FireCool
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I should have taken the breastplate of immense power; I think that's what it's called. It gives +2 to strength, which is good, since I'm playing as a mage. :)
The mission is just as tedious as it was when playing as Markel, when you have to capture the Academy castles instead. I played it with a hero, and in the first week, I was also bothered by minor enemies. After I dealt with them, a more serious necromancer showed up at the end of the week, but he wasn't stronger than my Zehir, so I easily sent him packing. That's where the difficulty ended. After that, it was just a routine of clearing endless neutral creatures for experience, and most of them never run away. Someone here also mentioned phoenixes. I'm already on mission 4, but I haven't found any phoenixes at all during this time, which is a shame, because I usually only level up Zehir with summons. In other cases, I take other skills.
I captured Al-Safir last. Before that, I took Mythgard, and I could have finished the mission faster, but as usual, something got in the way. I didn't have the Phantom Creation spell in my spellbook, and it was on one of the islands, so I had to spend time and sail there specifically to learn it. I spent more than a week on that.
The battle with Al-Safir didn't seem that difficult because I had the Unicorn Horn Bow. Of course, there were twice as many titans as I had, but I didn't worry about it because I had a lot of archliches, spectral dragons, and higher vampires in my army. It would be a sin to waste such useful undead creatures, so I replaced them instead of golems, rakshasas, and gargoyles.
PS: The replay is attached