bolotnik
Auto-translated
Happy holidays to everyone!
It's been a while since anyone posted any walkthroughs here, so I'll post one, but at the same time, I'll allow myself to give some tips for map makers.
1. Savage grin.
The map was taken from our forum.
I want to say right away that the map is very simple; there is nothing complicated about it. The author states that you must defeat the main enemy, Lucifer, within 666 days—this timeframe is simply gigantic and it's impossible not to make it, moreover, enemies are killed one by one, and we will have a wonderful opportunity to get snipers, wizards, and some types of dragonlings.
I started on maximum difficulty as Rampart with the hero Kyrr. At first, we already have a good army, but we need to capture the Rampart, which is guarded by an azure dragon and 2 wizards. To do this more optimally and better, I recommend not attacking the city immediately, but giving the same magic and earth books to the passage guard, freeing a hero with troops from prison, combining everything into one army, attacking the city with the main force, and sending the freed hero on reconnaissance.
All battles with the 7 gold dragons at the beginning are completed quickly and without losses, so it's very fast to reclaim all mines and resources, fully build up your own city and another native Rampart that we reach via portal, and then the blue (Castle) was easily and calmly defeated; you could have chosen to play as them too.
I'll talk more about a bug on this map.
Since no single battle forced me to strain, everything was broken through quickly and easily, moreover, practically without losses, it's best to talk about the bug and the dishonest AI gameplay.
The brown computer plays as wizards. In the end, several of its heroes used the fly spell without actually having it. Maybe they learned it somewhere, but I strongly doubt this, because after that I checked the map in the editor—globally, fly is not forbidden, but it has been removed from all cities and wizard guilds, meaning it's impossible to learn fly anywhere; after victory over brown, I confirmed he had no angel wings.
What happened was this: after I built up all castles and bought the strongest possible army from Ramparts and Castles, my 3rd Rampart—where you can't place a Stronghold—was captured by some brown hero using fly. When I went to reclaim the city with my entire horde, the main brown hero, Fafnir, attacked me via town portal and was crushed; I received valuable artifacts from him, including shackles and an admiral's hat (the computer had taken it from me earlier), as I played very slowly, using only one hero—Kyrr.
The walkthrough of the map is very linear, empty, and boring....
The map is declared XL, but in reality, there is no saturation or fullness of artifacts, troops, quests, and everything else.
Moreover, there are neutral cities on the map—Necropolises—that cannot be captured, but their shroud is terribly annoying as they hide significant parts of the map. I had to keep a hero at every observatory for convenience; otherwise, playing because of these "smokestacks" is very uncomfortable. Yes, this is an author's quirk: placing smokestacks to cover things that don't need covering (land view plus observatories—the smokestacks are pointless).
Then there's another useless bit—the first quest (give the passage guard magic books of earth and water); I completely failed to see the point of it. Well, we give them; still, not a single spell is used in battle during the 1st week.... What's the point of giving books and setting a quest? My opinion: just put it there for the sake of having something.
Map: if you look at the map drawing—yes, the drawing looks beautiful, like a toothy maw—but if you play on such a map, you immediately realize its absurdity: running for several days along a long and empty road with small branches containing one or two objects.
And what's more depressing is that only blue and red contact each other, and after that, it's a one-sided game.
By the way, I upgraded archers to snipers and wizards only before attacking orange; until then, everything was easily killed by archangels, gold dragons, champions, unicorns, elves, and archers.
Tips for map makers:
look at this map so you don't do such nonsense with useless quests or one-sided gameplay—there is no interest, no difficulty....
don't chase a beautiful map image; the actual gameplay on the map, its fullness, and detail are more important.
And 666 days is an obvious overkill; moreover, I checked in the editor, it turns out that on the 666th day, the last orange one is given 4k phoenixes....
The map can be completed significantly faster than even 12 months; I'm sure it can easily be finished in less than 6 months.
Walkthrough result: 230 days Score 480.
At the same time, for almost a month I really did nothing, and I ran everywhere with 1 hero; also, not all of blue's and brown's heroes were killed (there are sanctuaries on the map where these pests sometimes crawl into, and it was too lazy to finish them off on water), plus there are neutral cities that cannot be captured. This means a maximum score cannot be achieved.
And I attach a screenshot of the final battle with the main enemy.
2. Clash of titans.
I know for sure that this map and its problem with killing 4k ghost dragons at the end have already been discussed somewhere on the forum.
I would like to talk about this map in more detail now, considering it specifically as an anti-example and an anti-map to emulate.
The map is well-known and popular, but terribly unbalanced, crooked, and—excuse my expression—"hardcore/grindy".
The author of this map decided that the player should have minimum space for movement, while the map should be stuffed with everything to the brim...
1st. Cruel and terrible imbalance.
I completed it as swamp, but also played other colors.
So, starting as green is very fast, easy, and simple; we first have room for maneuver, the ability to immediately join 100 centaurs and go fight, reclaim resources, etc.
As red, it's a bit worse, but better and more spirited than others.
Worst of all is orange.
There, to exit the city, you must fight 50 level-3 creatures that can spawn as anything (grand elves, royal griffins); to break through them adequately at 200%, you'll have to skip a turn or two, buying troops for attack...
And in principle, not everyone is equal in starting conditions, so as green and red, you can reach victory much faster due to better start conditions.
2nd. Meaningless quests.
There are such idiotic quests:
- bring a thousand beavers... we only have 4 external dwellings of beavers, receiving +10 to sp for the quest... isn't that absurd... specifically collecting beavers to get + stats when stats on the map swell and grow extremely fast due to the huge amount of everything....
There is simply no point in listing anything further...
3rd. Huge number of troops.
Unfortunately, many authors still don't understand that a large number of troops doesn't add difficulty or make the walkthrough more interesting; it only adds time costs and nothing more.
The whole map is just swelling and bursting from an excess of hundreds and thousands of neutrals in one or multiple stacks....
And there's no point, as we also get and collect crowds of troops....
In the end, everything is blown to pieces without losses.
For example, a quest: 5 thousand nomads, 5 thousand nomads, and 1 thousand mummies; this horde is killed using magic (including berserk, blindness, slow, etc.) with much smaller forces and quite confidently, and in reward they give 1000 snipers (1k SNIPERS CARL!!!)
And after that, everything becomes as easy as can be with them; you just clear everything...
4th. Interest in completing or re-completing.
This is related to difficulty, plot, detail, variability, and so on.
But there's little interest in completing this creation.
Running around with thousands of snipers, wizards, hydras, wyverns, etc., isn't particularly interesting; everything falls easily, quickly, and without losses....
This map can be viewed as a failed and negative example of map building.
5th. Artifacts.
Everything you want and in any quantity: angel alliance: at least 2, the rest are collected just as easily. Everything will simply burst from an excess of artifacts.
But the question is, what for and why?
It seems to me that troops and artifacts appear in abundance because map makers look at standard maps where often not even 100 level-5 or 6 creatures are collected, let alone level 7, and many artifacts are missing; they want to play around with this, so they create such maps where there is an overabundance of all this.
Dragon utopias, just lying artifacts, those obtained in pandoras, in prisons together with heroes, etc.
Again, there's no point in this.
7th. Hero leveling.
Here you can actually get a hero to level 99 and even more, give all stats 99 and then have them reset (a known and still unpatched bug where if a hero gets 99 stats, these stats can be increased further and will soon reset, starting the same process over).
What's the point of this?
What idea did the author have for such a possibility?
To try and see how Kyrr runs at level 75 with expert logistics, expert pathfinding, boosted on a phoenix with all artifacts for +logistics and +speed ???
Or how Tazar's and Mephala's troops at level 58 cannot be broken through???
There is no point in insane hero leveling. Everything should be balanced and justified.
8th. Strategic and tactical components.
There should be room and space for maneuvers, various paths and walkthrough options; besides variability, there should also be some variety of quests, battles with AI, neutrals, and objects.
Here they just crammed in everything possible; beautifully crammed, with a sense and knowledge of the matter, but in the end, it turned out to be something else, not a good map.
9th. Choice of starting heroes.
I generally don't like it when others choose who I play (quest-RPG character with plot not counted, that's justified there, but in strategic maps, the player should always have a choice).
Here, not only is no choice given, but heroes are also assigned so that everyone is not on equal terms at the very beginning.
Green gets Mephala, which is very good since the defense bonus is a great plus and very useful, and the hero is one of the best for Rampart.
But what does red get for Castle—Katerina, a specialist in swordsmen, who isn't exactly a striking stack for Castle...
Others also receive quite debatable heroes; it seems good, but someone else might prefer something different; it's a matter of taste and it's better, of course, to give the person a choice.
10th. You shouldn't lock enemies in completely; it's better to make them a quest passage guard for thousands of resources that are given by an event in the required month, then there will be interest, or think of something more original, but completely locking away the enemy's main hero is sad and boring.
The main enemy, even if locked tight at his own "respawn", can be given 10 thousand azure dragons; it won't change the situation... He will be defeated either way.
Now for some walkthrough tips, if you still don't mind spending time on this creation.
1. How to kill 4k ghost drags.
The simplest thing. Use 100k grand skeletons or thousands of grand liches (if you want to collect a PKN, I kept it in disassembled form)!!!! the easiest option.
Free Galtran from prison, then send him with troops and artifacts to mow down skeletons, killing all these legions; he will slice through simple skeletons, which will later be upgraded in the mound at the fort into skeleton warriors. You can easily collect nearly 100k.
There is a pandora with 54k imps—you can raise more than a thousand skeletons there, etc.
Plus Galtran will level up so that his skeletons hit like level 4-6 and will wipe out these 4k drags and Haart without blinking.
And the legions guarding Inferno and Necropolis—also kill them with a necromancer with expert necromancy and artifacts for +necromancy.
Second option—hit-and-run.
Fly can be obtained on the map, so there's no point in opening the last tower and releasing Haart; just fly over the tower, enter a sanctuary, stay overnight, capture Necropolises the next day, and run back to the sanctuary.
Then exit with heroes via TP and start hit-and-run with Armageddon, Fireball, or you can even use Titan's Thunder to strike without spending mana (we will have plenty of money and resources by that point).
Third option.
In a fair fight. The hardest, but quite possible to do.
Gather all your thousands of most powerful stacks and attack; it's hard, but an option.
As an option, when he has only 1 stack of dragons left under slow, use berserk and hit with Titan's Thunder so as to spend mana on renewing the slow, while moving your flyers away from him in a triangular route (the main thing is not to use the wait button; I don't know why, but after waiting, berserk somehow disappears, mass dispel is used, and dragons crash into the flyers).
Fourth hardcore option.
Let Haart run around and kindly leave him a boat.
Wait for his stats to reset or when his 4k dragons move from his 99-99 stats to the city or other heroes.
In the end, having all cities, the whole map, and clouds of troops, there are zero problems dealing with Haart.
2. Whirlpools.
I'm not discovering America for anyone here: you give a single level-1 unit to the whirlpool and fly through without losses to your main troops.
A single unit is separated, and during the whirlpool teleport, only that one is lost. Thus, you can very quickly move straight to the AI and kill them.
3. Against the ally.
So this pest doesn't get in the way, it's better to lock him up.
Start a hero in his city and leave them there; ideally, if the ally's hero is in the garrison rather than on the map, then no one will bother you and you can definitely capture everything calmly yourself.
4. Rush.
Free your heroes as quickly as possible and knock computers out of the game as fast as possible. Then clean up the map when no one bothers you.
It's also desirable to get a town portal faster; for this, it's enough to quickly beat red, blue, and green—there will definitely be a town portal somewhere there.
5. Diplomacy.
When no one bothers us anymore, we have a bunch of cities and their number is only growing, money and resources are plenty, then start digging for diplomats in the tavern (one is enough).
Then calmly level him up (there are many trees for levels and libraries for stats), and further join the native troops we need with his help; for example, as swamp, there's a place with hundreds of monarch wyverns and own-units, where you can practically join almost all of them with diplomats—the main thing is to give him troops several times stronger and more numerous than these monarch wyv, and don't forget to add the wyv themselves.
Of course, not everyone joins, but many neutrals can be joined this way.
6. Pandoras.
Most are fought quite calmly using magic and troops, but you still need to hit them all; however, it's better to save before taking each pandora.
Pandoras really have valuable and useful things for the walkthrough. But again, the balance of pandora guards and their rewards, as well as the timeliness of obtaining all this, is not regulated by the map author at all.
7. Playing with 6 heroes.
Keep all good heroes in garrisons; level some up, then others. We always have 8 heroes available in the window on the map, but we only play with 6.
2 heroes stay in the ally's cities either until the end when we attack Haart, or when we've gone back and cleared the whole map to zero and the ally can no longer get anything there. They keep him so there is no competition or interference.
Result:
My game glitched when I decided to boost Galtran and placed 80+ thousand grand skeletons and everything else except azure dragons in a city...
Almost all skeletons disappeared, and further on, due to the excess of troops, there are various freezes and instabilities on the map.
Overall, the map isn't cleared quickly, but you can manage and complete it in about 8-9 months; maybe it's even possible to finish it faster.
It's been a while since anyone posted any walkthroughs here, so I'll post one, but at the same time, I'll allow myself to give some tips for map makers.
1. Savage grin.
The map was taken from our forum.
I want to say right away that the map is very simple; there is nothing complicated about it. The author states that you must defeat the main enemy, Lucifer, within 666 days—this timeframe is simply gigantic and it's impossible not to make it, moreover, enemies are killed one by one, and we will have a wonderful opportunity to get snipers, wizards, and some types of dragonlings.
I started on maximum difficulty as Rampart with the hero Kyrr. At first, we already have a good army, but we need to capture the Rampart, which is guarded by an azure dragon and 2 wizards. To do this more optimally and better, I recommend not attacking the city immediately, but giving the same magic and earth books to the passage guard, freeing a hero with troops from prison, combining everything into one army, attacking the city with the main force, and sending the freed hero on reconnaissance.
All battles with the 7 gold dragons at the beginning are completed quickly and without losses, so it's very fast to reclaim all mines and resources, fully build up your own city and another native Rampart that we reach via portal, and then the blue (Castle) was easily and calmly defeated; you could have chosen to play as them too.
I'll talk more about a bug on this map.
Since no single battle forced me to strain, everything was broken through quickly and easily, moreover, practically without losses, it's best to talk about the bug and the dishonest AI gameplay.
The brown computer plays as wizards. In the end, several of its heroes used the fly spell without actually having it. Maybe they learned it somewhere, but I strongly doubt this, because after that I checked the map in the editor—globally, fly is not forbidden, but it has been removed from all cities and wizard guilds, meaning it's impossible to learn fly anywhere; after victory over brown, I confirmed he had no angel wings.
What happened was this: after I built up all castles and bought the strongest possible army from Ramparts and Castles, my 3rd Rampart—where you can't place a Stronghold—was captured by some brown hero using fly. When I went to reclaim the city with my entire horde, the main brown hero, Fafnir, attacked me via town portal and was crushed; I received valuable artifacts from him, including shackles and an admiral's hat (the computer had taken it from me earlier), as I played very slowly, using only one hero—Kyrr.
The walkthrough of the map is very linear, empty, and boring....
The map is declared XL, but in reality, there is no saturation or fullness of artifacts, troops, quests, and everything else.
Moreover, there are neutral cities on the map—Necropolises—that cannot be captured, but their shroud is terribly annoying as they hide significant parts of the map. I had to keep a hero at every observatory for convenience; otherwise, playing because of these "smokestacks" is very uncomfortable. Yes, this is an author's quirk: placing smokestacks to cover things that don't need covering (land view plus observatories—the smokestacks are pointless).
Then there's another useless bit—the first quest (give the passage guard magic books of earth and water); I completely failed to see the point of it. Well, we give them; still, not a single spell is used in battle during the 1st week.... What's the point of giving books and setting a quest? My opinion: just put it there for the sake of having something.
Map: if you look at the map drawing—yes, the drawing looks beautiful, like a toothy maw—but if you play on such a map, you immediately realize its absurdity: running for several days along a long and empty road with small branches containing one or two objects.
And what's more depressing is that only blue and red contact each other, and after that, it's a one-sided game.
By the way, I upgraded archers to snipers and wizards only before attacking orange; until then, everything was easily killed by archangels, gold dragons, champions, unicorns, elves, and archers.
Tips for map makers:
look at this map so you don't do such nonsense with useless quests or one-sided gameplay—there is no interest, no difficulty....
don't chase a beautiful map image; the actual gameplay on the map, its fullness, and detail are more important.
And 666 days is an obvious overkill; moreover, I checked in the editor, it turns out that on the 666th day, the last orange one is given 4k phoenixes....
The map can be completed significantly faster than even 12 months; I'm sure it can easily be finished in less than 6 months.
Walkthrough result: 230 days Score 480.
At the same time, for almost a month I really did nothing, and I ran everywhere with 1 hero; also, not all of blue's and brown's heroes were killed (there are sanctuaries on the map where these pests sometimes crawl into, and it was too lazy to finish them off on water), plus there are neutral cities that cannot be captured. This means a maximum score cannot be achieved.
And I attach a screenshot of the final battle with the main enemy.
2. Clash of titans.
I know for sure that this map and its problem with killing 4k ghost dragons at the end have already been discussed somewhere on the forum.
I would like to talk about this map in more detail now, considering it specifically as an anti-example and an anti-map to emulate.
The map is well-known and popular, but terribly unbalanced, crooked, and—excuse my expression—"hardcore/grindy".
The author of this map decided that the player should have minimum space for movement, while the map should be stuffed with everything to the brim...
1st. Cruel and terrible imbalance.
I completed it as swamp, but also played other colors.
So, starting as green is very fast, easy, and simple; we first have room for maneuver, the ability to immediately join 100 centaurs and go fight, reclaim resources, etc.
As red, it's a bit worse, but better and more spirited than others.
Worst of all is orange.
There, to exit the city, you must fight 50 level-3 creatures that can spawn as anything (grand elves, royal griffins); to break through them adequately at 200%, you'll have to skip a turn or two, buying troops for attack...
And in principle, not everyone is equal in starting conditions, so as green and red, you can reach victory much faster due to better start conditions.
2nd. Meaningless quests.
There are such idiotic quests:
- bring a thousand beavers... we only have 4 external dwellings of beavers, receiving +10 to sp for the quest... isn't that absurd... specifically collecting beavers to get + stats when stats on the map swell and grow extremely fast due to the huge amount of everything....
There is simply no point in listing anything further...
3rd. Huge number of troops.
Unfortunately, many authors still don't understand that a large number of troops doesn't add difficulty or make the walkthrough more interesting; it only adds time costs and nothing more.
The whole map is just swelling and bursting from an excess of hundreds and thousands of neutrals in one or multiple stacks....
And there's no point, as we also get and collect crowds of troops....
In the end, everything is blown to pieces without losses.
For example, a quest: 5 thousand nomads, 5 thousand nomads, and 1 thousand mummies; this horde is killed using magic (including berserk, blindness, slow, etc.) with much smaller forces and quite confidently, and in reward they give 1000 snipers (1k SNIPERS CARL!!!)
And after that, everything becomes as easy as can be with them; you just clear everything...
4th. Interest in completing or re-completing.
This is related to difficulty, plot, detail, variability, and so on.
But there's little interest in completing this creation.
Running around with thousands of snipers, wizards, hydras, wyverns, etc., isn't particularly interesting; everything falls easily, quickly, and without losses....
This map can be viewed as a failed and negative example of map building.
5th. Artifacts.
Everything you want and in any quantity: angel alliance: at least 2, the rest are collected just as easily. Everything will simply burst from an excess of artifacts.
But the question is, what for and why?
It seems to me that troops and artifacts appear in abundance because map makers look at standard maps where often not even 100 level-5 or 6 creatures are collected, let alone level 7, and many artifacts are missing; they want to play around with this, so they create such maps where there is an overabundance of all this.
Dragon utopias, just lying artifacts, those obtained in pandoras, in prisons together with heroes, etc.
Again, there's no point in this.
7th. Hero leveling.
Here you can actually get a hero to level 99 and even more, give all stats 99 and then have them reset (a known and still unpatched bug where if a hero gets 99 stats, these stats can be increased further and will soon reset, starting the same process over).
What's the point of this?
What idea did the author have for such a possibility?
To try and see how Kyrr runs at level 75 with expert logistics, expert pathfinding, boosted on a phoenix with all artifacts for +logistics and +speed ???
Or how Tazar's and Mephala's troops at level 58 cannot be broken through???
There is no point in insane hero leveling. Everything should be balanced and justified.
8th. Strategic and tactical components.
There should be room and space for maneuvers, various paths and walkthrough options; besides variability, there should also be some variety of quests, battles with AI, neutrals, and objects.
Here they just crammed in everything possible; beautifully crammed, with a sense and knowledge of the matter, but in the end, it turned out to be something else, not a good map.
9th. Choice of starting heroes.
I generally don't like it when others choose who I play (quest-RPG character with plot not counted, that's justified there, but in strategic maps, the player should always have a choice).
Here, not only is no choice given, but heroes are also assigned so that everyone is not on equal terms at the very beginning.
Green gets Mephala, which is very good since the defense bonus is a great plus and very useful, and the hero is one of the best for Rampart.
But what does red get for Castle—Katerina, a specialist in swordsmen, who isn't exactly a striking stack for Castle...
Others also receive quite debatable heroes; it seems good, but someone else might prefer something different; it's a matter of taste and it's better, of course, to give the person a choice.
10th. You shouldn't lock enemies in completely; it's better to make them a quest passage guard for thousands of resources that are given by an event in the required month, then there will be interest, or think of something more original, but completely locking away the enemy's main hero is sad and boring.
The main enemy, even if locked tight at his own "respawn", can be given 10 thousand azure dragons; it won't change the situation... He will be defeated either way.
Now for some walkthrough tips, if you still don't mind spending time on this creation.
1. How to kill 4k ghost drags.
The simplest thing. Use 100k grand skeletons or thousands of grand liches (if you want to collect a PKN, I kept it in disassembled form)!!!! the easiest option.
Free Galtran from prison, then send him with troops and artifacts to mow down skeletons, killing all these legions; he will slice through simple skeletons, which will later be upgraded in the mound at the fort into skeleton warriors. You can easily collect nearly 100k.
There is a pandora with 54k imps—you can raise more than a thousand skeletons there, etc.
Plus Galtran will level up so that his skeletons hit like level 4-6 and will wipe out these 4k drags and Haart without blinking.
And the legions guarding Inferno and Necropolis—also kill them with a necromancer with expert necromancy and artifacts for +necromancy.
Second option—hit-and-run.
Fly can be obtained on the map, so there's no point in opening the last tower and releasing Haart; just fly over the tower, enter a sanctuary, stay overnight, capture Necropolises the next day, and run back to the sanctuary.
Then exit with heroes via TP and start hit-and-run with Armageddon, Fireball, or you can even use Titan's Thunder to strike without spending mana (we will have plenty of money and resources by that point).
Third option.
In a fair fight. The hardest, but quite possible to do.
Gather all your thousands of most powerful stacks and attack; it's hard, but an option.
As an option, when he has only 1 stack of dragons left under slow, use berserk and hit with Titan's Thunder so as to spend mana on renewing the slow, while moving your flyers away from him in a triangular route (the main thing is not to use the wait button; I don't know why, but after waiting, berserk somehow disappears, mass dispel is used, and dragons crash into the flyers).
Fourth hardcore option.
Let Haart run around and kindly leave him a boat.
Wait for his stats to reset or when his 4k dragons move from his 99-99 stats to the city or other heroes.
In the end, having all cities, the whole map, and clouds of troops, there are zero problems dealing with Haart.
2. Whirlpools.
I'm not discovering America for anyone here: you give a single level-1 unit to the whirlpool and fly through without losses to your main troops.
A single unit is separated, and during the whirlpool teleport, only that one is lost. Thus, you can very quickly move straight to the AI and kill them.
3. Against the ally.
So this pest doesn't get in the way, it's better to lock him up.
Start a hero in his city and leave them there; ideally, if the ally's hero is in the garrison rather than on the map, then no one will bother you and you can definitely capture everything calmly yourself.
4. Rush.
Free your heroes as quickly as possible and knock computers out of the game as fast as possible. Then clean up the map when no one bothers you.
It's also desirable to get a town portal faster; for this, it's enough to quickly beat red, blue, and green—there will definitely be a town portal somewhere there.
5. Diplomacy.
When no one bothers us anymore, we have a bunch of cities and their number is only growing, money and resources are plenty, then start digging for diplomats in the tavern (one is enough).
Then calmly level him up (there are many trees for levels and libraries for stats), and further join the native troops we need with his help; for example, as swamp, there's a place with hundreds of monarch wyverns and own-units, where you can practically join almost all of them with diplomats—the main thing is to give him troops several times stronger and more numerous than these monarch wyv, and don't forget to add the wyv themselves.
Of course, not everyone joins, but many neutrals can be joined this way.
6. Pandoras.
Most are fought quite calmly using magic and troops, but you still need to hit them all; however, it's better to save before taking each pandora.
Pandoras really have valuable and useful things for the walkthrough. But again, the balance of pandora guards and their rewards, as well as the timeliness of obtaining all this, is not regulated by the map author at all.
7. Playing with 6 heroes.
Keep all good heroes in garrisons; level some up, then others. We always have 8 heroes available in the window on the map, but we only play with 6.
2 heroes stay in the ally's cities either until the end when we attack Haart, or when we've gone back and cleared the whole map to zero and the ally can no longer get anything there. They keep him so there is no competition or interference.
Result:
My game glitched when I decided to boost Galtran and placed 80+ thousand grand skeletons and everything else except azure dragons in a city...
Almost all skeletons disappeared, and further on, due to the excess of troops, there are various freezes and instabilities on the map.
Overall, the map isn't cleared quickly, but you can manage and complete it in about 8-9 months; maybe it's even possible to finish it faster.