Duel map: "Summon Ship".

Having finished playing this map, I want to provide detailed feedback, as it deserves it. Overall, the map is quite good, but there are a few points to note. So, let's go through everything in order. Strengths of the map: - a large number of resources, artifacts, monsters, and locations to visit; - the enemy's "home" zone is inaccessible to us; the player can develop peacefully in the early stages, and even later, in case of danger, their heroes can always find shelter there; - AI enemies that become very strong after some time (Green and Brown), and battles with them can be challenging and interesting. Weaknesses, comments, suggestions: - City Portal is forbidden. Usually, on large maps, authors disable Flight, Dimension Door, and Angel Wings so that a player who acquires them doesn't win too easily and quickly (they don't have to fight guards, search for and visit tents, complete guardian quests, etc.). This is perfectly reasonable. As for the City Portal, its absence on large maps inevitably leads to prolonging the game, often significantly (by 2-3 times!): everyone who has played on such maps knows how long it takes to travel from one end of the map to the other; if a strong hero is alone and most combat tasks have to be solved only by him, such journeys will be repeated! Therefore, it turns out that it takes 10-12 months to complete the map. Moreover, in the finale, the player will simply spend a long and tedious time chasing enemy "roaches" that are running away from him, because they can no longer offer serious resistance and only strive to survive. This drawback is exacerbated by the following... - Shackles of War are forbidden. This means that if you fail to kill an enemy hero, and he escapes from the battlefield, you will have to fight him again. (Yes, I understand that both of these restrictions are set by the author intentionally so that the AI player, who has developed too strongly, does not make the victory of the human player unattainable if he is not playing well enough). - Neutral towns in the northeast and southwest zones are located too close to each other. This is bad in combination with the following circumstance: - the entrances to one-way monoliths leading from enemy towns (which are also neutral at first) are located very close to them, and the exits are located near neutral towns on the surface. As a result, the enemy hero jumps out of the city, jumps into the teleport, and captures a town on the surface in one day! And in combination with the absence of the City Portal, this leads to the fact that the player's main hero is forced to constantly rush diagonally, suppressing enemy roaches! - perhaps it only happened in my specific case, but Brown becomes too strong compared to the other players because the most powerful artifacts are located on his territory: Helmet of Divine Enlightenment, Sword of Justice, and Necklace of Divine Grace (Sandals of Saint are also there, but the named 3 were already with Brown's main hero when I defeated him). Such an imbalance is undesirable. Therefore, to make the map even better, it is desirable to: - place the neutral towns further apart from each other; - move the entrances and exits of one-way monoliths away from the towns; - place the artifacts so that the players' opportunities are more balanced. Also, it might be nice to make it so that Green and Brown can not only enter each other's lands through the dungeon and fight each other (provided that their capabilities are balanced), but also pass through the center diagonally on the surface (from southwest to northeast). This can be done with border gates and tents. My playthrough After thinking about what difficulty level would be best to play on, I decided to choose "High" (130%) for the first time. And, as I later became convinced, this was the right choice (I will explain why below). I chose random towns and gold for everyone as a bonus. The distribution turned out like this: Red (me) - Castle, Blue - Rampart, Brown - Castle, Green - Tower. Since the town does not have a Fort at the start, it is not worth playing on a difficulty level higher than "High": this will prolong the early stage and lead to a significant lag of the human player behind the AI opponents, who do not experience (at difficulties of 160%-200%) a lack of resources. Having assessed the prospects of the starting heroes, I decided to hire Grindan with Wisdom, Earth Magic, +350 gold per day, after seeing him in the tavern. And a little later, I decided that he would become the main hero - and I was not mistaken, as it became clear later! His Earth Magic soon leveled up to expert, which allowed him to defeat guards in the early stages with Slow and arrows with almost no losses. By the way, a rare case: I was lucky again with the secondary skills - they all turned out to be valuable, including all 4 schools of magic! True, as with all mages, at first, only Strength and Knowledge grew, and Attack and Defense remained at zero, but soon magic became one of the most important roles. After some time, having explored about half of my starting area, I saw something valuable: in different places were the components of the Well of Magic - this is a necessary thing for a mage hero! Before I assembled the Well, I had to return to the city, spending several days on the road, just to replenish my mana. With a portable Well, archangels, the Clone spell, and expert water magic, I could destroy very serious groups of monsters without taking losses and pick up the "goodies" guarded by them. And a little later, after looting the Pyramid, I learned Summon Elementals of Water. When Grindan became strong enough and had a large mana reserve, he could already fight neutrals with almost no army, using the forces of summoned elementals. And only for battles with enemies was an army necessary. Taking advantage of this, I transferred almost all the troops to Sorcha and started "leveling" her. This was a wise move: on this map, one hero cannot handle all the tasks at the same time. The enemies appeared on the surface at the very beginning of the 4th month, and Green and Brown appeared almost simultaneously! Giving all the troops to Grindan, I started to defend myself. I will not describe everything in detail. All combat tasks were performed by Grindan and Sorcha, the other heroes were only "supporting". Having descended into the dungeon, I almost immediately stumbled upon a Cartographer, who opened the entire underground world for me; of course, this saved me from long wanderings (although View Air and Earth also clearly showed where to go, but it was much more convenient). One unclear thing that I discovered during the playthrough: Blue for some reason did not want to explore and "clear" his zone: viewing the earth showed that he had only captured a mine and a sawmill, and the information in the tavern showed that his primary skills had barely increased compared to the starting ones. It would be good to figure this out - why is he so timid? (Having reached his lair, I made sure that there were no mega-monsters on the way that would prevent him from walking around). So, victory came on the 6th month, 2nd week, 5th day (152 days, 282 points). For a 2-level L-map, this is a quite adequate completion time (remember, with "high" difficulty).