Umka-Gold, hooray!!! Finally, someone here understood me. Everyone else was just: Wing, Ossir. There was still one smart guy left. It wasn't for nothing that I was explaining things here. :) Thank you, Umka!!! You are absolutely right about the native lands. You are also right about summoning: an expert summoner increases the number of summoned creatures by a factor of two compared to an advanced summoner, and the Hive is also very effective. It's just that with summoning, I always take summoners right away. And when it comes to the expert summoner, I don't take it if I get the desired skill. I don't take a new skill before the summoners. Your thoughts about mana have strengthened my belief that I need to take Wisdom. And ideally, right after summoning. This would be better than Logistics - there really isn't enough mana, so what's the point of running fast? This is the only thing I would do differently than you. Battle Doctrine is a great idea, yes. Ideally, take it right after Wisdom with Magic Affinity. I already wrote about how to defeat mages in the thread about a fast start: take Battle Doctrine, buy a secondary hero, take the meat from him, divide it into 7 stacks of 2, and kill the mages with Fire Warriors. For more details on clearing the map, see the thread about starting as the Elves. I respect you, Umka! :)