each. I split up and head home, and on day 141 I break through the GO (Wyverns and Efreetis) without losses. On day 142 I run over and with Dimension Door take the opponent's main (without troops already). Gunnisson at this point is looting a Dragon Utopia and is glowing with skills roughly twice as high as mine! This is where, apparently scared by the opponent's parameters, I make the most rash decision. Instead of heading towards the Conflux secondary town, right to the place where Gunnisson and Isra are scurrying about, I march along the road in the other direction, intending to collect more Dragons and find at least one Dragon Utopia, while also taking another of the opponent's secondary towns along the way. In the end, I only found 2 Dragon Fly Hives and a Pendant of +3 3, but I lost a lot of tempo, while Andrey, on the other hand, was given room for creativity. He takes an external dwelling of Magic Dragons. And then the nightmare of my entire life begins. :smile30:
By the way: I fully experienced what it's like to lack Logistics, against Stables and Logistics on two of the opponent's full-fledged heroes; even Dimension Door didn't help. And Isra on Fire Birds, with spell power under 20 - casts a spell and buys back.
If I had managed to find a Portal of Summoning, everything would have been resolved much, much earlier, but without it, I just aimlessly galloped around the prairies, like a sack of sh*t, often waiting for the opponent's very prolonged turns.
We managed to swap all the castles and kill about fifty of each other's heroes. In short, a month of dull, dreary running around for me and insane maneuvers for Britva.:smile23:
In the end, I was damn tired and just wanted it all to be over. In the final fight, my head wasn't thinking at all. I forgot about the passive Magic Mirror on the Magic Dragons:smile52: and for some reason was shooting at the opponent's 30% resistance. I just needed to remove the Sleep from the fifty Dragons and shoot the opponent with the Golden Bow and Expert Archery. But after the fight, it's too late to wave fists.
Thanks to Andrey for the game! I hope a brain drain like this doesn't happen again.