That was insane... 

The AI is hard as hell, spamming units all over the place. If the champion AI gets improved, I'm not sure if it's possible to beat it. But the bonuses seems a tad bit off regarding score at least, it fluctuated wildly from 1200ish to 3-4000 randomly. Dunno if it's a bug or "lag" after I beat armies. 

My tactic was gathering up as much mana as quickly as possible while trying to stay alive at the beginning. I had custom faction and custom sovereign of course, and picked wraiths for that new shiny dodge. (a big lifesaver!) I also used death worship with infest to spam blind and graveseal on everything. Excess mana was used to paragon my champion with. (and I only got 1! Krax stole like 10 champions on the map!) I got pretty much owned in the start since I started between Krax and Altar, so I tried to flee to a corner and stabilize, but the map wasn't exactly optimal for that. I had at least 2 openings to cover all the time so beelining Breon's letters was a necessity for Call of the Titans. (It says 10 turn CD, but it gets available again sooner than that?)

The early game was very close, and I was saved with getting Sacrifice reasonably early so I could trade some poor citizens for much needed mana between fights. (I could not fight without spam blind on everything) I got some item luck, spectral plate and that firebolt staff, so I could throw free firebolts. Free Firebolts on gravesealed stuff is awesome ^^. I think I would have quit if not for those items in the beginning. But man, I went on the offensive and thought: "This is going great!"; But the AI goes batshit insane mid game. It techs so insanely fast that when I was barely done with Breon's Letters and could do some teleporting to push back, THEN the AI started mass producing stuff. I think it got done with the civic three or something around that point. And OMG does the AI spam units. I pushed out a bit and was suddenly attacked on 5-6 fronts at the same time, with units that were not possible to beat other with my heroes. Again getting enough mana was the key. Freeze and Tremor everywhere to buy time for me running in between. I stopped midway in the arena quest to get my 3rd hero, and he had Earth magic as well, so spam Tremor everywhere. This was when the game got very tedious...

Why did you nerf Curgens Volcano? 2k mana and 10 turns CD? I could SOOOO have used the old one to plug holes in my defenses. When I used the first one I already had killed 2 AI's and was on the way to winning the game. Well after a long mop and a 30ish Sovereign (new record obviously.. lots of fighting) I won. My Champions were both 100+  thanks to paragon and became gods. I don't know if it's intentional, but the +spell damage traits stack with the green abilities. So going mage and assasin after defender means they do insane damage. (Sweeps with 600+ crits? yes please) It's fun but I think paragon needs a looking into, you don't need the old DG spam when you can paragon instead for tanky skills and hp as well. 

Well thats how I beat the game on insane, it was loads of fun.. but took fricking ages. (16 hours or something ingame time) If I'm going to do Insane again, I will have Masters's quest or Spell of making on, because conquest was really really hard. ^^ The AI did very well attacking me everywhere and punishing mistakes, and the bonuses made every army super good. I couldn't just wipe them off the map with Tidal Wave etc. They had too much HP and they scattered reasonably well, even though there were a couple of 16-25 stacks that I softened with the Falling Star spell. (was on epic pace btw, don't know if that slowed the AI or not, it didn't feel like it anyways ^^)

TLDR: 

Abuse Paragon, Death Worship and Wraiths for blind and dodge abuse. Sacrifice to get mana for more abuse. Evoker stacks with green skills for imba damage. Lots of cleaning = conquest win.   (MQ and spell of making is for sissies!)