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I finished the first map, it turned out to be very tedious and uninteresting. The idea is good, but due to the large territory and limited level, I didn't even fully develop the logistics, and moving around the entire map in an attempt to level up the hero took too long. I played on hard difficulty with a hero, but I didn't really understand what made it hard – I entered into battle on the first map exactly 4 times (when I brought heroes to the castles). In all other cases, even when the enemy army seemed a little larger than mine, the following happened: I started slowly shooting down the enemy with snipers, the hero makes one physical attack on a stack of one peasant, kills him, and runs away, and this happened about 20 times. The author really messed up with the AI programming. It would have been worth giving the hero the "Shackles of Fate" at the start, otherwise all battles are automatically won on hard difficulty, so what about soft difficulty?))
In fact, with the starting army, I took all the surface castles right away, and if I hadn't bothered with exploring the territory and leveling up, I would have taken the underground castle right away too.
Just in case: before starting, I deleted everything from the maps folder, the map version is the latest, and I don't have megaAI (although I probably should try playing with it so that there aren't any easy wins).
P.S.: for some reason, the starting castle doesn't have any city history, castle name, or, most importantly, a SPECIAL BONUS for the castle. There don't seem to be any other flaws on the first map, I'll try the second one...
Added after 20 hours 34 minutes
I finished the second map on hard difficulty with a hero, the map is very interesting and original, I liked it. It wasn't for nothing that I leveled up the hero in the first one – after the first victory over the sorceress, everyone started running in a group, not towards the hero, but away from him. I defeated the enemy through attrition; as soon as the armies became large enough that the secondary heroes could defend themselves and reliably guard the castle and surrounding territories. Again, I didn't hesitate to level up the hero to the maximum, level 22, and he turned out to be a powerful character.
The map is as easy as the first one, but it's more exciting and not tedious. Now it's time for the third one...