It has happened! The first club tournament for Heroes of Might and Magic II!

But, holding a proper tournament on a proper map in St. Petersburg next year would be more than ideal for me.

I'm not against it. If there are no unforeseen circumstances, I can take on the organization of this event. I think we can comfortably accommodate 8-10 people. The best time for me would be in the summer, in July-August. So that I don't get distracted by work and can have a good time (meaning a walk around the city :)), go to Peterhof, take a boat ride, etc. Let's, while we have time, preliminarily estimate the dates and plan accordingly.

Now, a report on the last game with Dust on North-South. The map is terrible, but not difficult, and heavily favors the left position (and I chose the position, Dust was the host, which doesn't matter at all here). The advantage is that, after clearing out the neutrals near the castle, green can send 1-2 empty heroes along the road, who will clear out the entire upper part for him, as there are 2 Orc and Centaur stacks along the road. If you move a little to the side, there are also Gnomes, Goblins, and a 3rd stack with Centaurs. This is enough to take the village and the mine, and then with the Djinns... :cool: Thus, the entire army can calmly work on the lower direction, where the second village and the castle are conveniently located along the road. Due to this feature, I managed to gain a good advantage in development at the beginning: by the end of day 8, I had 3 castles + a village (I turned my original secondary settlement into a castle), 7 heroes, and an income of 4000, while Dust had a castle + a village, 5 heroes, and an income of 1250. By day 13, the income advantage was 6100 against 1500, and I knew this approximately. How? Thanks to the View Towns feature, which in Might and Magic II shows not only the color of the city's flag but also its type and development (village or castle). Therefore, I thought that time was on my side and started building Phoenixes - on the second one in the starting castle, on the 3rd in the secondary settlement. If I had ignored the Phoenixes, spent the money on upgrades and buying units, and attacked on day 3, I probably would have won. But my lack of online experience let me down; I didn't take into account the additional growth of the Barbarians and their relative cheapness. Lexa started bombing the computer-controlled towns and first caught up with me in income, and then surpassed me. After that, it became clear that further "arms race" would be in his favor, and I had almost nothing left to do on my territory. As a result, I sailed to him on day 4, but it was too late to retreat from the river; I wouldn't have had time to reach his cities by the end of the week. I had to wait for reinforcements. On 1.3.7, I was exchanging all resources, except for 4 mercury (for the Phoenixes), in order to buy units the next day, and it turned out that at the beginning of the 2nd month, an event takes away 5000 coins and 5 of all resources from the players. I'm afraid Qwerty glitched at that moment, because in the monologue about the appropriateness of such surprises on maps for multiplayer, only the prepositions were censored. :rolleyes: To avoid replaying for 2 days, we decided to skip 2 turns instead, and not use the "extra" money or exchange it on the market. After receiving reinforcements, I went forward. Even taking into account his advantage in magic, things could have gone differently in the battle - his Barbarian had parameters of 14/11, mine had 16/12, and I gained 2 more levels on his territory and became 17/13. Plus Archery, Luck, and Leadership in the secondary skills. But the problem of going to the enemy's territory is that all of his heroes are waiting for you. Accordingly, he can launch a hit-and-run attack or a crowd of kamikaze mages with some kind of Storm spell. That's why I took the witch with her first turn. But that wasn't enough against the Djinn rush. There was no Death Wave, no mass spells either. I managed to kill 3 Djinns out of 5, but the remaining ones had 36% chance to "do something," and the first Djinn turned 17 Phoenixes into 8. :( The game ended at that point, because my small units are no match for 20 Cyclops.
I made a lot of small mistakes in development; when trying to take the upper island from Lexa, I didn't have time to take 37 Orcs and 100+ Goblins with me, and the Djinns couldn't do anything; I was clearly late with visiting the opponent.
Well, Dust played better, and that's good in itself, that I managed to put up a fight and not get completely crushed. :) By the way, if it weren't for the 3v3 tournament, Alex the Great could have also claimed victory; he would have most likely won our unfinished game on Beltway.