Dance of Death - [Campaign 9, Mission 1]

So, here's what happened. I spent a long time running around the map with Sandor, killing minor creatures, when I stumbled upon a weak Castle. It's located above the Fort; if you cross the bridge near Vasilisa, it's right on the left along the way. Anyway, as soon as I captured it, an enemy hero rushed over and defeated me. Realizing my mistake, I replayed the map. I cleared everything around the Fort and immediately headed for the Castle. I had about 2-3 weeks to rebuild it and gather an army. After that, the enemy hero ran towards me, I ran towards him, and he fled back to his Castle. I returned to my Castle, and he came back again, but this time he went down towards my starting Fort. I caught up with him there and killed him without any difficulty. Then I ran to his Castle and easily captured it. After that, I focused on leveling up and recruiting armies only for Sandor, which meant I often had to interrupt exploring and clearing the map to deal with enemy heroes who would show up every week. This bothered me for a while until I realized that I had another hero – Vasilisa – and "her" Castle, which unfortunately cannot be upgraded. But it's already leveled up, so I recruited an army for her, jumped into the Fort closest to the portal (from which the enemies emerge), and fought in the open field on autopilot to avoid wasting too much time. Despite the dumb AI and its blunders, this wasn't a problem because the enemy hero would arrive every week with the same weak army. In general, there were no difficulties. I let the computer win the final battle for the staff because it wasn't challenging.