Walkthroughs of standard maps, focusing on SPEED.

Plotnick, why do you need the Orator's Hat for a speedrun? It's pointless for speed.

I just didn't know it wouldn't drop. If you looked at the Podarok_2001 map, you should have noticed that everything else you're talking about is clearly prohibited there. But the hat isn't. Or rather, as I now understand, it's implicitly prohibited through spells. And the hero is given at the beginning with stats of 8-8-9-9 and intelligence. So there's plenty of mana.
I must say that the hat wouldn't have given an instant win either. You can't complete it in a week, because at the end there's a hero with a lot of troops and stats of 99. But what's the point in talking about it now, if you can't get the hat anyway? You can only take boots to increase speed. The current record is around 66 days, I don't think I'll manage to do it faster. I played at a leisurely pace and finished in 180 days. But my main villain drowned in the sea, so I had to defeat everyone. And then I bought him and he helped me :)