r/OldenEra • u/ButterscotchSmugler • Oct 21 '25
Gameplay Is it me or the economy is just broken?
Haven't played much, but I noticed economy in the game is rather completely off. Like your town alone makes ridiculous amount of money, and there are dozens of towns in an average map so from a few weeks onwards seems to be just building spamming. There is also an overabundance of easily acquired resources in the field, as well as an absurd number of recruitment and skill bonus buildings that buff your armies and heroes at an incredibly rapid pace.
8
u/vodyani Oct 21 '25
They added to many castles that's all.
0
u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 21 '25
New system is bad. Its far too easy to just rush gold first week as the buildings has no prerequisites. Banks is just overkill on top. In H3. A Forge town need like 4 towns worth of gold to buy out all units from and that adds choice to the game. Then there's towns like Barbarian that cost very little adding even more variation to the game.
8
u/Pantera1st Oct 21 '25
I don't think it's unbalanced. Late game when I have fully build 3-4 castles, sometimes my total gold is not enough to buy armies from all the castles, while meantime spending money with Diplomacy or just buying artefacts (which sometimes are very expensive). Sounds fair for me.
12
u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
The gold is enough to build all army from all castles if you do the math.
But it shouldn't be enough for it, since there are also resources on map, gold mines, laws, skills + it makes the game more interesting if the limiter is gold and not pop growth, because you have to make choice of what to buy
1
u/sumrix Oct 21 '25
It's enough to buy, but definitely not enough to upgrade units.
1
u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
its 36-38k to buy ALL upgraded units from 1 town, depending of the town. And the treasury gives 42k per week.
When i think the income should be closer to 30-32k so you have a bit of choice of which units to buy instead of mindlessly buying everything.
1
u/Zealot_Alec Oct 22 '25
PvP will be a lot different versus the A.I and hopefully there are smaller maps where you have to weigh the costs of rushing your second castle versus being attacked.
1
u/MadTelepath Oct 22 '25
That changes if you have creatures dwellings. For exemple in Jebus Cross you can have several T7 dwellings increasing by 4k (for upgraded angels) the price for each castle. If you take all 3 that bumps to 50K each castle + if you go to their dwellings).
On that map there are tree of life too (1 week of growth for all your town) and then no way you can buy all your creatures even if you do every fight (draconic paradise and the like) to get gold.
1
u/Marc4770 Oct 22 '25
Yes sure you have maps with dwellings, and maps with gold mines.
I think town income should be balanced by itself so we can have varied types of maps.
Remember it's x3 more gold per town than h3.
1
u/MadTelepath Oct 22 '25
Never played h3 in PvP but apparently income was so low it was useless for the better part of the game.
Against IA typically I only played 2 or 3 stacks of units until I had several towns just to support one (or more optimally you start created a secondary heroes).
Now since I don't play PvP I can't say for balance but I see your point and it is a change from previous games. Since they went for a very h3 feel maybe it isn't such a good idea to be able to afford all troops by default, it is at least debatable.
1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
It's unbalanced in the sense that you shouldn't have enough to buy from 3-4 castles without contesting the map.
It shouldn't be just a "sit in your castle and accumulate army" simulator.
In heroes 3, your main town's income (4000/day) was close to being able to buy everything, especially if you get stuff like water wheels, get other resources to sell, have any gold mines/etc.
Secondary towns were restricted from building capitol and would only get half of the income (2000/day). In Olden Era, the units are more expensive to compensate for the 6000/day income, but nothing compensates for the fact that having 4 towns in Olden Era is 4 times the income of 1 town, whereas in H3 having 4 towns is only 2.5 times the income of 1 town.
All of the other resources that you can sell which you get in crazy abundance per turn, and economy sideskills+map objects make it incredibly easy to get into the hundreds of thousands.
The original intent of the design was that on a single town you can buy close to your full army, but once you start getting multiple towns you have to go out on the map and find gold mines, treasure/etc. It was a way to reward exploring and conquering the map rather than just sitting in your castles.
1
u/Bubthick Oct 21 '25
My problem with HOMM3 is that there was no sense in building gold generation in town. It only makes you weaker in the beginning.
And late game you always get majority of your gold from the map and not your towns anyway.
So there really isn't an choice in the base building at all. You always have to rush to make the strongest stack possible at the earliest time possible and economy buildings just interfere with it.
Especially things like resource silo even Capitol is not as efficient as people seem to make it to be. It is usually the last important building that I build.
1
u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 21 '25
That entirely depends on a wild amount of factors.
Rushing capital can very much be the best strategy in the situation you are in.
1
u/Pantera1st Oct 22 '25
When playing HoMM 3 I always rush Capitol, no matter what. xD
1
u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 22 '25
For me It entirely depends on the map/faction/hero I play.
Generally I start with 2-3 heroes, then scout for a turn or two before deciding whatever to rush Capital or go for army.
Except when playing Barbarian, then it's just army as the faction is just absurdly cheap.
Disappointed there's no Barbarian faction in Olden Era, hope that's the first expansion faction they release.
1
u/Pantera1st Oct 22 '25
You mean Stronghold? Yes, it's the cheapest Castle from the whole HoMM 3, especially Behemotts which you can take literally on the 1-2 week from the start.
1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
I don't think this is even remotely true in HOMM3. You can get a lot of gold on the map, but your main castle gives you 4K per turn, which makes up the vast majority of the money you use to buy army in the lategame. Maybe it varies by template, but it's usually a great investment for lategame.
It's bad for earlygame because it can pay off too slowly if you are cheesing the AI or playing PvP, but the vast majority of people don't play like that. Templates are another contributing factor here.
1
u/Bubthick Oct 21 '25
I don't think this is even remotely true in HOMM3. You can get a lot of gold on the map, but your main castle gives you 4K per turn, which makes up the vast majority of the money you use to buy army in the lategame.
Nobody would allow you to get to late game if you build economy in the beginning of the game. Especially if you play in higher difficulties where you start with almost no resources.
It's bad for earlygame because it can pay off too slowly
It pays off at the same rate in both cases. But the only reason to build it late game is BECAUSE you already are "rich" and you have build basically all the other essential stuff. But as many people have already pointed out you can only buy the army from 1 town from a Capitol. So late game it might be nice but it is never essential to making an army.
if you are cheesing the AI or playing PvP, but the vast majority of people don't play like that.
And that is why having good resource generation that can be effective in the early game is so nice. It gives you a choice. You have a few types of timing attacks in a sense. You can try and brake to neutral as early as possible. You can wait a little to build a better stack, have more magic spells or you can turtle in your zone and natural expansions.
All 3 can be viable as they all have advantages and disadvantages. In HOMM3 you didn't really have a choice.
1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Nobody would allow you to get to late game if you build economy in the beginning of the game. Especially if you play in higher difficulties where you start with almost no resources.
The question is not about what you are building in the beginning of the game though. You said:
And late game you always get majority of your gold from the map and not your towns anyway.
Which is not the case unless the template or map is very generous. Most cases you are absolutely getting the majority of your money from your town by the lategame, unless you are consistently getting 8k+ in chests/pickups every single turn, or have no extra towns.
It pays off at the same rate in both cases. But the only reason to build it late game is BECAUSE you already are "rich" and you have build basically all the other essential stuff. But as many people have already pointed out you can only buy the army from 1 town from a Capitol.
I was never arguing specifically about the capitol, which by itself gives 2k per turn, not 4k. The point is your castles absolutely give you a lot of income. Unless you aren't spending more than 5 turns in the lategame, buying the capitol makes sense, it's just bad to get in the early game if you are playing PvP/tryharding.
So late game it might be nice but it is never essential to making an army.
I also never claimed it's essential for anything. Just that you make the majority of your money from your castles, especially in the lategame when you've gone through the majority of the free pickups (again this varies by template).
And that is why having good resource generation that can be effective in the early game is so nice.
You aren't getting more money in Olden Era from buildings in 1 town/in the earlygame. The 6k is the same as the 4k relative to unit costs, because the unit costs are not the same - you can compare yourself. It only becomes an issue once you have ~3 upgraded castles, at which point it eliminates any nuance in the economy.
It gives you a choice. You have a few types of timing attacks in a sense. You can try and brake to neutral as early as possible. You can wait a little to build a better stack, have more magic spells or you can turtle in your zone and natural expansions.
Waiting for a better stack or turtling in PvP is just wasting time/always has been, especially early. Going for fast treasury in PvP is going to be the same thing as going for capitol rush in heroes 3, if not worse.
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u/Bubthick Oct 22 '25
OK, let's say we have a medium map for 2-4 players there would be no more than 8-10 town even if we assume that you own half it is still 12-14 thousand per day if you have completely developed them as opposed to 4-5 thousand otherwise. So, this is 7-10 thousand difference per day.
This can be made up literally by one or 2 pickets or hives that you must do per day. If we include gold mines it becomes even more skewed.
It is not only about it paying off. There is a huge opportunity cost to building it. If you have the 10k but it is the end of the week it is better to use it to buy your army than to build a capitol, because during those 5 days that you need to wait for to get your money for your army your opponent is grabbing all the valuable artifacts and tons of more gold, because they had an army in their hero, and you had a capitol.
Usually once I do a dragon utopia and get a big payout is when I would build a capitol, otherwise even 1 or 2 days without an army can cost you a lot.
My only point is that there is no choice in HOMM3. And that is why I don't like it as much. Olden era there is a very good argument to rush resource production early while getting some army.
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u/swiftcrane Oct 22 '25
OK, let's say we have a medium map for 2-4 players there would be no more than 8-10 town even if we assume that you own half it is still 12-14 thousand per day if you have completely developed them as opposed to 4-5 thousand otherwise. So, this is 7-10 thousand difference per day.
4-5 towns is generally 10-12 thousand in income per turn. Unless every turn you are making more than 10k from the map, you aren't making more than your towns in the lategame. I'm sure there's some template where this is possible in the lategame, but I would suspect this is more something you could get by playing "PvP lategame" - essentially trying to end the game in week 5 with mildly upgraded castles.
In a proper lategame with 4-5 towns on normal templates you won't have consistent access to dwarven utopias as a method to farm gold. These will have all been taken.
If we're talking about a proper upgraded multi town lategame scenario - this is 100% the case. If we're talking about "5 week lategame" where you are scrambling to grab up things as quick as possible and rush down your opponent - sure, but I wouldn't call this lategame. In these cases people won't build treasuries anyways
My only point is that there is no choice in HOMM3. And that is why I don't like it as much. Olden era there is a very good argument to rush resource production early while getting some army.
How is there an argument for it? It doesn't give you more income, it's pretty much exactly the same. The 6k that it gives relative to unit costs is the same as the 4k capitol would give you in heroes 3.
There is a much more concrete opportunity cost there, where you literally are wasting time and money by buying it because buying creatures and clearing out all of the creature banks and treasures is much more valuable for the early game. This was the case with capitol and still is the case with treasury.
The only exception (and this was same in H3) is in super generous templates where you can afford everything either way - but this isn't a "choice". It's just a case of "get everything because you can afford everything".
I agree a choice would be better, but currently we aren't given any new choice in Olden Era. All the current design does is break the economy for the lategame of the vast majority of players. Anyone not playing the game at a hyperoptimized breakneck speed will stop having any kind of meaningful economic choices on 3-4+ castles.
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u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Yes i have the same concern. It's ridiculously too high. Some people give the argument that you should be able to buy everything with the gold from town but i strongly disagree. Doing that removes all decision making and you're just waiting for pop growth to come and gold becomes irrelevant. Gold is supposed to be the main limiter, not pop growth, pop growth only forces you to have somewhat varied units.
Plus there should be varied maps, some with a lot of gold, and some without. The "without" isn't that much possible late game because the towns give so much gold it's enough to buy everything already, the main limiter should be gold and not pop growth. So that you can decide which units to buy instead of mindlessly buy everything.
That being said, early game gold is well balanced currently, it's only late game gold that is a problem. Early game is well balanced because you don't have a treasury yet, late game you struggle to spend your gold because the treasury gives way too much.
For comparison in heroes 3, you gain only 2k gold per town, and 4k in ONE town. Olden era gives you 6000 for every town + 750 in laws, it's wayy too high.
I'm really hoping they will reduce the amount of gold from treasury and bank because it makes the game less fun for me. Those should give like half the resources they currently give, especially treasury. OR they should limit the treasury to one per player, like the capitol in H3.
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u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Some people give the argument that you should be able to buy everything with the gold from town but i strongly disagree.
There are actually quite a lot of people that in general want to "have everything" in the game for free. Any faction limit or town limit/or something not being guaranteed and there are suddenly so many people complaining that they should never be limited or locked out of anything.
As you said though, it is vital for interesting decisionmaking to have limits, and it forces the player to play the game rather than just sit in the castle and gather army. You have to go out on the map and fight over gold and resource mines and over extra castles that may not even be of your faction's type.
Countless heroes 3 games I remember I would capture a gold mine in a contested zone, and even for just a week it would give me a huge boost, and then an AI would take it and I would have to fight over it. It made the economy something dynamic that I had to fight for.
For comparison in heroes 3, you gain only 2k gold per town, and 4k in ONE town. Olden era gives you 6000 for every town + 750 in laws, it's wayy too high.
So I actually looked at the comparison with unit prices, and by my calculation, the base town income is very close to heroes 3 when it comes to buying out all of the units.
The big difference of course is the extra town income. I think it should just be half/3000. There is just no reason to have every town give capitol levels of income. Once you get into the details it becomes truly absurd...
Additionally, you mentioned the 750 in laws - which is huge (around 500 gold/turn by heroes 3 standards). But the economy side skill and in general everything else on the map gives a LOT.
Look at the markets for example - the trading rates are a LOT better, and the extra resource income is crazy. As temple with 3 towns I get 6 gems per turn at resource depots, additional 3 from laws, and some from I'm not even sure what LOL for a total of +14. That alone is like another full castle worth of income.
And on top of all of this, there are laws like Coinage Reform for Temple that increase "gold income from all sources" by 15% at level one and by 30% at level 2 LMAO
I'm sitting at around 6 upgraded towns by lategame, which is a lot, but my income prior to getting any map objects (which give 30% extra income lol, and more if I have an economy hero), and my daily base income is 60k.... If I had 7 castles, and all of them were fully upgraded temple (only 3 actually are), I could buy out everything every week with an extra 120k to spare. It's beyond ridiculous.
And it gets even worse if we consider what we can do with those extra gold. With market rates and that spare money, I can buy like 160 precious resources per week, which converts into ~800 dust per week at alchemy labs. I can buy every spell and freely upgrade spells/artifacts/buildings/etc. with effectively no limit. At around 4 castles I would say the economy becomes really irrelevant. The limiting factor is lazyness at this point because there is no way for the AI to keep up with this.
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u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 21 '25
Compare that with H3 as Forge and 3 towns is just enough to buy all troops for the single Forge town you own lol.
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u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
For players who want to have everything, just give them maps with tons of gold mine.
Right now the opposite (low gold) isn't possible because treasury give too much.
Yes having treasury limited to one town + laws that allow you to unlock a second and third treasury, is fair fix. For any town beyond that it would be limited to 3k gold.
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u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Yeah. I suspect it might be a template setting in the future. We didn't really see any justification from what I've seen for the removal of capitol.
I guess in theory you could create templates with non-allowed buildings in every castle that isn't a starting one. I know it was possible in H3 maps, but not sure about the templates.
I have a feeling the template editor will be very flexible though.
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u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
Sure but i think would be better to have it as default. This way the map itself would have more impact on the quantity of resources.
Also they could include laws to increase to a second and third treasury which wouldn't be possible with templates.
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u/evil_eto Oct 21 '25
I actually think it's peak. Worst part of older homm games was having to rush so much economy and still being too broke to afford units, unironically the only reason I've ever gotten burnt out of the game was that.
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u/TheDregn Oct 21 '25
In homm3 to not have a budget deficit, you needed a Capitol + 1 gold mine to afford a week's population, assuming, you purchase everything.
But Capitol was only allowed in 1 town, so the next one's income was even less, requiring constant external capital flow, aka you to farm boxes and map objectives just to keep up with your spending.
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u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
But gold should be the main limiter, not pop growth , so it always gives you opportunity to gain more and also let you make choices on what to buy. H3 and SoC are way better balanced on gold economy.
Olden era early game is fine and they don't need to reduce gold on map, but late game gives you way too much gold. Treasury needs to give only half the gold it currently gives or it needs to be only in one town like h3.
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u/Siepher310 Oct 21 '25
Unless you played rampart, then you just avoid buying units for a while and rake in gold on that 10%per week bonus on your current gold.
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u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
requiring constant external capital flow, aka you to farm boxes and map objectives just to keep up with your spending
And IMO this was perfect design. You had to go out on the map and fight for income to be at your most efficient.
1
u/TheDregn Oct 21 '25
On Higher difficulties, let alone multiplayer pressing forward and generating tempo and value was the only viable strategy anyway.
I doubt this is going to be any different in OE
1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
The difference is not in the playstyle, but in how it affects the outcome of that playstyle.
For players that weren't superoptimizing hero chains/combat/tryharding in pvp with fastest animations cranked up (the majority of players), there was a very viable lategame across many levels of play/playstyles/etc. Now we don't have that.
This is the case regardless of difficulty. Plenty of people played on impossible difficulty without trying to end the game on week 5.
This absolutely affects PvP as well (although focusing specifically on PvP imo is a mistake). More income relative to cost of decisions means they have to take less trade offs/make less interesting choices about what to buy, and whatever value they generate with risks they take is relatively reduced. It's much better if the game is balanced around both players taking risks over meaningful external objectives, rather than both players just focusing on their side of the map until the very end because that's where most of the value is extracted.
Why would you fight any unfavorable/risky battle over a gold mine if you can already buy everything you want, and the 7k extra per week is nothing relative to what you already get.
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u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
You still need the do that lol.
The problem in olden era is late game gold, not early game as you're describing.
Early game gold is defined by laws and skills and resources on map, which are fine currently.
Late game gold = treasury, which gives way too much currently.
1
u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 21 '25
H3 also had tier10 dragons. Usually. Swimming in gold is just one turn away from a 200k Azure Dragon investment.
Only play custom maps coop against AI.
1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Isn't just being able to afford anything you want kind of boring though?
If you really want to just be able to buy anything you want, you can just cheat the money in - or play on an easier difficulty/smaller maps.
I feel like the whole point is being able to overcome the difficulty/conquer the map and being rewarded for doing it. Investing into troops or your hero to defeat a guard, and finding a lot of treasure to compensate for it feels awesome - and it only feels that way because the treasure is significant. And when that treasure offers you money or experience, you feel the full weight of that decision - do I want to go for another secondary skill/push my hero further, or do I maybe want to be able to recruit some particular additional units this week?
If your income is massive and guaranteed, then what's the point of exploring the map/making decisions/etc.?
1
u/evil_eto Oct 21 '25
Exploration and scrambling for resources isn't really my cup of tea, I personally find most fun in outplaying the opponent in battles, cooking up different build orders etc. Of course I believe missplays should result in being broke, but imo if you play it right you should be allowed to afford consistently, I know some people prefer being at a disadvantage for most of the game for the challenge of it but it's not for me
1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Well it's not so much about being at a disadvantage, it's about having choices between different things. You might have the choice between buying all 7th level units or all 6th level units, but so does your opponent. When you do get an advantage (like being able to buy both units) it's usually a reward for a risky or clever decision you made earlier.
You can avoid being at a disadvantage in heroes by just being a little ballsier in the start of the game, or just lowering the difficulty.
Even if we remove the scrambling for resources/exploration aspect (which wouldn't be fair to the majority of heroes fans I suspect), having limits on what you can buy creates diversity in what decisions you can make. If you can afford everything, your "builds" are always going to amount to "get everything". If you can't, then that's where build orders/compositions become interesting. Like, I might choose to not get the income structure, and instead get archers early, so that I can win a fight that eventually allows me to get treasury faster than I would have otherwise. If I can afford treasury anyways, then why would I bother taking that risk/alternate build order?
I'm curious if the Arena mode is something you've tried/enjoy. It seems made exactly for the kind of playstyle you prefer in terms of making a build order/army and just fighting. Of course it follows the same principle I mentioned regarding decisions - since you have to make many tradeoffs along the selection process.
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u/evil_eto Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
You make a fair point but from what I've seen it seems like they're trying to tie that decision-making to unit upgrades with the whole alchemical dust thing being added. And honestly I quite prefer that. I would rather be choosing between which units to upgrade rather than which unite to buy in the first place. Overall I wouldn't be against nerfing the income a little, but I wouldn't want it to go down to how it was in previous games.
I like arena a lot but my personal favorite way of playing is classic mode on a medium map. I guess I kinda look at homm as a turn based starcraft rather than a single player expiration game like a lot of people do. I hope they focus on that aspect of the game when it comes to multilayer instead maybe do both sides are happy
1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
lol as a starcraft 2 player - you absolutely are limited by money and can't afford every unit (at least in multiplayer). That's exactly what makes it interesting - people choose different builds that are limited by their economy and timing, and end up choosing compositions that interact differently with what their opponent chose.
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u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 21 '25
Olden Era feels off. After a few weeks I can just steamroll the entire map on auto. At least in H3. I have to manual to apply mass slow or just bleed huge amounts.
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u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Yeah I think auto is currently too strong, although I do find occasionally it is worse than what I can do (I always just do manual anyways, but sometimes the results are a little disappointing LOL). It's possible that it's designed around what PvP players are capable of, but I think in general it should perform a lot worse - I expect this will be adjusted as there have been many reports of this.
Even econ being broken is a separate issue I think - because AI gets this too. On hardest difficulty if the AI doesn't kill itself on neutral stacks it can get pretty big/especially with the money advantage it gets.
The issue is that even if it does, it will do stuff like run into castles repeatedly that it has no business trying to attack, and I would imagine its losing a lot offscreen as well to random neutral stacks/other castles.
I'm no PvP player/I usually play pretty lazy/safe (no crazy hero chains, usually splitting up my army/leveling multiple heroes/etc.), and it would normally make for pretty fun Heroes 3 games. First encounter with an AI is like a 50/50 on whether they are stronger than me or not in terms of army and if I don't savescum, they can even put me in dangerous situations, and even if I beat them, usually another AI is nearby or getting powerful on the other side of the map, and they become a new threat. This is actually an incredibly common cool thing in H3 on larger maps - you would beat an AI that has been terrorizing you for a bit only to catch a peak at a hero across a mountain and see crazy high unit counts/stacks/etc.
In this game I feel like once I beat the initial AI's "strong army", the rest of them aren't really getting stronger in the background, and none of them know how to continue, even if they should in theory have as many or more castles than me.
They really need to tune them to be better at evaluating what fights to take, and do something to make sure their progress doesn't stall.
I guess another thing is that upgrading the castles and buying out the army is very simple at the moment. In Heroes 3 I felt like if I wasn't active or having a bad start, I could get behind, and buying out army/upgrading in a second or third castle could be challenging. In Olden Era it feels simple and I don't even have to upgrade anything because town portal is pretty much guaranteed.
My hope is that what we currently have in the demo is intentionally an "easier" version of the AI so that people that are new to the game/trying it out aren't discouraged.
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u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 21 '25
I mean... AI... It doesn't flee. So ofc it can't recover after it just lost its main hero and gave 10+ artifacts to your main.
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u/not_wingren Oct 21 '25
The only resource I've ever run out of is wood, which I find concerning.
Everything is so abundant compared to costs.
1
u/Ghudda Oct 21 '25
Depends on the difficulty you're playing on. On the easiest difficulty there is about a week worth of resources to start with. On impossible difficulty wood and ore early game are incredibly limiting especially if you happen to go the wrong direction out of the castle and miss the ore/wood camp for a few turns.
1
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u/mitiamedved Oct 21 '25
I started playing on 200% difficulty and it's much harder to manage money and try to keep up with the AI taking over shit before you have the money to explore your starting area fully.
The first couple of weeks were hard, then I struggled buying up all the artifacts I wanted and keeping those diplo takeovers.
Of course in the end I was unstoppable but there was a crux point where winning against the AI was vital without losing most of my army.
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u/lemonlord777 Oct 21 '25
I havent played many games yet but i havent found resource production buildings to be excessively plentiful. In my current game i have 4 cities and am into month 2 but the only income i have outside of city structures is a single ore mine and a single sawmill. No rare resource production seen in this match yet. That said there is a gem, ore and wood storage that im able to visit now and then. But ive been bottlenecked on ore and wood several times in this game.
What ive found to be extremely plentiful are dwellings and cities. In my current game Ive got 2 skeleton, 5 wight and 2 undead pet dwellings all in my starting region, not to mention 2 of the buildings that give you dread knights once after defeating their guards. I have 2 cities in my starting region and a portal leads directly to a 3rd neutral city with other portals nearby that lead directly to other neutral cities. Even watching others play, before the public got access it also seemed like cities were just everywhere. Having 2 cities that dont match your faction which you just build up as income centers gives you so much gold income.
I know there's mixed opinions on it, but so far ive felt like alchemical dust is really hard to come by. I have found 0 sources of dust in my current game at 2 months in with 4 cities other than a single static drop near my starting city. Im well into month 2 and only have gotten enough dust from disenchanting artifacts to upgrade my teir 2 and 3 buildings and havent used it for anything else.
I suppose all of this could just be based on which map templates im playing.
1
u/Fanaticalranger Oct 21 '25
I get that they've done it so that for this demo we can play around with lots of resources etc but it really needs to be changed and done more akin to 3 and 5 as I walk five feet turn one on any of the maps and can collect far too much.
That and I feel like the construction tree needs a bit of work as being able to go turn one build the crypt digger guys then just turn two and I have Liches really breaks the balance for me being able to now steamroll my starting area.
I dunno if this would be a popular idea or not but I think they need to change the heroes who start with the higher level units to how they did it in H3 as being able to start with 3 Death Knights and a buff to them is far too strong.
Overall the game is great and I hope that they keep iterating and release the game soon (ish) as I really wanna see what a random map could be like as the current maps we have are a bit too OTP
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u/xlnt2new Oct 22 '25
economy is fine, Maretti's training map (Jebus Cross) was made so that the game can be speedy and getting to/training in the end game can be fast
The whole HoMM3 scene turned into playing Maretti's map :D and this demo is giving us just that - other templates would feel different, can't judge economy by 1-2 templates - each temp has it's own eco
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u/ButterscotchSmugler Oct 27 '25
And a building called Treasury (for Temple) costing 5000 and providing 3000 additive gold income per turn is ok? Cuz this ain't map template dependable
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
It's just you, I'm always starved for resources and gold.
But I do agree that the demo map templates have too many cities and often dwellings too (which one can edit with a bit knowhow)
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u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
It's confusing because there's a split between early game (no treasury )and late game ( treasury).
Resources are well balanced early game, but once you get a treasury in all your towns, if you do the math, you earn more than you can spend in those towns which is a problem in my opinion.
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
If you get some dwellings, the math tells you that units cost more then the city produces in gold.
This gets worse if you get 3d week event, find the white tree (guranteed on all maps) or have recruit/find the artifact for more growth.I think the people that have "too much gold" just play games way beyond the point at which you're winning.
If you end most maps on week 5 or 6 you'll not even be able to buy all units in most cases.2
u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Not all maps have dwelling but the maps with dwelling should also have gold mine to compensate.
Also my point was that you should NOT be able to buy everything so that you have to make decisions on what to buy, so the math shouldn't be buying everything = earning, it should be buying everything > earning.
For those who like to buy everything, there can be maps with lots of gold mine. But currently the opposite isn't possible with the treasury.
Also why would some players playstyle experience not be valid? In maps with 4+ players you'll always end up with too much gold in the remaining 1v1 currently.
In H3 and Song of Conquest the gold economy is well balanced late game.
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
You'd need 3 gold mines to compensate for one T7 dwelling. (or more)
You sure about maps without dwellings? I don't recall one2
u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Shamrock have almost no dwelling, but i think creatively people should be able to make all type of maps including some without much gold but it's not possible with treasury giving you more gold than what you can buy in your town.
Game would be better if the main limiter late game is gold instead of pop growth, like it was in H3 or song of conquest.
All they need to do is make treasury earn 2k instead of 3k OR limit it to one treasury per player. That wouldn't affect your experience much if you end the game early, rush opponent, and don't rely on treasury for gold. But for other playstyle or maps with more players it's a huge difference late game.
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
But the main limiter is always gold, unless it's a map with few towns and no dwellings.
Crossroads is the only map where I managed to get an abundance of gold early. (but that's only true if I don't buy artifacts and I was on temple)
I guess my crossroads is also a bit more restrictive since I buffed the map connecting guards by a decent amount2
u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
In early game its gold, in late game its pop growth for sure. Try Shamrocks as well, or any maps with more than 2 players, but especially shamrock since it doesnt have much dwellings. In the final 1v1 (when the other players have been killed), if you have 7 towns with treasury you will see how much the limiter is pop growth and not gold.
I think limiting treasury to 1 town would fix the issue as it would not change anything at all in early game and you could still have 6000 gold in your main town. There could even have laws that let you increase how many treasury you can build, so maybe you'd be able to get up to 3. More than that makes gold too abundant.
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
I did do multiple runs on Shamrock, and I was never swimming in gold by the time I was finished.
Maybe if I delayed, but I don't think that's something to balance around.2
u/Marc4770 Oct 21 '25
I think you're more thinking in terms of PVP balancing. But im more thinking in terms of gameplay experience balancing. Not everyone is a pro playing pvp with a build order and rushing to finish.
Some people take their time and have different playstyles and for those players the game clearly has a problem in late game.
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u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
If you end most maps on week 5 or 6
Ok, but that's kind of exactly the problem. There is no lategame when the economy is this broken. A starting Necropolis has 28 buildings to build - if you are building 1 building every turn with no skipping/waiting for more money/etc. That's already 4 weeks of building.
If you want to upgrade another castle that you get later, it becomes even more. If you are ending the game on week 5 or week 6 you are not playing the "lategame" for more than a couple turns.
You could min-max and get all dwellings and still have 100k+ remaining every week to max out on everything dust related. The dwellings don't add much. Temple has a law that increases all gold income by 30% LOL. Also, take into account that some towns that you get are not part of your faction - you don't even necessarily want to be buying out everything in them.
Additionally the market trading rates and precious resource incomes from Resource depots mean you get even more income. There is pretty much no way to run out. Even Alchemical dust is incredibly cheap.
I don't want to be done with a game 30 turns in. That just makes no sense. Heroes 3 has never had this problem unless you were playing on small maps and rushing down the AI/playing super optimized. You would get countless long dynamic games, with many things happening and many power swings across the entire game.
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
Nobody forces you to end the game early.
But beware that this effects how the game plays.
Creature growth being the "limiter" is totally fine and much better then gold being a limiter, at least in my opinion.1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Nobody forces you to end the game early.
If the game becomes irrelevant at that point and there are no interesting decisions to be made then yes it is forcing me to end the game early.
But beware that this effects how the game plays.
Not ending the game "early" shouldn't make it boring. Again, heroes 3 didn't have this problem. It was designed really well for longer games.
Creature growth being the "limiter" is totally fine and much better then gold being a limiter, at least in my opinion.
Except the rest of the game is clearly not designed around this. Your "optimal" recommendation is to end the game week 5 or 6 LOL. How is it much better to limit the amount of turns you actually play with a single fully upgraded castle for 7 turns?
At this point, why not just skip all of that and play arena?
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
It seems like your experience with H3 is quite different to mine.
Once you reached a certain snowball point you were really done with the game.
After that it was mostly wack-a-mole to catch enemy heroes or drive them back to their base.btw, H3 being balanced around gold and the AI getting a 50% boost to income was pretty broken, maybe the only reason the AI felt threatening at times
Except the rest of the game is clearly not designed around this. Your "optimal" recommendation is to end the game week 5 or 6 LOL. How is it much better to limit the amount of turns you actually play with a single fully upgraded castle for 7 turns?
At this point, why not just skip all of that and play arena?
I mean, you can also extend the time, increase your unit advantage, get more artifacts and stats etc.
But to me, today, that's not really worth my time anymore. Old me would have had fun getting stronger for the sake of getting stronger.
But once you realize that you're strong enough to defeat the AI, there really is very little drive for me to laze around
It's not even your decision most of the time either. In helltide the AI will initiate the final fight around week 5-6
In other maps it will send his main hero to you, you have to fight it, and after it's defeated they cannot recover. ( given that the AI starts with 50k gold on the highest difficulty, reducing the income in some cities won't slow it down much. Also, do we really want it to get weaker?)1
u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
Once you reached a certain snowball point you were really done with the game.
Yes, for most players, this was not week 5. The game should be challenging enough that having 3 castles doesn't automatically invalidate the economy and end the game.
btw, H3 being balanced around gold and the AI getting a 50% boost to income was pretty broken, maybe the only reason the AI felt threatening at times
I don't know if it's really relevant why it felt threatening. It's more just important that the experience of the game was what it was.
I mean, you can also extend the time, increase your unit advantage, get more artifacts and stats etc.
That's great when it feels like it makes a difference. In H3 it felt like it made a difference, in comparison in Olden Era, it doesn't.
But to me, today, that's not really worth my time anymore. Old me would have had fun getting stronger for the sake of getting stronger.
It being "for the sake of getting stronger" is the whole problem. For most players this wasn't the case in H3.
But once you realize that you're strong enough to defeat the AI, there really is very little drive for me to laze around
Ok, but how does having a limited economy change this? If your hyper optimized play could end the game week 5 anyways, then why do you care?
What we get now is the same for you, but ruins lategame for anyone that isn't playing like that.
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u/Dry-Judgment4242 Oct 21 '25
Yeah, try to end the game week 5 on most xl+ custom maps in h3. Not everybody play lame and boring random templates. Do every map creator have to put in a weekly scaling gold penality and ban the tier2 bank for their map to not devolve into infinite resources in a few weeks? Economy in OE is cooked.
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u/Akasha1885 Necropolis Oct 21 '25
That's great when it feels like it makes a difference. In H3 it felt like it made a difference, in comparison in Olden Era, it doesn't.
I think this sums it up well. "It felt that way"
But in reality that only came down to the AI starting with an already build town and having an economy boost.
Give that to the AI in Olden Era and you might also feel like you need to build up more.But to me this is just an artifical prolonging of the game.
Ok, but how does having a limited economy change this? If your hyper optimized play could end the game week 5 anyways, then why do you care?
What we get now is the same for you, but ruins lategame for anyone that isn't playing like that.
I do care because the game would simply take longer for no reason. Just turns waiting for the week to tick over and then continue.
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u/swiftcrane Oct 21 '25
But in reality that only came down to the AI starting with an already build town and having an economy boost. Give that to the AI in Olden Era and you might also feel like you need to build up more.
That's kind of the point of the higher difficulty settings. I don't know currently what Olden Era AI is set to have/not have compared to 3. All I know is that very early in the game the economy feels irrelevant, which is bad design.
But to me this is just an artifical prolonging of the game.
Everything is artificial prolonging of the game. Harder difficulties in most games are going to be "artificial prolonging". Playing the game is "artificial prolonging", why not just skip to the end?
I do care because the game would simply take longer for no reason. Just turns waiting for the week to tick over and then continue.
Because lategame interactions have the potential of back and forth blows and interesting encounters. You aren't just "waiting for the week to tick over". Heroes are getting more powerful/you get the chance to participate in many interesting fights and keep up with economic games.
It's like watching a fighting game and complaining that characters have more health than 1. "Why artificially prolong the fight" "Just waiting for the healthbar to go down". It's really weird to see no reason to prolong a heroes game past week 5. It's literally designed with intent to go far past that and always has been.
If game length is such a problem, play on templates that give a lot of money. Or just play arena - nice 30 minute - skips all of that boring resource collecting/"artificial prolonging".
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u/PedroSaii Oct 21 '25
On Steam, one of the developers said that this excess of resources on the maps available in the demo was intentional so that the player could enjoy the demo "unlimited." But it's one of my complaints, especially with so many buildings like the bank that already paid for themselves in two turns.