Heart of the Volcano

During a period when the summer slumber is in full swing, the appearance of a new map is a pleasant surprise. For this alone, the author deserves the warmest words of gratitude. However, I won't praise too much. To a large extent, the map did not live up to my expectations. But, let's go through everything in order. An undeniable advantage of the map is that, despite its size, it runs very smoothly: the AI doesn't lag during its turn, there are practically no crashes, and saves load correctly. I liked the non-trivial landscape – it's beautiful. But the routes for movement on the map are poorly designed (I agree with Antik). The huge Dungeon is completely non-functional. You can only go there out of curiosity. This map, to a large extent, seemed to me like an expanded version of "Old Friends." Strategically, whoever reaches the center first wins. This greatly limits the choice of starting heroes. Another point: mines are scattered over a very large area, with serious protection. In this situation, a number of castles turn out to be in an extremely unfavorable position (no wonder most of those who wrote comments played as Humans). I played a couple of times with the Human castle, and even without capturing a couple of mines, I won without any problems. And when I decided to play as Dwarves on the same map, it was utter misery. I also didn't like the fact that the dolmens of knowledge, which at least somehow ease the start, turned out to be scattered at a great distance from the castle. Some are in an area where the hero already arrives with a high level and 1000 experience points – this is not significant help. The protection of the dolmens is excessive. Just like the protection of the "hotabych" – hundreds of Arcat/Lava dragons. If your hero is capable of breaking through them without serious losses, retraining him will only spoil him. In my opinion, the map lacks mills and other small things to provide random freebies.