On the choice of skills in the beginning: Logistics, Pathfinding, Earth Magic and Wisdom are by far the most important. You could call the first two weeks "Need for Speed"; the first week will be decisive. Take the western hero in the boat immediately and head north to the dungeon island. Take the cities and move down. Move your hero eastwards, conquering all towns you can find. After you got the last one on this trail (which is a little westwards at the end of the road), take the two way teleporter. In the north and the west you will find two other dungeons. You should be there very fast, the faster the better. All mines can be flagged by hired heroes out of the dungeons, and I recommend to flag them early since you will need a lot of money. In building concentrate on mage guilds.
Your second main hero should be moved to the island in week one, taking out the army there and moving down afterwards, unifying with your main hero to take the last dungeon in the west.
Collect all the troops you have (which can be done within two days)and move into the winterlands. Two things are important here: Donīt move your main hero down to the underground island. The towns there are quite weak and can be conquered by a hired hero with a week's production from two towns. You may also be forced to leave one town behind, because it could happen that the main enemy heroes will pass the gate just around this time. But by this time you should have townportal. If you have, you can collect all the troops very fast, jump to the town that needs protection and prevent the enemy from taking the teleporters. If you donīt have townportal then you will be in trouble since there are two heroes coming up, each strong enough to beat you if you divide troops. So remember: Build mage-guilds!!!
Once you have seized the garrison the rest will be a cakewalk, because an army combined of black dragons and titans will be enough to mop up the rest (which is indeed one half of the map, and there are some battles in it which should not be underestimated, but compared with the beginning...).
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