Walkthroughs of standard maps, focusing on SPEED.

I already mentioned the bot I wrote.

Plotnick, if you know how to program, you can try using a debugger to swap an artifact on the map after a specific layout has been generated. I can't and don't want to do that: if a map can be completed without it, I should "play with the cards I'm dealt." The map creators (except in cases of clearly inappropriate designs) have calculated what, when, and how the player should do to win. In the case of "Gift-2001," this is exactly the case: a lot has been written about this map on the forums (see the comments in the map catalog and this thread in the HP Tavern, where the author himself participated in the discussion) - and, by the way, the player also gets the Dimension Door, but only at the very end of the playthrough.
If you get too carried away with restarts to "catch" the desired artifacts and spells, your skill level will become highly dependent on a "convenient" layout.
And one more thing about the oddities of the random number generator in "Heroes": I struggled with this several times when, at a very inconvenient moment, Plague Week would appear; it seemed that if I exited, re-entered, loaded an autosave, and made a turn, something else should appear! But nothing like that: time after time, Plague Week would appear again!:( But some of the player's actions affect its appearance: during this struggle, I suddenly discovered that building a building in a city changes which week will come. In particular, in one case, I avoided Plague Week by NOT building a certain building, and in another (literally the other day) - on the contrary, I built a building - and Plague Week did not appear! Keep this in mind, it will be useful.