immortalDMB
Auto-translated
For me, the armor was actually quite useful because the archers attack once, so slowing effects and other debuffs from "Slow" fall without spending mana or casting in the first round. Then, you can cast "Berserk" or something else useful for victory...
And also, the AI is dumb: if you cast "Slow" on it, but don't overdo it with buffing your own units or further debuffing its stacks, it acts very foolishly and doesn't dispel or heal everything...
It's also possible to win without fire magic and expert "Berserk," but I would still prefer to invest in intelligence rather than ranged attack.
Or, you could skip attack and invest in ranged attack, but I haven't tried that, as there are only a few ranged units at the beginning, and the focus is still on melee combat.
As they say, to each their own..., but I'll still try to convince you - I'm leveling up a warrior with water and earth magic on this map (you can't do without them here). But the mana shortage was only a problem while I was fighting the first three purple cities; after that, there were no problems at all (but with fire magic, mana constantly drains), and the battles are quick - the only battle that lasted longer than 5 minutes was against the dwarven king, holed up in the Palace-in-the-Mountain, and even that didn't last long.
Without attack, I wouldn't have a chance in a battle with Solmyr because he mows down ranged units with titans.
And also with the dwarven king - I only defeated him by buying monsters (before that, I tried with archangels + champions + heavy crossbowmen and fanatics - no chance; you need to quickly eliminate the gold dragons, or you'll quickly run out of ranged units, and then ranged attacks won't be of much use.
And after defeating Lomocron, a quick march to Drakarosh, where you encounter Yorogos with a cloak. The goal is to blind the storm lord and eliminate the cyclops and red dragons + the catapult in the first turn; otherwise, you'll suffer losses, and I don't really see how to eliminate them without ranged attacks.