Confirmed. On the first map, everything is fine. On the second, there is a Griffin Conservatory level 2, a Pandora's Box with experience, external dwellings of Unicorns, Elves, Dendroid Guards, and Pegasi. Dragons are in the Castle. I find another couple of conservatories. On the third, I get greedy and lose 4 days by taking 2 conservatories with scouts, even though I already had a large army (I lost 5-7 Dendroid Guards and almost all Centaurs throughout the game) — all of this was off-road. Then I made a mistake choosing a path (I checked the template layout, the fastest route to the opponent, also all off-road + just in case, Ivor's entire army is <dendroid guards>). On the fourth, mostly maneuvers. I pick up a secondary Conflux. I find three teleports and two exits to the underground. All this time, there is a chain leading to the main hero (scouts on Silver Pegasi). On day 147, I take Elves and Pegasi from Ivor, give him Fairies and Air Elementals, and take a Dragon Utopia — for 3 Black Dragons, it gives the Book of Earth and the Helm of Heavenly Thunder. I send scouts to external dwellings and to scout the territory. The Tavern shows that Shakti has higher stats. There are many directions to choose from; I'm afraid of making another mistake, so I go to take the Hives and another conservatory that were slightly out of the way. On the fifth, I find another secondary town that I passed by earlier. But I don't have time to take it, as Shakti appears on the respawn adjacent to my starting one. I portal home. Time was running out; I didn't manage to (I was thinking about the wrong thing) remove the Helm, but it wouldn't have helped much anyway. He had the Armor of the Damned in the fire spell book; he didn't even let me put up a fight against his 22 Angels.
Thanks for the game