the good old confrontation of TE/VT vs SoD/HD will never lose its status as the most toxic thread; only the actors and settings change, and even the phrases are the same as they were 6 years ago :D

Dimka, you're wrong.
Yes, it gets toxic, but truth is born in dispute :)
6 years ago I was also against TE; back then, supporters of that version used different arguments for TE: that you could separate single units, fast troop exchange. As a result, a mod appeared. That's already a plus from the toxicity.
Now the arguments are about one-way paths and extra artifacts in Dragon Utopia obelisks.

Regarding one-way paths — personally, my imho is that I don't want to spend many hours on HL+U only to not even survive until the final battle (which happens quite often).
Removing artifacts like the captain's hat and obelisks can be done in SoD as well.
Therefore, I even believe that there is no need to change or improve SoD; it is already beyond competition compared to VT.