Built-in autosave feature (for the TE version).

There's also a cost involved. It's the time required to learn the game. If someone were to switch from SoD to TE and aim to play at your level or Samurai's level, how much time would it take for an abstractly very skilled SoD player?

There's a belief that each person has a certain "heroic potential," meaning a predisposition to Heroes as a sport in general. And it weakly depends on the version, rules, and settings (within reasonable limits). I think that the same Samurai would become a top player on fixed rules, SoD, or any other conditions if he set that goal.

The example of LeBron and Pete shows that retraining from SoD to TE doesn't present a big problem, and one can reach the same level of effectiveness in TE in a relatively short time as they had in SoD.

The main problem here is that the level of effectiveness sufficient for a normal game in the SoD sandbox is insufficient for a normal game in the TE sandbox, simply because the players there have a slightly higher "heroic potential" (on average). This is why there's a feeling that it's difficult to learn to play TE.

You have interesting views on the development of TE. But this is a certain choice. Where balance comes at the cost of impoverishment and standardization. I have a different approach. Let there be randomness and unpredictability at the level that is inherent in the rules of SoD. I get more pleasure not from building a chain through 10 heroes in the first week, but from finding some unconventional move, for example, developing a mage in parallel in the first week, building a GM, and crushing them there with a Light Bolt or Meteor. In TE, I haven't seen any original game endings in reports for a long time.

Not quite. I'm actually trying to fight against impoverishment and standardization, and many of my proposals for the development of TE are in this vein. For example, strengthening mages (so that they can be taken as starting heroes on par with warriors), strengthening alternative heroes, simplifying the acquisition of normal magic (so that you can already build the 4th level in the 2nd week), a modified filling of cans/hives, etc.

The point is different - the trends in the development of sports are such that in conditions of fierce competition, not only unviable but also semi-viable strategies are quickly discarded. This can be seen in traditional sports (football, for example, was much more strategically diverse 30-40 years ago), and in computer games (StarCraft, Warcraft, Quake, Counter-Strike, etc.).

And the techniques you describe are precisely from this series - semi-viable, not by the odds of the bank, that is. Therefore, top players, whose style was formed in fierce confrontations with their peers, do not seriously rely on them. And the situations when the situation favors them still happen quite rarely, both in TE and in SoD.

Continuing this logic, one can recall RoE, where there was a lot of diversity. You could build a Capitol in the 1st week, Titans in the 4th week, and crush everyone with Loins under mass pre-war. Only this is not a consequence of the game version, but a consequence of the level of players.

Although, in reality, I don't see a problem in promoting both versions. It's hardly that difficult, if Asm has already taken on simultaneous play.

My vision here is this - let there be a SoD sandbox, where new players will come (because SoD is much better known), get used to it, and in parallel, a TE sandbox, where these players can either switch or not. That is, I believe that the active existence of more than 2 versions of the game is meaningless (for the same reason, I am skeptical about TE-light).