Jebus Cross - 4

We played with a timer of 24+8+1. Sometimes the timer was a bit tight, but overall it was enough. The map distribution was pretty decent - a couple of hives were visible, an external dwelling of horses, but the road to ГО was blocked by cyclops behind a box. You could run around for scouting. After a couple of days, I found 4 more hives (6 in total), a Griffin Conservatory, and a box for all level 1 units. On the 1st week, I took both secondary sites; I Town Portaled horses from the dungeon, but no real stack came of them - they were eaten. I also gathered all the hives - resulting in slightly more than 30 ducks overall (some were lost to sultans), and skeletons by the start of the 2nd week were only around 200. Galtran had mass earth, air, and weapon skills. Log never clicked for him, and there were no speed artifacts for a very long time. I took Griffin Conservatory 3 and rushed toward ГО. On the last moves of turn 122, I broke a double ГО consisting of archdevils and monarchs. I launched scouting and accelerated. The center is quite poor - a couple of speed artifacts, helmet+12, 2 hives, boxes all for experience and crosses, necklace+3 all, a couple of utops. In the middle of the 2nd week, I broke through to the opponent's respawn - the road there is very wild. I never reached the main town, but I took a couple of utops from his respawn - useful items included a level 5 cap, speed boots, and a gladius. I built up to a level 4 guild, and with the TP scroll, moving around became easier. At the start of the 3rd week, the opponent showed a larger army and equal stats. On turn 132, Gunnar, arriving via off-road, attacks me in my Castle, but I was reinforced just in case. The armies there were from two built dungeons + 2 external dwellings of cats and 4 angels; plenty of mana, stats roughly equal. I had 40+ ducks, 300 bones, 3 angels, and a few death knights, +3 speed. Impl there, mass haste and impl from me, slow and impl there (I was only afraid of mass berserk). Then I had the option to throw an impl and buy off with a superior army, but I cast sacrifice and trade 2 angels for 6 ducks :) and buy off with slightly more than 20 ducks - there were a few medusas, eyes, and a couple of cats left, and Gunnar puts himself in a bad spot. I beat the red orb just in case (should have done it earlier, then I would have fought a teapot instead of a cap), take an angel from the external dwelling for the 1st move, and luckily Loshek with 25 mana was wandering through the center. He captured the Castle and Galtran with mass haste kills Gunnar. Thanks for the game!