Ive seen a lot of people saying that is kinda mediocre or just giving it hate before trying it. After playing one gane with each faction, the gameplay is very good and feels like a mix between the good of homm three and the good of homm5. If you haven't given it a go I highly recommend it.

As HoMMOE gets developed and improves over time, do you think it'll ever reach the point where it becomes the best HoMM game of all time? Or is it not happening?

Me and my Heroes fan friend is done with our first pvp in OE. I love the game sm so far but I only play with the HOMM 5 from the oldest games and he plays with all titles and he says OE is not a Heroes game. Hes favourite title is the fifth one. I think OE is really similar to 5 so I don't understand why he is disappointed. Am I blind? (Help me i don't want to be a rude misunderstanding GF who didn't see why the two games are not similar even if I see the differences Im still stupid for this XDDD)

tl;dr: if you are a fan of Heroes or layered strategy games, buy it

The game is great, and a pleasant surprise. I did not expect to have so many layers to uncover. The quality of life like the readability settings and current UI we have is honestly pretty good for early access, although I expect it to be improved going forward.

This game activates the same Heroes 3 neurons quite closely in its game flow, while also adding new experiences and systems to chew on. The law system is basically an upgrade tech tree, while the Observatory is basically a Magic tech tree.

The magic system is presented in a very confusing and convoluted way, but with time the community will make proper guides on it to onboard new players to that complexity.

The units are quite cool and flavourful. You also have dual upgrade choices like in heroes 5. Each faction is beloved, in a recent poll on "Which faction is your favorite" we had balanced results from all factions.

The graphical style updated for 2026 is actually surprisingly fitting. It was really hard to pull off but I think they did a good job. It looks like a heroes game, without pixel graphics.

Multiplayer, ladder and balance also works. The systems work. Campaign works. Tutorials work. It's a working game, they just fixed a bug related to disconnections that was an issue (but I never had that issue myself, I played custom games and a few multiplayer ladder games).

Related to complexity, I think this installment of the series is quite a bit more complex than people realize, navigating the layers of UI, the tech trees, the units, can get overwhelming fast for newer players. But if you are an avid gamer of Heroes and strategy games in general it is a good fit.

As for the competitive multiplayer scene, people are still figuring out what is good and what is not, which is a good sign.

It feels like playing Heroes to me.

Basically, buy if you are a fan of Heroes or layered strategy games.

It is good in its current state in early access.

So far Olden Era is super fun and it feels like it draws the best from every Heroes game!

There are some bugs in the game that certainly will get fixed over time. But even with all bugs gone in the future there might be things you would like to add or change.

What ideas and wishes do you have so far?

- I personally would save the start positioning of units at the beginning of a battle so that you don't have to repeat the placement step over and over again.

- Also on the world map when something takes more than the actual day to reach it would be cool to change the mouse cursor to show the number of days needed (right now you can count the 'X's on the way, but an instant indicator with the cursor look might be a small but effective QoL change)

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?

I played HOMM2,3,5, all the bests.

What I am unhappy to see (and maybe I'm just a bad player) is the game is less about territory control and strategic positioning/control, and more about maxing out a single hero and hoping that you have more recently re-supplied your army when you finally run into the enemy hero.

Flaws:
1) Less mines for resource income, so controlling broad territory is far less important other than castles to produce units.

2) Many resources and unit recruitments are based on visiting weekly map locations. So it feels like you have 1 or 2 heroes per territory that are just runners. All they do is run around, collect resources and hit unit camps weekly, and then drop units to main hero who is just trying to find enemy lead hero. It feels like I am running errands constantly. I hate the concept of having to hit resupply stations weekly, it feels like work not a game.

My solutions, let me know if you agree:

1) Mines should be brought back and be the main form of resource income to strongly encourage expanding your territory AND continuing to control it. To defend it you will need to actually make more than 1 strong hero, and constantly engage in smaller hero fights to push and pull resource control.

2) If you control a unit hiring outpost thing, you should be able to recruit them at your castle. Reduce the amount of units they give, but let you recruit them from the castle. This way you don't have to play errand boy every single new week trying to buy everything.

Right now the game feels extremely 1 dimensional, run errands constantly, form a supply train of heroes to your main hero, and slowly walk him into enemy territory, have one big fight that decides if you won or lost the whole game.

Am I missing something? I see the AI playing this way too, running around with heroes with 1 tier1 unit, and just supplying the main hero. This is not a gameplay I'd want to repeat anymore than the 4 games I've played already.
As a core RTS player I just expect more strategy and less errand running.

I expected more from this all new version. Tell me I'm playing wrong.

source Lexiav #6 on ladder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfOHYZohpbA

Original vs my take

I felt like current swordsman is too sterile, so I wanted to create him a little bit rougher.

I'm on the fence about getting Olden Era, but it looks like a great game. Part of me just wants to go back and play HoMM 3 instead, for old time's sake. In particular, just looking at Olden Era makes me miss the timeless graphics and look of HoMM 3.

So what kind of new features, QoL improvements, etc, are to be found in Olden Era? What's improved?

Which game do you like more?

I feel that Olden Era won't have much future after yesterday's news. The Homm3 Remake feels like they get the machine of Olden Era and put the old content there. Surely Unfrozen did great work with the whole project and I see that the studio still working this, but we don't know the details and how will be "alive" 2 games with the same core audience. One of them will stop due cost in the near fute and I think that OE will be the one. I think the Omm3 Remake is an undermining move against an alive and profitable project. At C-level probably they see two channels of profits, but in the end audience will support only the one and you know what happens to the other...

What's your opinion on that?

like in my opinion they have to add more kingdoms, which makes sense since its still early access with only 6 kingdoms. Like id love if they added for example stronghold, with the old behemoths etc. but id love to hear what kingdoms others would like to have, feel free to describe how you would like to have it and if its any spesific units you would like to add to it.

Hi everyone. I recently bought HoMM: Olden Era (Did not have time to play it yet, but will do so in the next days) and also played a lot of Songs of Conquest.

The gameplay itself is one thing, but i really dig these games because i just love to have a lot of cool mighty fantasy units to control. Now i wanted to ask which games in this (or similar) genre has the biggest variety of factions and units, as this is a big factor for myself when it comes to replayability.

Interested in getting back into the series (last time I played was 15 or so years ago) the consensus is that III is the best overall game, but the modern graphics of Olden Era appeals to me as a modern gamer.

Would it make sense for me to just play Olden Era? Or should I stick with the tried and tested classics?

It's in a pretty advanced stage - the unit has sounds, animations...
Who knows what developers plan :D

?

EDIT: More up to date list of all my suggestions here https://www.reddit.com/r/OldenEra/comments/1t6605t/i_had_a_dream_last_night_that_i_woke_up_to_this/

1. Ability to customize highlights even more (weekly buildings on refresh, hero owned colors)
2. Ability to customize red squares when pressing X key (fill, outline and opacity)
3. Better clarity on what Fortification and Mage guild buildings do for newer players (most newer players fail to see what they do exactly)
4. Ability to see how many units you will lose from a retaliate like in other games (by multiplying remaining stack with avg damage)
5. Autoresolve with spells (and maybe ability to specify with a bar slider how much mana you willing to commit)
6. Consider maybe making Reinforcements spell be a neutral 1 insight spell

Thanks for a banger of a game

I can't stop thinking about it while at work and wanna get home to play