Resilience

Yeah, I agree, there is a dependency. But here, as with almost all maps, the difficulty is kind of "reversed."
I'll explain: on Recruit difficulty, there's little neutral "meat," but on Veteran, the armies are huge! Defeating them gives experience, which can be gained much faster on Veteran (if, of course, you manage to defeat the neutral creatures). This is why the hero levels up faster – that's all!
There's a great script function: SetExpCoef(n); – I would add it for Veteran, for example, with a coefficient of 0.2 – then the difficulty would actually live up to its name.
:D
If you want a real challenge :smile35: – choose the Recruit difficulty.
P.S.: The map is great – it's addictive; I'm still playing it :cool: