"And thirdly, I find it hard to believe that password-protected saves can be cracked"
On ХВ Disksquare was banned after the sames were analyzed in AK with an official statement - maphack. This means he managed to uncover the map somehow
P.S. although this was a long time ago, maybe they played without passwords back then
Moving on to point 2
if someone somehow figured out how to crack saves, would they bother so much with the grail? Maybe they would take other information from the game? Cons-Dragon Utopia and their contents, the opponent's location on the map, and so on?
When your opponent is right there in the open, then of course the first thing you'll dig for is the grail ? :D Or rather, the whole map and the opponent
And I added in that sentence that a password generator should be used, instead of using 3-4 characters, which can simply be quickly cycled through via brute force. But that's not the main point. The main point I already wrote in the paragraph above.
За то что нейтралы не бегают за единичкой, для меня это уже стоит того