Regarding the first point, I forgot to add something. In all the games, you first fought monsters and then collected resources. And only in the 4th installment can you have ONE hero collect resources, and only then will you be attacked... This is mostly what creates the imbalance. Hiring one hero in the first week ALWAYS paid off. Hiring ONE hero in the 3rd game on an impossible difficulty could be unprofitable and severely hinder the early game.

It's just a simple case of "I like it and I'll keep playing that way" or "I feel like playing that way now."

This might have worked against the AI, but against real players or in tournaments, there was no choice (unless you wanted to lose). And the choice of creatures remained practically minimal; there were just fewer of them and no upgrades. As for the 3rd game, I think you haven't played it much... there are many choices about which creatures to rely on and which not to build at all.

I was talking about the heroes' independence, and I just gave an example of when this is especially evident. And this is precisely a flaw in the concept, because any hero either turned into a killing machine or was killed by a single hit from anything. And, plus, the heroes lost their individuality (expressed in their specialization).
And the campaigns (there are many who like to argue about the "spirit of the heroes") are precisely an indicator of this essence, as they are what convey the plot twists of the game to us, and if they fail, and especially if the plot is boring, then this is a huge drawback of the game.

P.S. I've written many times that if the 4th game had been called something else and released by someone other than 3DO, it would have received much higher ratings, it would have had more fans, but it would have made less money.

The fourth game was unlucky because it was released after the third and was too different from it, as funny as that sounds.

But if a game is released and called Heroes, it should live up to that. You know, the third game was released after the second and became more popular. And besides, the 4th game wasn't the only failure; there was the terrible 9th M&M, there were a bunch of pointless chronicles for the 3rd game (just to make money), and add-ons for the 4th game with the same goal, the disastrous Crusader of M&M, Legend of M&M. As a result, the fans' patience ran out, and the company went bankrupt.