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The Middle is an H4 Scenario in the Contest Maps Folder.
My first game was on Expert and I was assigned Order Magic, my favorite. Turned out this map is way too easy. I started with a mage (making sure I got a couple of useful spells, turned out Precision was most important since halflings were an important stack in my army troughout the game) and added an Order Lord on day 1 and then a knight the next week and Order Lords after that until I had 13 of the little buggers. There are no mines for rare resources on the map. A few sites that give you a weekly bonus of gold or resources., so the Order Lords came in quite handy once I was able to start liberating Learning Stones (13 or more), Dream Teachers (2) and Veterans Guilds (2). There are 5+ Trees of Knowledge but by the time I decided to use them I didn't need them. The Trading Post is important since I needed lots of gems early and wasn't producing very many. Gold was scarce, one Gold mine for a long time. There's a second academy undergound that isn't well defended. Massive neutral armies protect the three red exits Blue will try to use to invade but he never had a chance against those guardians.
So paitaintly build, pick yor fights and once you have genies, things pick up speed dramatically. At 4,2,6 I had 1 million gold and nothing to spend it on. There is a Portal in the SW that leads to "The Middle" and your original victory objectives. Those change and you must ultimately hold all 7 towns. There are some difficult neutral armies along the way and figuring out how to win those battles withou signifcant casualties is the best part of the map, but after a while you get so powerful that nothing presents a challenge. I finished at 4,3,5.
So, I thought, how tough would it be to play Chaos or Nature (no Order Lords)? I picked Nature at Expert to see. Not a problem! By the time I took Stronghold in "The Middle" at 3,1,7 my income was good and I never hired any Order Lords (they take time to manage). I built my army with a druid, a knight and an archer. My creatures were faerie dragons, water elementals, elves and sprites at the end. I did hire a thief along the way and he reached Grandmaster Stealth. He hit L15 compared to my other heroes who were L20. I finished this time at 4,1,2 and got exactly the same score despite finishing 2 weeks earlier!