Despite what I said before, I decided to keep going in order, with Order
Once again I need to learn new tactics for the new creatures and spells. I have found that Illusion is a VERY powerful spell, as is poison. With a decent stack of genies and mages, I can do serious damage, while my main heroes concentrate on debuffs like forgetfulness and slow. The fact that an Illusion stack can be larger than the original makes this even stronger than I originally thought.
This campaign has reinforced the opinion I got early on that, more so than any other heroes game, each faction plays considerably differently - at least in the beginning of a campaign when creature stacks are much more important than later. Of course, in single scenarios, where the majority of play will eventually take place, this is a very good thing.
The treasury in the Academy is nice- but it runs the danger that it did in the Rampart in H3- if you can hold off on buying troops for a week or two, you can let your interest pile up and then never have a need to save. With the daily interest, you actually get about 10.5% per week, so the money grows faster than in H3. In fact, since my main force had to run around cleaning up a few strong heroes from one of the AIs before going after the last, I was able to let my creatures go unpurchased for almost a month. At that point, I was able to buy all creatures in all my towns (I think I had 6 at this point) and still had 28000 gold left. Of course, hoarding gold may cause a problem in the long-run, as it always causes the thought "I can hold off buying troops ONE more day, right?" But with a 2-day backup on autosaves, I don't think I'll get bitten to badly if this happens and an enemy catches me off-guard.
Only one carry-over hero to map two, but I got her up to expert in Order and Life magic (including Master Ressurrection- always a very useful skill!) , and some combat skill, although I haven't been offered archery for her yet (but except when forces are quite small, she'll probably use spells more anyway. I just hope that once I get her to grandmaster in Life, I will be able to get Guardian Angel (much cheaper than potions- which I fortunately haven't had much need for yet.)
As for the troops, it is what I expected. Lots of ranged power- a shooter or spellcaster at every level, with tanks as the alternate. Although I could only get Titans for my level 4 in this map, so I cannot compare these, I found the genies to be infinitely more useful than naga, with their illusion ability. I never gathered enough golems to give a good comparison to mages, but poison works incredibly well during seiges. Many times the AI just sat inside the castle, so I didn't even bother to invade. I poisened all the stacks and waited for them to die. A definite AI flaw.
More to come when I get through the next map.
), but I think you'll need the original .exe file for H4 in order to do so.
Um, just my own personal little fantasy. 
