How to get the "Hero" achievement without map hacking: An in-depth guide

Here's a table showing the starting bonus resources for each difficulty. As shown, on Impossible you have zero bonus starting resources by default.

For the Hero achievement I use the Key to Victory scenario. It's a small map, has only 1 opponent, and there is a Grail. Most importantly, you decide what turn to face the AI, because a border guard blocks the AI territory and only you can access the keymaster tent which opens it. It's probably the fastest map to complete 10 times on Impossible difficulty, in my experience.

I have included full maps of this scenario, which are at the end of the guide.

This may be the easiest, quickest victory that doesn't involve any map edits or save states. The way it works is pick Shakti, restart until you have 3 troglodyte stacks, then use your troglodytes to defeat the prison guards. The hero in the prison Adela has 5 angels in her army, which you gain control of when she joins you. With the angels you can rush the AI town in week 3, early enough that it doesn't have time to build an army.

For Player settings, choose [Dungeon], [Shakti], and [Gold] starting bonus. For the CPU, choose [Stronghold].

Start the scenario and use the "restart scenario" button until you have 3 stacks of troglodytes on Shakti. There is a 25% chance to start with 3 stacks, so it doesn't take long. I use the "O" and "Enter" hotkeys to make it faster and less mouse clicks.

Restart until there's 3 stacks of trogs on Shakti

You only need 3200 gold: 2500g to hire any one Dungeon hero, and 700g to hire 14 trogs. Move the trogs and any extra troops onto Shakti. In total, you should have around 140-160 troglodytes. Previously, I would do this and upgrade them into infernal troglodytes, however after playing the scenario many times, I realized that's not necessary. There are only two neutral camps you need trogs for, and the angels take care of the rest.

You only need trogs for 2 camps before getting an angel army

1a is a camp of random tier 3 units. Alternatively you can go through 1b, which are random tier 2 units. At the prison is camp 2, a group of random tier 3 units. Sometimes, these prison guards will flee depending on how many units you have. I've seen a camp of beholders flee from an army of 109 trogs (picture).

Prison guards fleeing 100 troglodytes

After rescuing Adela, give Shakti the angels and go underground. With Shakti's tactics and offense skills, the angels can easily dispatch any neutral camps in your way. Tip: Removing all units except angels from Shakti allows him to travel further each day. You can give the slower units back before entering the AI territory.

In the underground, you can skip everything and go for the red keymaster tent. There are resources, gold, and Angel Feather Arrows which you can give to the seer for 5000xp, but again we're rushing the AI so fast that none of it is necessary. But if you want a little extra loot, go for it.

You don't need any units other than 5 angels to defeat the AI because of how fast you will arrive at their territory. The AI may have a few tier 4 units at best. Many times I found the enemy hero wasn't even in town and had no garrison, so I could just walk in and take their stronghold. The AI will have a couple heroes and will attempt to recapture your town, but it just doesn't have the resources to defeat 5 angels this early in the game.

The enemy town is empty

Enemy hero's army during week 3

Ok, we know the trog rush is very effective. But what if you wanted to play a long, complex game that overwhelms the AI in late game? This strategy is for you.

Archangel resurrection uses the angel army rescued with Adela, but takes it one step further. Regular angels, though extremely strong, don't have a very important ability: resurrect. By playing Castle, we're able to upgrade the 5 angels into archangels, unlocking this ability and giving your army a massive victory condition.

This method is slower, and requires your starting turns to be highly optimized. Essentially, construct a Castle town to build an upgraded Portal of Glory as early as possible. You want to rush ore and wood mines week 1, and luxury resources in week 2. Then, take the 5 prison angels and convert them into archangels, giving a stack of 8-10 archangels much earlier than is normally possible. This stack gives you the ability to resurrect 800-1000HP of dead units in battle using the archangel special ability. The AI prioritizes marksmen units (ranged), so any marksmen killed can be resurrected by archangels as if they never died. It's quite fun because you start out slow, but played smartly you gain an overwhelming advantage.

This strategy also takes more time because Castle doesn't have the same level of early power as Dungeon. You need to flag resource mines and pick up resource piles to get enough for the upgraded Portal of Glory. It will take time to build a small army to do those things, since Castle can't zerg out an army with no resources like Dungeon.

Using the grail to build a large advantage over the AI is possible, but is also very inconsistent if you don't use save states or map editing. The default area for the grail is an area with an 8 square radius, which can take weeks of in-game turns to locate with digging. You can always just save the game before starting the grail search and then revert back once you find it, as the location of the grail doesn't change from the start of the game. I personally didn't use this method because it felt like using a cheat to reveal the location, but it's effective.

According to the map editor, the grail is within an 8 square radius, something like this

The fastest method of all, if you just want the achievement and don't care about other considerations. Just use the map editor to add a custom army of 10 archangels to your starting town, then make a beeline to the AI town. The game doesn't see map editing as "cheating" so this method does indeed work.

In the map editor tool, click on the Town icon in the toolbar. Then double click the default town to open the window, and click on the Garrison tab. Check the "custom" box, select Archangel from the drop-down menu, and change quantity to 10. Even 10 is excessive, only 2-3 Archangels is enough to rush the AI town in week 2.

I was also able to finish the Knee Deep in the Dead scenario on Impossible relatively easily, due to it's small map size and single opponent. However, note that the AI begins with a much larger army in this scenario, so things can get tricky based on the random "AI type" that is chosen for the CPU (explorer, defender, or warrior). The CPU's bigger army and AI type makes this map trickier and less consistent, but it's a viable option.

I'm including the complete overworld and underworld maps here for reference and as an archive.