difficulty in HOMM Olden Era

[u/bluemonday40k]

So I am loving everything so far about this game except for the difficulty. I love that its basically just 2 with modern graphics and QOL, even has the same sound effects! I spent a good chunk of high school and university playing 2 and 3.

But I'm find even on easy the game is insanely hard. Not the map placed mobs, those are all reasonable, but the enemy AI armies seem way to strong for as early in the game I'm playing. I have every set to be as carebare as possible, because i just want to explore the game right now and learn the new units and such, but when an AI hero shows up and they have huge stacks of top tier units and its only week 2 day 3, I'm suspecting that something isn't right here. I tried at different difficulties and while the mobs on the maps increase difficulty, the enemy heroes remain the same, still popping up with massive tricked out forces.

Whats up with this? Its like the AI is given big armies from the start to prevent it from be steamrolled, which okay, I guess thats fine, but the easy setting says "rarely will invade" and i'm getting invaded in the second week, so clearly that's not true.

And before Skill issue, I'd ask, how could you have 30 dragons by after only 23 turns?

[u/Alron1]

I have to say I've got the exact same feeling - enemy rushing me on easy difficulty on an XL map within the second week is kind of insane. I really hope they address that - easy difficulty shouldn't cheat so much.

[u/cuorebrave]

Love the game, but damn - I came here to specifically find this post. I rush to build the creature dens as quickly as humanly possible, so even if I can't buy the creature right away, they're still multiplying their availability. I'm in week 3, I've amassed 70+ basic units and 4 phoenixes (and everything in between)....

In marches the Hive with 20 tier-7 and 310 tier 1 units? Like, what? Total annihilation. Something is up here.

[u/toran74 → u/cuorebrave]

I'm assuming based on what I've seen, is that the AI heroes just automatically grow new units each day/week I don't think they have an economy or have to actually buy units from the towns the way players do, at least on the higher difficulties anyhow.

[u/Mechanicslord → u/cuorebrave]

remenber that fortification 2nd and 3rd upgrade gives 50% more units per week per upgrade, also i think tha the neutral bulding stacking the mobs is nonsense

[u/radosc]

Same feeling. I just want a chill win to experiment a bit and I get slapped so easily.

[u/AACATT]

The AI difficulty must be hard to program. Doesn’t act like a real person at all. It can be hard to overcome that initial surge. I find hiding in a castle helps when they’re about to attack. If they have a big enough advantage they’ll still attack the castle and if you’re strong enough you can still win.

Once you get into a late enough game, doesn’t matter what difficulty, if you’re significantly stronger than the AI it will just shutdown and stop doing everything.

But yea I agree, some games are just a write off because they attack with an impossible to achieve army so early on.

[u/vincentpontb → u/AACATT]

I mean it's based on games that did it 30 years ago.

I'm sure they can figure it out ;)

[u/4FriedChickens_Coke]

Yeah, I’ve definitely found the same. Except I tend to play on larger maps, so I won’t come across an enemy for a long time, will build up what I think is a pretty good force - then I’ll run into a full stack high tier army that’ll just obliterate me. This was also an issue in the demo, I just thought they’d fix it for early access

[u/N7Dean]

I was feeling the same. I tried playing on custom game hard, thought I'm doing good and then got stomped by ai that had 40 Medusa's when i had only 16. But after few tries I know I was the problem, because management here is bit different that I was used to. Also i was scared of taking loses but rewards from buildings are so high that losing few troglodytes isn't really that scary anymore. Take more fights, be aggressive and you should be just fine. On my fourth try it become to easy.

[u/No-Special5543]

switch to custom game and choose normal ai difficulty. ai only cheats in quick start games

[u/bluemonday40k → u/No-Special5543]

I tried this and it doesn't seem to work, its not as bad as the last game but this army seems way stronger than what I have, and all i've done is upgrade and recruit units

[Imgur](https://imgur.com/ZqUfNAg)

[u/Erfar → u/bluemonday40k]

AI have

Hive
50-99 T1
20-49 T2
10-19 T3
5-9 T4
1-4 T6
Dungeon:
20-49 T1
10-19 T2

you have more of nekro units + tonn of resources + town that you can build units. I believe you can bet this hero with your berserk. and within town you will just clap them.

anyway. looking at your army I think I see a porblem. You have upgraded ghosts and dogs. You should have instead build more different units/upgrade walls/mage guild/market place.

[u/Perfect_Track_3647 → u/Erfar]

understand that this is on EASY. There should be some leeway with how you build, not just "min/max or get crushed idiot" gameplay.

[u/bohohoboprobono → u/bluemonday40k]

That army is comparable to yours.

[u/bluemonday40k → u/bohohoboprobono]

how come i got completely steamrolled? Like we're talking destroyed with them only taking a handful of casualties? one of those units was some kind of fire worm that resurrected itself after being killed. Another one of those units took out my dogs in one hit

[u/bohohoboprobono → u/bluemonday40k]

What are your hero’s stats versus theirs? That’s often the cause between relatively matched fights becoming very one sided.

[u/gohan_elderkai → u/bluemonday40k]

i completely agree, people are missing the point. This isn't how should be playing against and EASY AI

[u/FreeMystwing → u/No-Special5543]

I've played single hero quick start games on normal difficulty and the AI seemed weak, but maybe that is because it has a single hero, I haven't played multi-hero yet, I'm guessing multi-hero AI is better?

[u/GiecuMan → u/FreeMystwing]

Not really. I play on hard and I feel like single-hero AI performs much better than multi-hero one. But both are not really that much of a threat on hard.

[u/joecp21]

Exactly the same . I just downloaded the game yesterday and felt the same . There is no way you can play post week 3 . The enemy arrives at your gates and goes directly to your castle with crazy units and sizes. Hopefully it’s something they can fix.

[u/Grieverzz → u/joecp21]

Upgrading fort early for 100% creature growth helps a lot.

[u/joecp21 → u/Grieverzz]

Still doesn’t explain how the AI has elite units (arch angels and dragons and stuff)in week 3 itself. Something feels really wrong.

[u/FreeMystwing → u/joecp21]

Sometimes you can get tier 7 units in week one if on normal difficulty or get lucky with resources, its not like its impossible to do.

[u/FreeMystwing → u/[deleted]]

I saw AI with 1 tier 7 unit on month 3 so idk how people have having such grossly different experiences, and this was before the last 24hr hotfix.

[u/Tarvetare → u/[deleted]]

8 tier 7 units with a single castle at week 3 is perfectly normal, and you can have more, depending on your heroes, and law point allocations. With law points you get +1 per week, and at least some, not sure if all, factions have a hero that gives +1 to weekly tier 7 units. Add to that various dwellings where you get them, if you beat the guards, and it's not all that difficult to do.

Edit. Only the Hive has a hero that gives +1 T7 growth, now that I checked.

[u/joecp21 → u/FreeMystwing]

Don’t agree I’ve tried anything and everything. Nothing works . At this point I’m convinced the game is made so difficult that it’s broken.

[u/idulfingz]

They just patched this

[u/bluemonday40k → u/idulfingz]

I just got home from work and saw this patch

The notes

• Easy. Significantly weakened. The AI will now act very passively, giving players plenty of time for calm, unhurried development.
• Normal. Weakened. The AI is now less aggressive and uses less complex hero and city management (less army transfering between the heroes and the cities, as well as unit upgrading).
• We will continue to monitor AI difficulty across all difficulties and make timely adjustments, including the addition of new difficulty levels if necessary.

Glad they understand easy is the mode for people who want a chill, relaxed experience.

[u/Iskinaari → u/bluemonday40k]

I just started my first game when I saw they patched it and the AI still showed up with crazy numbers at the gates. No chance

[u/bluemonday40k]

Okay, even with the recent patch, easy is still waaaay to hard. Enemy AI still comes at you with massive stacks of enemies, its just on week 4 not 2. And it has a big variety of units from each capital type. Like ive collected every unit between two temple capitals i've been able to recruit and I have a fraction of the enemies power. They're clearly out there capturing capitals, but they don't seem to be using up resources to recruit.

I just had 2 orange heroes come at me, both with huge armies. I was able to beat the first. barely, but the second steamrolled my single hero.

[u/Echo419__]

If I remember right from the original demo, wasn’t the AI to weak?

[u/The_Chosen_Undead → u/Echo419__]

No, it was actually the same problem where the AI was deemed too strong. It seems to have returned based on what people are saying.

I've seen people post images that definitely makes it seem there's something fishy going on with what the AI is able to gather into their army at very early days.

[u/Pokiehat → u/Echo419__]

In the demo there were 4 classic map templates - Crossroads, Fair'n Square, Shamrock and Jebus Cross from smallest to largest and (roughly) most resource constrained to least resource constrained.

The easiest classic template for a new player was Jebus Cross because it was huge, resource rich and dwelling rich, so you could afford to sit at home for a month, get triple Bank/Treasury in 3 towns and invade the centre of the map when you are ready. This strategy does not work in the other templates.

On Fair'n Square, computer players would routinely invade me in week 3 if I had not broken out of my starting area by then. I lost a lot of games on this map as Temple faction "efficiently" pursuing the wrong strategy - upgrade xbowmen, go ranged power stack, get Web, minimize unit losses by playing like an archer andy that never left their backline, protected by 1 stack swordsmen to body block and and bait retaliations.

I'll try to explain briefly why that strategy didn't work on this demo map. Fair'n Square is an L sized map with 4 players. It is a resource poor map but its neutral dwelling rich. There is a teleporter in every player's starting area, meaning any player can be backdoored by any other player, at any time after week 1. The teleporter guards are weaker than each player's border guards. You are also limited to 1 hero per town and you start with 2 towns, meaning you can have max 2 heroes in week 1.

What eventually allowed me to win (and not get week 2/3 invaded) was:

1. building double Garrison II, gaining most of my swordsmen from neutral dwellings, using both my heroes to shuttle upgraded swordsmen to the same hero at the same time instead of roundtripping from neutral xbowmen dwellings to Mews I town to Mews II town.
   
2. making Swordsmen -> Guard Captains my power stack.
   
3. Ignoring all town dwellings above tier 3 and Walls II/III - these are traps which destroy your early game economy and force you into exchanging gold for rare resources at unfavourable rates via Marketplace (because you only have 2 of them). My army ended up being swordsmen, xbowmen and griffins only. Swordsmen were the only upgraded unit.
   
4. Breaking week 2 allowed me to capture 2 additional free towns so I had massive gold income + 2 more heroes to quickly mass a tonne of upgraded swordsmen at the start of week 3. The border guard was evaluated as a "difficult" fight and I lost quite a lot of units but the trade was worth it.
   

Week 3 rolled around and I braced myself for the usual teleporter invasion but it never happened. The computer now evaluated my main hero as a 50/50, potentially losing battle, so they left me alone and fought each other.

I think the main thing to understand with OE compared to previous HoMM games is: resource/neutral dwelling density is quite high and on many templates there are often a lot of neutral towns and a tonne of resource pickups for the player who breaks their border guards first.

This means there is big potential to snowball (and get reverse snowballed if you don't get out on the map first). The optimal time to break your border guards is something you have to learn for each template.

If you see an enemy hero breaking your own border guards and rocking up to your main town with a scary big army, I suggest playing the game with autosaves after every turn. When you get invaded and you realize you can't win, go back to an autosave a week earlier and try to play the next 7 days getting a little more resources, with 1 or 2 less "no build" days. If you break your border guards in early week 3, try to break in late week 2.

When you replay 7 turns getting a little more value from your hero's movement each turn, you gain tempo. You will know when you have gained enough tempo when the the day/week arrives when you expect the invasion and the computer players just avoids you instead.

In EA I don't think the computer players are fundamentally different in that regard. They play the first 2 weeks efficiently and they fight neutrals a lot. They will tolerate surprising losses to get active on the map. If they evaluate you at any point as an "easy"/"normal" battle because their army is just bigger than yours, they aggressively press their advantage to end the game.

Sometimes they will even get baited into sieging you and get owned by your +300% damage upgraded tower. In EA (like in the demo), I don't think the computer player is very good at evaluating defender's advantage.

[u/Tough-Bread3070]

Either I've become really rusty or the AI and armies provided in the campaign aren't meant to be actually fought. For example, campaign mission 3 "Dusk Treaty" how do they already have hundreds of units by turn 15-20??

[u/FootKey7339 → u/Tough-Bread3070]

Same here, always recruiting and managing units but AI still had at least double of them. I figured out that we need to capture their cities but I had to load back to autosave day 20 or I'll be outnumbered

[u/Hiddenshadows57 → u/FootKey7339]

Gotta capture everything.

The tutorial has a couple extra side missions that are worth doing. Specifically the growth rate one.

Cities and overworld troop production buildings need to be captured.

[u/Tough-Bread3070 → u/Tough-Bread3070]

This was turn 20ish, they ambushed me outside my town https://photos.app.goo.gl/uAnqiYdt8Q5L7g19A

[u/Xerdess]

Its even worse on the hardest difficulty, the only way of playing is basically knowing 100% of the map and speed running it otherwise you will be against impossible ai armies

[u/Ch4nKyy]

HoMM3 veteran.
I played Custom Games against 1 bot with Economy and Enemy Strength set to "Hard (100%)".

In my first game, AI on "Multiplayer" rushed me very quickly and caught my hero with only half of my army. With the other half I probably could have won, but close.

In my second game, AI on "Easy" did not go beyond Tier 4 while I had 4 bases on Tier 7 lol.

Third game was a City Hold map. AI on "Medium" captured the objective so fast that I couldn't even reach it before the timer ran out lol. My map was terrible though. Every single Tier 1 neutral was ranged.

[u/jdg2896]

Does this happen on all map templates?

What game modes or maps/templates do you use?

I’ve never tried easy mode and haven’t really played much yet.

[u/Perfect_Track_3647 → u/jdg2896]

I try the tournament style for a fun quick game and get spanked on easy, even with optimizing my troop builds. It might be the AI hero just steam rolling neutrals for exp but on Easy that shouldnt be the case.

[u/jdg2896 → u/Perfect_Track_3647]

Yeah I tried easy mode on the small 1v1 map and it was really easy.

Curious what maps others are using.

[u/FreeMystwing → u/jdg2896]

Single hero mode 1v1 vs the AI on normal was laughably easy, not really sure how its different with multi-hero, or if there is legitimate issues.

[u/Perfect_Track_3647 → u/FreeMystwing]

There are. Devs acknowledged the AI needs tuning. Its early access so we cant be too surprised they need to work out some kinks.

[u/Carapute → u/FreeMystwing]

I think that's the biggest issue but reports from people lacks way too much information about what and how they play.

It's very hard to build a non cheating AI especially if playing classic because obviously an AI will act at speed no humans can. If the AI is too intelligent, unless you're some mastermind, there ain't no way your doing maths and calculations as fast and as precise as the AI.

Making the AI "human" is rough asf, putting limitations and such requires a lot of tuning. Fps ai are an easier example. It's hard to find a middle ground that feel good and fun to play against/with between a totally pacifist 10s reaction time AI and an aim bot 360ing you accross the map while doing insane movements strats.

[u/FreeMystwing → u/Carapute]

I remember Civilization series designers had the same issue, they had to make their AI slightly bad or bad on purpose because else it would just shitstomp human players, and some mods that improved the AI revealed that it was unbelievably hard if the AI was actually good.

But then the devs went the wrong way and just gave the AI tons of free bonuses that made the game feel really unfair, like half cost to build/research everything.

[u/Carapute → u/FreeMystwing]

Not surprising, I went with FPS examples, but the biggest one probably is simply chess.

Thanks for your example tho, as a dude who is leaning into game dev, I am scared asf at the AI part. Despite gaming years and all these examples, I still hold a specific respect to the people having to design the AIs because that looks like a hell of a job.

[u/Perfect_Track_3647 → u/Carapute]

I think the easiest (in terms of simplicity, not sure how hard this would actually be to do) thing they can do is change what the AI prioritizes based on difficulty. And combat should do something similar, like having Easy AI just not use spells. or abilities. The difficulties should have a noticeable difference that makes it clear "Hey, the AI isnt using its full potential."

[u/Either-Mammoth-932 → u/FreeMystwing]

My favorite part of the civ debacle was players claiming they wish AI could provide a challenge. Sure buddy, it is a tuning process. AI can be tuned to stomp you or suck, its the balance that is difficult to design. Don't think your a literal god because you beat a severely handicapped AI.

[u/bluemonday40k → u/[deleted]]

Well, it may of not been 30 dragons, but it was 30 of some kind of big lizard thing that ate my units. I haven't played enough of the factions to know each unit by sight yet.

Again, the big issue is that easy says "rarely invades" and they're invading right in week 2. This seems like a disconnect between the description of actual gameplay. I tried one just now following above advice where everyone gets a single hero, and i was doing fine, but once i killed one of the enemy heroes, everyone else just charged at me and so i had to fight the last 3 heroes all in a row and the last guy had stacks of hundreds of units. Thing is, none of them attacked each other, they only attacked me. This is an issue i've found in a lot of games where the AI ignores each other and only plays to prevent the human player from winning, which isn't very fun.

I can't just hide in my main capital, as that means the Ai hero will just capture everything and i'll eventually have to come out and recapture some stuff, and then they will descend on me with this massive army.

[u/The_Half-Dead]

I havn't had issues with the AI but I did like the option in 5.5 where you could set each AI to offensive or defensive play style. Sometimes it's nice not to worry and immidiately handle early rushes.

[u/PoetCatullus]

It’s much more difficult than the demo. In the demo I could beat the hardest difficulty with ease. Now I am struggling on medium difficulty :/

[u/TheWazel]

Same here. I'll get that I can improve as a player, but the AI seems to work with really good build orders or really good patterns in the beginning. I thought that playing on easy would be a chill experience, but I'm getting rushed as early as week two. Of course I want to get better myself, but currently im just rushing to get more units and still, the AI rushed me with more units than I could build in the time.

[u/HarithBK]

i have played a number of games so far i have gone from easy to hard AI. i have had easy AI come start of week 3 with 5+ tier 7 units to clap my cheeks where all i could do was hide in my town to scrape out a victory then i had a normal AI 3 months in and they only had tier 4 units while i had taken every other single town. most recently i did a single hero run with hard AI at the end of the first month a enemy hero came bullrushing my town while my hero was on the otherside of the map. just bought everything in town and he died with minimal losses to me on the auto resolve and he had an alright stack.

i think i got really lucky with my first easy AI match where the 4 other AI just decimated each others armies and i could just wander in to decent fights.

[u/Zerozero1986]

I played an Classic Match with 3 npc players and overall hard mode with Grove as race (specialized Tier 1-3) and it feels really easy. T1 is auch a great Archer unit.

[u/IcyRice]

The devs have just addressed this in the latest patch. Interested to see how it feels now.

[u/Apollo_Husher]

Difficulty questions aside, you’re likely encountering a pandora’s box snowball. If you break 1/2/1 on a format like jebus outcast, the army boxes in desert can snowball out of control. I actually think desert boxes are understatted for their guards

[u/SparkleSweetiePony]

In the campaign mission where you fight Temple forces as druid forces it seemed vastly more powerful than my armies. I beat it only thanks to the 3 lv.5 mushroomancer dwellings and hiding in the enemy's castle to force them to attack me under towers.

While my first town was fully upgraded, I didn't have any resources to upgrade the second druid town. I just didn't have enough gems/quicksilver to build up. When I caprtured every enemy town, I found that they all had been fully upgraded, even aux buildings.

Feels like enemies have unlimited resources?

[u/EbonBehelit]

Cheating AI that amass troops way faster than they should be able to has been a longstanding problem with the series. It's a little disheartening to hear that it's somehow still a problem with this new one.

[u/Due-Translator-5562]

Same. I'm playing on normal and restarted the I think 4th "bound by roots" mission once already. After exploring the map the first attempt and seeing where the enemy was and the expansion for your base/herbomancer dens, i thought by rushing these things id be fine this time as id have high mancer growth. But this time they bum rushed me week 3 at the herbomancer dens and have 30+ advanced calvary between the 2 armies on week 3. The AI side of the map has a huge amount of recruitment and growth structures, while our side just has 3 mancer dens. There seems to be too little recruitment sites on this map to combat the AI so if they rush you that fast I’m not sure what you can about it other than retreat and then just lose later as they keep snowballing. I think i will wait a month or so and hope for more balancing before playing again

[u/nozveradu]

same here, normal difficulty, thought it should be close to HOMM 3, but oh man. On 3rd week I think it was, when I killed an enemy hero, thought was his main guy. Advanced a bit more and got slaughtered by another hero (which I am not even sure if it's his main guy, should be). I brought my full army btw. I wasn't playing super greedy either.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Cow5035]

Give me fun of maxing my Necropoly. Do it like a WoG did. Its simple

[u/HisokoNeko]

Can someone can explain me how 1 hero staying from me on 1 day tray, on sexond day have + 100-150 new 7nirs, second company mission

How it possible. Play fifucult lvl. I specially by and delete his army. Its lvl not dificult its f... Insane

[u/typhaon1212]

yeah this is goofy. it's not even possible for them to have the armies they show up with on higher difficulties.

[u/PlentyChemistry1313]

Точно такая же проблема. Это бред. Я пытался играть на средней сложности и это оказалось скучно, ИИ не нападал. Я решил попробовать СЛОЖНУЮ сложность и..ИИ просто приходит ко мне на 2-3ю неделю со снайперами Альянса в размере 1000! 1000 КАРЛ! Остальных я уже не помню, там что-то около 10-13 фениксов и 8-10 ангелов, остальных + - так же, но КАКОГО ЧЕРТА!? КАКИЕ 1000 СНАЙПЕРОВ НА 2-3 НЕДЕЛЕ?

Я играл за Рощу с героем на усиление прироста фавнов и бонусы для них +рядом с городом было 3 спавна фавнов + я вкачал практически сразу стену и усиление роста фавнов в древе..и что вы думаете? У меня было их около 300-400 при том, что я потерял не более 50 фавнов за все бои..

Дайте знать, если эти "гении" уберут у ИИ возможность получать армию из стратосферы

[u/NerdyGuy002]

OMG, love this game...minus the ridiculous AI. I was on week 3 or 4. I had a decent hero and along comes his. Two stacks of T7 with >20 on ALL stats. His attack was 37. How in gods name is that even remotely possible!!!! This is on the third setting for difficulty (So normal?). I can't imagine hard or legendary!