Posts from Start on "Hero".

I just like the design of the Academy, and the "evilness" of the demons, but unfortunately, it's difficult to play as these two factions.

Well, I wouldn't say that Academy is difficult. There's a period when you have a lot of troops but not enough hero units, and during this period, the mage hero is the weakest.
And Academy heroes would always benefit from a powerful starting spell, which is another advantage of the Stronghold and Fortress. In the Chaos guild, it might not even appear.
And developing an Inferno faction isn't necessarily difficult, but it's very long and tedious.

I played as Inferno, and at the beginning, I lost a lot of demons, but in the end, I won against an elf in a close battle, and the rest were weak. But I tried playing as Academy again, and something is missing; I can't seem to play well with them:(

When I was just starting to play Heroes, I also thought that mages were the weakest, and I couldn't play them properly. But then I managed to play them well too. In general, you can come up with many tricks with the "Wizard's Sign" and any school of magic.
Although, even so, I don't particularly like playing as this race; it's definitely not among my favorites.

The gimmick with this artifact is that it consumes twice as much mana, but in a way, it also saves you extra turns. However, until you have a ton of knowledge and artifacts, you'll struggle, especially with a less-than-ideal army.

At the beginning, all factions may face some challenges, and there's no way around it. Mages, however, start with more knowledge, and it's primarily this that grows. Usually, there aren't any major problems with mana. If needed, you might have to spend some time in the town or find a well. Dark Knights have much more trouble with mana. And for tanking damage, there are Gargoyles. They may not deal much damage, but they are durable and fast. Single Gargoyles can quickly block archers and protect the main stacks from infantry units.
If you want to minimize losses, then you should focus on upgrading magic of light and building guilds. As you know, light is one of the two primary schools for mages, and it will definitely be available in every guild in the town. If you're lucky and get regeneration on the second level of a guild, you can play with almost no losses or with minimal losses. It can be learned even without having the magic of light, but it will be much more effective with it. Also, thanks to the library, the arsenal of magic will be larger.

Wouldn't you mind sharing your plan for disrupting the city here?

The hero gets a choice of which creatures to build. And that's great.
It flows very smoothly: Gremlins-Gargoyles-Djinn-Titans.
If you also build Golems and Mages, it's not certain that you'll reach Titans quickly. Rakshasas are the most expensive.
Considering that you immediately buy two more heroes (one of your own race and one of another race), there's enough "meat" for pushing through (and there's also the Bandit Camp and the Conflux of Elements). We get gold from chests, sell a bunch of unnecessary artifacts (through the market) - there are no problems with it. We mine ore on the map.
If the map is very difficult, where the AI quickly attacks me, I at least build a Stronghold, and as soon as an enemy hero appears, I hide in the Castle, he attacks - I kill him (usually, the threat level on him is high if the map was generated poorly).
If it's a good map, the threat level is medium, and it's not necessary to hide in the Castle.
You don't need many Guilds if the game won't be long (2 levels is enough). I just hope for Chaos to appear in it (you don't have to level up the magic itself). Nothing else is needed at the start. The map also often has spells that can be learned. Two heroes for scouting are good.
Sometimes, Regeneration drops, and the combination of Titans with it is excellent; sometimes, I get Light for leveling up when the game wants to be long. There are Fire Warriors in the Summoning spell - they are also very useful.
Against the AI, and especially if there are many players, you need to level up for yourself, for pushing through, etc. But if there's a human opponent, you need to guess the "counter" against him.
Having Chaos spells, you can weaken the opponent with Cockatrices, and if we also have Mentoring leveled up... )))

Why specifically Genies and Titans? I believe the combat potential of mages is much greater than that of Genies, and certainly greater than that of Titans, because their numbers are always limited.

I usually only buy units of my own race, because what's the point of having, say, 9 Scouts and 3 Beasts? Besides, I desperately need money for my hero.

I almost always take gold for my hero, because there is never enough of it, and experience can still be gained in battles.

Today, something like this happened: two Dragon Armors were lying 5 meters apart from each other :D
I thought the AI doesn't like attacking castles?

Titans are ultimately better because they are more durable.
And everything is bought because there are no resources for anything else on a difficult map (I was considering exactly this scenario). And if the map turns out to be more or less favorable, everything is bought except for Rakshasa and Golems; they are saved for other weeks.

There is always plenty of money on the map; I already wrote above where to get it. And without starting meat, you won't get this money.

Not almost, but always.

They attack when the danger is high. As a result, their entire army, which is twice as large, is defeated under the castle.

I just played against the computer (one elf) on a hero. I thought I would write something about it, so the second week turned out to be the Union week, thanks to which, on a medium-sized map, I defeated him on the 3rd week.

In the first week, I got ore, wood, crystals, and gems (I didn't touch sulfur because I wasn't going for mages, and the guard was inconvenient). Starting hero - Nur, starting artifact - a bag of gold. In the first-second week, I captured the Golden Horseshoe, the Lion's Collar, the Dragon's Tooth Crown, the Dragon's Flame Tongue, the Dragon's Greaves, the Flesh Tunic, the Emerald Slippers (sold), the Clover (sold), the Flame Rune (sold), the Sword of Power (sold). The second was Or, the third was Erling, then there was a Dungeon on the map, and there was Ingvar. Of the useful spells - Arrow, Regeneration.
I went for Summoning and quickly leveled up the Fire Warriors. If I summoned more than 30 Fire Warriors in battle, the opponent preferred to run away immediately)).
I got lucky with the week, but the computer would have lost anyway.

Good game, and I started a game, and Hafiz turned out to be incredibly strong, his gremlins, with an artifact and in a quantity of 400-500, are simply devastating, the entire army consists of alt-upgraded units, and the hero is already leveled up to 18 and is preparing to defeat an elf army consisting of orcs.

The longer you delay, the more the AI cheats.

By the way, at one time, you could summon elementals as many times as you wanted without killing the previously summoned ones, and then they fixed it.