Haven – "Everything is mixed up, truth and falsehood" [Campaign 3 – Mission 2]

I'm playing on Hard difficulty, but I read about the HARDEST difficulty here. I'm curious, where is it set? Also, I didn't know that ballistae don't target their own defenders. In the previous mission, I had them standing in an open field for the entire game; now I'll make sure to protect them. Yes, this mission is challenging. It's the end of the third week, and I'm avoiding neutral creatures because it's very rare to win without any losses. I'm severely lacking wood for building and upgrading, so I've been specifically searching for piles of logs to build something at least every other day. I have a town of George and a Dungeon fort in the northwest. I'll manage to build Riders, and Paladins will be available next week. On Monday, I'll buy everyone, luckily I built a Capitol initially, and then I'll go across the river. Maybe I'll choose the hero path after all; I have 250 points in both Tears and Blood skills. I was thinking of going with Blood, but now I'm leaning more towards Tears. Overall, I enjoyed the map's difficulty. After the previous missions, I thought I was a superhero, but now I have to really think. But it's interesting. I finally completed this map. You can't just rush to take cities and defeat everyone in sight; the enemies are too tough. Sometimes, instead of capturing a fort, I would place one of my second hero's dwellings there, and they would stay there until the end of the game. In general, I gradually expanded my territory, attacked the barons' towns, and eventually captured all their dwellings. Then, I went to Cordelia, where I could upgrade Paladins. Then, I went south, through the Cyclops, to Cyril, and then, through the spirit portal to the Catacombs to George. It took about 3-4 months, and somewhere around the 3rd month, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief and knew I was going to win. Yes, the siege book doesn't give a +1 damage bonus to catapults.