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A couple of months ago, I played a game on a small map as Inferno against Castle. I started in the underground, but I got a good starting position; one secondary town was near a free guard post, and my opponent didn't have a quick way to reach it. We only met on day 142.
I started with Marius, but then I got Brissa, so I decided to switch to her, even though my main hero was already level 5. My opponent wasn't weak, meaning he could easily reach town 131 with a group of archers and deal significant damage. But in this game, I was the favorite, so he waited, ran around the treasures, and so on. Not for long, though. :-)
In terms of buildings, I went for fast imps (gogs were already built) and started upgrading two spells for demonology. And that's when my fairy tale began. Surprisingly, on the surface, I found my own secondary town with a pit guard (my opponent also had one), but it was a bit late, around day 123. On day 121, I bought everything from the pit guard and didn't upgrade any goats. By day 131, I had over 30 pit fiends, and with them and other creatures, I went to the treasure. The treasure gave me two chests with creatures; one had 60 snakes, and the other had 30 snakes (it was a swamp treasure, but the scout was leveled up, which turned out to be great). From this, I made additional goats. As a result, on day 141, I bought everything and went to the main town with 230 goats.
I can't say that I was particularly lucky; the guards were strong, and the passage to the secondary town was 78 (!) gnomes, which I even lost to once. Usually, there are smaller hordes, but I tried to break through on the first week. It was difficult, to say the least. For an Inferno start, it's terrible. You need to take Ignatus and upgrade imps on the first week; the total speed becomes 9, and almost no other infantry has that speed. But it's hard to choose; Ignatus is weak, sometimes you can't find a folder, it would be better to have a mage, of course, Brissa saved me with her mass haste, and the goats ran almost all over the map. Skeletons would be more pleasant.
The pros and cons are listed above, but if you get a Necromancer, level him up. It's better to have heroes like Izra or Galtaran, of course, but sometimes even Clavius is enough because of his offense, which doesn't hinder skeletons, plus he has a high chance of getting logistics. Here, it's not so much about which town you play as it is about your ability to play in general. But I agree that, under equal conditions (and hoping for chests with snakes is at least foolish), this castle loses even to the Tower, let alone others.
P.S. Fixes are a separate story; you need to study them first and then play, and not the other way around. I used to be into it, but now if I play, it's in some old, good campaign like Eternal Love