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First Steps. Mystical Journey. 1.

It's level 1 so decided to keep AI modest here. :3

Good job with the map, although I think you could've given the A.I. more land to work with.

Adjusted Empire and it's traps on player's side. It should be now more manageable. Increased hidden neutral archive's size and added an extra artifact of experience. Added another path to the middle Empire fort.

Tweaked Blue Underlord's dungeon layout to prevent it from dying early to Empire's guards.

alright, i was just worried when i saw the master difficulty and though "how will these get harder?"

Yes. Though you can set whatever difficulty you want.

Level is quite easy even with Master AI opponent on level 1.

Master difficulty!? on the first level!?

Obey and other important things become available in later levels. Empire wall placement mostly serves as decoration.

Regarding the attack - top and bottom outposts have separate Training Rooms. There isn't much sense in waiting because if AI opponent claims it, he will progress further and claim the rest of dungeon, including Mana shrine which will make it stronger. It's wiser to push and take blockpost on your side sooner since it is weaker in comparison. There's also a path in the middle to hidden rooms at the top, claiming those will also increase your odds of success.

Empire faction has no AI in this map. Putting training room on front line ensures it is protected by units inside of it. Empire owned units here aren't really managed in any particular way so any encounter you have with them is fully random ( they either decide to go to the same room you are attacking, based on need or don't ). Room placement here was important to avoid situation where half of Empire's content is unprotected.

Since there's no control over Empire, killing any unit makes the pushing and claiming easier. With proper management of own units ( heal spell is available from start ) and some trickery ( luring Empire units out with imps or baiting them out ) any room can be cleaned out and then claimed by your own imps. This level in particular shows how important it is to outsmart Empire's guards in order to progress further. It's another reason why I excluded replacement walls entirely - AI is not good at dealing against them and they are quite abusable.

- The empire treats all of their rooms like it's an active dungeon. That means they will try to fulfill their wants and needs. The first room the AI will attack is a training room, which means as soon as one empire unit dies, another unit somewhere on the map says "Hey, there's space in the training room, let's go train". An empire training room on any map with a lot of empire forces is basically a stone fuckin' wall. As soon as you kill a unit, another unit comes through the door and replaces them. Stemming from this are two other issues; other parts of the map lose all of their guards and just need a quick steam-roll to deal with the traps or doors, and it also encourages the player NOT to leave their dungeon. Why attack through the training room if you're going to pull enemies away from the AI's dungeon?

So that said, here's some general comments;

- Where's the replacement earth and the Must Obey? They are quality of life spells. They should always be available except when it expressly hurts the level.

- It feels like when you did the empire dungeons, you built them first and then painted the empire faction in huge boxes across the terrain. There are areas where the empire have walls and shouldn't or don't have walls and should. If it's not next to empire owned tile, it shouldn't be painted with the empire faction.