Game is pretty easy(considering that the version we have here is not patched, unless a patched one appears later on, meaning weaker Main Hero Skill and 50% less HP on all units) if you know what to do, beat hard mode without grinding with the following:
Basically all you need in the game is 3 units:
Archers, Cavalry and Pikes/Spears
The whole strategy is pretty much waiting/hoarding resources while enemy is approaching you then doing archers from behind the walls. After that you usually want 1 unit tanking - most of the time it's cavalry but against enemy who spams lots of cavalry it's better to use spearmen.
But main goal is to stack a tonn of archers - with enough archers enemy will die before approaching you. Also if you stack enough range on archers - enemy rangers will have to leave the gates to fight you back, making them die instantly.
Weapon/Armor wise try to get suitable things for suitable forces - archers are mostly offensive - range is their best option, cavalry can profit a lot from HP% since their HP is so high. Regen is also decent for them since they actually survive for more than a second. Flat HP/Dodge are nice for low HP allies.
Early on I also used the first monk unit but I gave up on it once those 3 got unlocked and became equal leveled.
The thing is - enemy 'waves' are not exactly infinitely spammed at same pace - enemy will eventually get out of steam and stop sending massive waves.. once you reached that point - you have won essentially since one by one enemy won't do much against big archer stack.
There also seems to be an issue when at 2x speed the enemy seems to be spamming waves for a longer time, making game overall harder(mass waves last approximatly same REAL time but twice as long in game time), making the 2x speed only useful once you are 'winning'.
Basically it seems that how long the opponent keeps sending big waves depends entirely on real time and you can't speed that up, hence wait until opponent is out of steam and only then put on twice the speed, you won't win faster than that anyway!(unless you want to grind easy stages, but there ain't much point)
Near the end of the game - a few enemy stages will get the towers which wipe out the archers pretty fast, in those stages you need to focus more on melee units, I mostly focused on a more defensive approach.
Best hero abilities are IMO the ones that deal damage to enemy. Both of them.(but obviously only use the one that damages your own units when enemy sends a massive wave and wipes your units) Another great one for 3 line fights is assassin summoning one - those deal pretty huge damage to walls, making fights much faster since archers do pretty low wall damage.
Ambush battles are pretty easy by using Giants and Archers behind them and fighting against spears/bows/mages - this will clear majority of waves by itself. The other 3 units don't matter too much but I would say melee are the better ones, cavalry being one of them. I upgraded giants once I was done with Archers/Cavalry/Pikes.
The 'massive battles' are simply spam all your forces non stop and win.
Also if you want to experience all content I highly recommend you select the Main Girl strategy on chapter 5-4, the other option seems to simply skip 3 missions leaving you with 0 story context, only unlocking the love scene you would get from it, which will be pretty out of context.
Overall a pretty simplistic tug of war, reminds me of the old flash games. The scenes are pretty decent though. If you just want scenes - select a new game on Fap Mode and you got them all, no need for the save files
