"The Art of Strategy"

"All or nothing"—I'm exaggerating, of course. But the point is this: for a gnome to advance without losses, it needs 1) either bears with soldiers (not a super-reliable tactic, and there are still losses) – initially, there wasn't enough wood and stone – well, it happens when resources are scarce; 2) siege engines (I initially leveled up three heroes to level 5, waiting for someone to get one – no one did. Then I started leveling up Ibbu to level 15, but she wasn't offered a siege engine either. As a result, she couldn't break through and fight anything in the center, where the money and experience are, without significant losses); 3) Light magic, regeneration, and resurrection, and banners – which, of course, comes later. Everything else is unreliable. So, in my game: 1) there was no energy rune – Inga had it, and the bears were getting wiped out; 2) no one got siege engines – as a result, I fell behind; 3) I found regeneration, but too late. As a result, even though I started leveling up (when I barely scraped together enough resources for dragons), it was too late, and I simply didn't have time to level up properly before Negan arrived. That's what I meant. Even considering all of the above, Ingvar was very decent, so if I had at least one of the things mentioned above, I could have easily kept up and provided strong competition to Negan.