Heroes 5.5 WarGame Edition - Tactical Edition.

In the first week, it's not always possible to even leave the starting zone. Not because of the movement range, but because of the guards; the neutrals can be strong.

I consider maps where you can't leave the starting zone, not just in the first week, but even in the first few days, to be terrible. What's the point of crowding a bunch of heroes in the starting zone with zero scouting when you could explore at least 3-4 zones and gather a lot of interesting information, play out some early skirmishes? The starting zone isn't going anywhere; you can clear it later with other heroes. Not only is scouting affected, but also expansion – cities captured after the first week are already significantly weaker compared to the starting one.

I want to note that accelerating the timeline isn't about playing a rush strategy; it's literally the same gameplay, but with all the delays and stagnation removed. It's the essence, undiluted.

A huge random map with strong neutrals will simply ruin this concept, regardless of how quickly the players want to play.

With strong neutrals, it's unlikely to be beneficial to accumulate troops; under such conditions, other strategies like artillery, magic, or hero-based attacks (in offense), and even ranged units, will play out very well. Magic is much stronger here; a single debuff can halve the damage of an entire stack – and this debuff is applied during a spell attack (offense). Or 50% stun (instead of 10% in the original) – this means that a hero plays as well as, or even better than, half of the strongest stack. In any magic school, I can give examples where it will provide a significantly greater bonus than waiting for troops to gather. Strong neutrals mean that it's initially advantageous to focus on control magic (debuffs, stuns); strong neutrals mean more experience; more experience means the mage levels up faster and invests levels where? in magic. Why bother with troop gathering? Specialized heroes will simply roll over the neutrals, regardless of their numbers, exploit the AI's stupidity, and then gradually build up an army in the cities for the endgame. In fact, you can see something similar in TE (where the neutrals are very strong, and the game lasts 4-6 weeks, and the maps are always huge), but we have even more opportunities to cheat by exploiting the strong neutrals, due to the powerful perks/magic. But "Troop Gathering" definitely cannot be considered a useful perk for such a strategy.

And yet, okay, let's assume that with extremely short timelines, a 10% troop gathering bonus per week doesn't work. But what's the problem with giving a bonus to city growth? What's lost by doing that?

1) It's unclear to which city to tie it: there are many; there may also be several heroes with this perk.
2) The hero gives a bonus to the city, but not to their own army.
3) There's a significant delay: you take the skill on Monday, but you only get the benefit a week later (if the game hasn't ended by then); this significantly devalues it.
4) The current solution is simpler, more elegant, and more interesting