Revived

I played a bit – as recommended, I used a “hero” and, in the first two weeks, managed to capture everything before entering the portal, defeat the Red Demon, crush the monks, enter the portal, and capture my Castle.
First impressions:
1. I didn’t notice any particular hardcore difficulty. Rather, the difficulty was there until I realized that you can hire Death Knights in the mausoleum. At first, I did everything the same way but without Death Knights – I defeated everyone except the Archangels guarding the tent (including the Red Demon and the monks) and crawled into the portal with a couple of ghosts, but then I discovered that further progress is impossible without defeating the Archangels guarding the turquoise tent :(, so I had to replay. After hiring the Death Knights, repeating all of this with almost no losses turned out to be much easier.
2. I really didn’t like that I had to have the addict learn Light magic – for him, this is a violation of his nature; in other words, it’s a waste of several levels, because “light” is useless to him in battles against light creatures – it’s like giving a fish an umbrella. Darkness, logistics, attack, and chaos would be most effective for him (at worst, summoning could replace chaos).
3. The outposts guarding the portals from which the Red Demon can appear are very uneven in strength. The one without Archangels is much stronger in battle against this opponent because it has griffins that know “Strike from Above” – they more than compensate for the demon’s artillery. With them, you can easily defeat the demon’s fire elementals and imps, and the archers, protected by swordsmen, can easily take down the Archdevil from close range. After that, everything depends on your desire – you can defeat the demon, or you can let him emerge with a couple of demons to be torn apart by Nicholas.
But if the Red Demon emerges through the outpost with the Archangels, he will break through it in any case because it has no artillery for fighting at a distance (archers against the demon himself, and ballistas and fire elementals are generally “useless”). And then, in order to defeat him (the demon with the remnants of his army) without losses, Nicholas has to work hard.
4. There is a lot of rigidity in development – in order to avoid losses, you have to follow only a strictly regulated combat path: 1. mages – 2. demonesses – 3. golems – 4. gremlins – 5. dogs – 6. imps – 7. crusaders (after that, it depends on where the demon appears).