🚀 go-pugleaf

1) I suggest taking the endless sack of gold as a starting bonus.

2) On the first day, you should hire 1 hero, give his troops to Godric
who will go east where a stack of archers will join him , get the
gold, hire a second hero, combine all troops on Markal (this includes
Godric's who will also exchange his spells) and have Markal fight the
colossus stack just west of the town. Protect your shooters by boxing
them in. Cast circle of winter and icebolt (or better) whenever you
can. Keep your walkers defending until they can kill one colossus
without retaliation. If it's easier, the above could be done in 2
days. The army of the second hired hero is not really necessary for
Markal in the colossus fight.

3) Your reward is early access to the water (use a secondary hero) and
more importantly a stack of liches that joins Markal.

3b) It turns out that the waters are infested with strong orange
wizards. I lost a hero and a boat quite early. You can still take a
chance to pick up flotsam though.

4) Building order I used in week 1:

day 1- Peasant cabins
day 2- Archer tower (I'd have gone with town hall but I was lacking
gold)
day 3- Town Hall
day 4- Mage Guild Level one (to get monks)
day 5- Griffin Tower
day 6- Blacksmith
day 7- Barracks (for footmen)

The order of these purchases does not really matter as long as you get
the town hall as early as possible.

5) As much as possible, try to use Godric with a haven-only army to
fight haven neutral stacks. You'll have a better chance of having them
join for free that way. Of course, you want Markal to "attack" any
undead neutral stacks so they join him.

6) For the first month or so, always pick gold from chests, you'll
need the money.

7) You might want to avoid certain haven neutral stacks until later
when Godric has more haven troops. Another stack to avoid for the
moment are the Titans to the east.

8) At the end of week 1 or during week 2, you might have to contend
with a orange wizard invasion. If Markal is nearby use him to fight
the battle (unless he has low spell points), otherwise use Godric with
haven troops inside the town if possible. You could hero chain troops
from Markal (east) to a secondary hero to Godric. That's what I did. I
gave him the skeleton archers, the liches and the wights. I even had
to attack the wizard outside the town because he didn't want to attack
it.

9) Week 2 building orders

day 1- City Hall
day 2- Fort
day 3- Nothing (I bought everything I could in town starting with
archers then griffin and footmen). In hindsight, do try to buy a
marketplace, it will help later in the week to trade needed
resources.
day 4- Monastery
day 5- Stables
day 6- Citadel
day 7- Farms (possible to get

10) Some tips for the fight against the invading orange wizard using
Godric:  Cast mass righteous might (use any other mass spell you might
have too), concentrate your attacks on the mages first then the
djinns. Try to protect your fragile skeleton archers and archers by
boxing them in with walkers who defend instead of waiting. Don't
really go to the other side but do attack with the griffins and wights
after waiting when the enemies are in range. Even though there were
lots of gremlins, they didn't do a lot of damage. The wights were more
than a match for the rakshasa. I was lucky that the orange wizard
mostly wasted its time casting weakness because I had cast righteous
might on my troops.

11) In week 3, you should save your gold until you can afford the
capitol. Then work on getting the castle, the resource silo, the
jousting arena (for cavaliers) or the altar of light (for angels).
Markal should start sailing (having an undead-only army with perhaps
half your archers from home if you don't feel strong enough) and
killing orange heroes in the water while Godric stays home with the
haven troops to protect the base.

12) Important: if your opponent has mages or archmages, do not regroup
your troops together with tactics, especially to box in your shooters.
Otherwise, the mage's spellcasting will hurt you a lot especially if
it casts fireball.

13) After killing 3 high-level orange wizards, there was a fourth that
managed to hurt me a lot more than the others. That woman kept casting
phantom forces. I lost all my undead troops except for the skeleton
archers and the liches. Fortunately, those were the most important
stacks. If something like that happens to you and you still have one
orange wizard to contend with, go back home and pick up
reinforcements, especially archers and cavaliers.

14) One of your first objectives besides killing the orange sailing
wizards, is to take the lighthouse to improve your movement on the
sea.

15) In week 4, I really wanted the altar of light so I restrained
myself from buying dwellings and upgrades so I would not deplete my
stock of ore. With a bit of trading, I did manage to get my angels.

16) The death knights, even though they are undead, will not join
Markal's army. Such a shame though, because they would have made a
great addition to your army.

17) It turns out there's a limited number of orange boats. I think
it's 5 but I'm not 100% sure. Once you kill them all (you'll know when
you don't see any orange moving in the sea), navigation will be safe.

18) In month 2, week 2, I decided to invade the big northern island.
It might be obvious but don't go through the garrison. There's one
location where you can disembark to the east of it (I did so with
Markal) and one point at the southwest where you will eventually go
with Godric after you bought every marksman, cavalier, griffin (some
monks) from your town.  Bring him reinforcements later.

19) For your information, in case you thought of sacrificing your
peasants (or living creatures) as cannon fodder while getting some
skeleton archers in exchange. Shame on you! It doesn't work. ;-)
Necromancy only works on enemy creatures.

20) Archmages and water elementals are especially dangerous. Do not
fight them unless the reward is worth it.

21) Eventually, Markal and Godric should join up again. Give all the
marksmen, the monks and the cavaliers, not to mention the best
artifacts to Markal. This will be your almost final army.

22) Actually if you want to make your army even stronger, you could go
back to the Hill fort with Godric and the non-upgraded troops to
upgrade them. Forget about upgrading the angels and the monks if you
have them, they're a bit too expensive, and it's not really necessary
to win the last battle. Go back to Markal and transfer troops again.
By combining the archliches, you should have one more empty slot in
Markal's army which looked like this: 65 archliches, 16 paladins, 49
imperial griffins (or 7 angels), 250 Marksmen, 667 skeleton archers,
110 spectres and 60 monks. Very strong army in the shooter
department.

23) It is possible to kill the titans guarding the lith with the army
above with lots of troops remaining after the battle. By the way, when
I right-clicked on the stack of titans, it said 182 titans, but once
you attack, there are only 100. I cast mass weakness and mass
suffering because they affected all the stacks. Mass vulnerability is
nice but affects only a certain area (2 or 3 stacks of titans
depending). Try to boost the effectiveness of your most damaging stack
with divine strength and haste. Make sure the archliches target the
right square so they hit 2 titans on each attack. You'll know you have
valid targets when they both light up.

24) It is possible to skip the "find and restore Lorekeep" objective
and defeat the orange academy to win. That's what I did the first time
through.

25) To complete the "find and restore Lorekeep" objective, you need to
build the town up enough to get the Citadel. Once you do, the titans
protecting the monolith will leave.

26) You just need to defeat the orange academy, with your current army
it should be very easy.

Finished on month 3, week 1, day 3 at normal difficulty doing all the
objectives.

Finished on month 2, week 4, day 2 at normal difficulty skipping the
"find and restore Lorekeep" objective.

The Quebec Dragon