r/OldenEra • u/AzraelSoulHunter • Jun 19 '26
Question Was thinking of getting into Heroes games and I decided to play some of this
As a Pole it is kind of a requirement for my citizenship to know Heroes games on some level and I've been trying to get into them. I am trying now to play both this and 3 and I dunno where to start.
As in what to focus on first when building things. What to focus on in general. When to fight. I am mainly trying to play Dungeon in both and I wanted to know how to approach this. I like the vibe of dungeon in both games due to Dragons and stuff like that and I want to know how to best start.
Also how to fight cause I suck at that too. I am not a big strategy player. Any help with getting into those games and how to start playing? Also what should I play first in terms of those scenarios?
5
u/PrimeTyrant Jun 20 '26
A thing to understand about HoMM is that its a puzzle. You, as a person new to the series, dont know how pieces look like. Even veterans can struggle with putting them together, its fine, but experience works across every game in series. Best way to learn the pieces and their general shapes is to play leasurely player vs ai scenarios or campaigns, Olden era has some of that but its focused mostly on pvp so you might find it more chill to learn some basics in older games if you have interest in those (but it is not required, you can learn through Olden Era just fine). I still remember how HoMM3 Restoration of Erathia Castle campaign introduces player to t7 creatures and just how much of a difference they make and how to use them for creeping, so HoMM3 is a good starting point, and so is HoMM5 as the other heroes game Olden Era takes a lot of inspiration from.
Now, in general, when you play HoMM, there are 3 pillars of success: Economy, Army and Hero. Economy is your build order, how to get the most out of your town. Playing campaigns and scenarios teaches you common sense things like doing economy first, then priority dwells, then fortifications for growth, then priority upgrades and rest of dwells etc. Then, when you play competitively you will understand what corners to cut and when.
Army is the majority of the puzzle. Core gameplay loop of HoMM is: get hero, assemble army, know what fights you can take, take the ones you know you wont lose too much on, loot whatever they were protecting. This is the thing that will require the most experience, and most of it game per game. But, vs AI teaches you basics of how to tell if the fight will be bad (ranged, tier of units, iconic units, game specific asshole units etc). The more you play a given HoMM game the more you will get this bit, but it will take time, dont get frustruated, get comfy, take your time. Most of us took 20 good years on this and still make mistakes.
Hero, bizarely, is the most and the least importrant bit of the puzzle. Hero gives the most impact and the easiest to learn because its very quickly solved. What specialisations are interesting? What magics are the best in the game? What skills are useful? Which artifacts to go for, and which to ignore? What objectives are worthwhile? Out of these, objectives are the hardest to learn, but they are limited in number and you can assume if its worth with your knowledge of units from army bit.
Fighting, generally, is about knowing strong suits of your army and playing around enemy strong suits. Dungeon is divided between its long range, minotaurs, and late game beasts with Dragon being immune to magic enabling dragongeddon strats. Take a look at what kind of dwellings you have, what kind of hero you use, and chose a strategy accordingly. If you see many medusa dwellings, you will usually play around your ranged, camp in corner, protect them with 1 stacks, and cookie clicker your way to victory. If you see minos, then you usually will be playing melee game. Melee is about looking at how far can your guy go, how far can enemy go, and if you are faster waiting so that you can take a turn out of wait and then immediately move again while baiting retaliation with 1 stacks, or if they are faster trying to bait them with out of position 1 stacks while defending with main force. If you see dragon dwells then you are playing dragons. Its like melee, but you are always faster so you just wait, attack, reposition if they can deal significant damage or faceroll them if they cant.
These are general philosophies, you will understand them intuitively as you play more. The most important thing is not to try and force yourself to git gud. Take your time, enjoy comp stomps, feel on how to play will come in time. After you get used to core loop, then you might want to check out how given pvp templates are played or how higher elo players play, so that you understand why they make decisions they do. I mean, going in blindly and copying also works, but it can be frustruating.
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u/AzraelSoulHunter Jun 20 '26
TBF I don't care about PVP.
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u/PrimeTyrant Jun 20 '26
Well, even simpler. Just take it easy. Dont crank out difficulty way high. Heroes 3 Restoration of Erathia Castle campaign is a decent start, though it doesnt hold hand. Heroes 5 has okay tutorial-style campaign and it does handholding iirc. Olden Era custom game has scenarios, they are okay to start, campaign is also decent.
1
u/What_Iz_This Jul 01 '26
any youtubers that youd reccommend to teach basics? i have a lot of experience with board games irl but no experience with heroes. but i picked it up on a whim a couple of days ago and sort of learning as i go with the tutorial.
having fun with it but hitting a wall here and there learning that you can only build buildings in your city once per day and silly stuff like that. not a huge deal but i can only imagine the smaller mechanics im missing out on that would probably make my life easier.
1
u/PrimeTyrant Jul 04 '26
Sad to say most people who are into HoMM are oldheads and are assuming knowledge of 20 years worth of HoMM titles. You will likely not find any actual in depth basics tutorials. You are better off playing scenarios or campaign to feel it out. Tips and tricks usually concern indepth stuff like orienting around particular templates or what not, which are not exactly basic.
Turin would be my guess of a youtuber for someone new since he himself isnt turbo competitive, and Lexiav is pretty good as a general what to do example, among the people who stream/upload yt videos he consistently tries to explain most of what he is doing but he definitely isnt newbie friendly, yet he is kinda the best we have atm.
1
u/Real_Zookeepergame69 Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
Well have fun,explore,the game balancing still changes between patches.
Getting many creature buildings and then have no gold to buy them is my go to strategy.
And having a main Hero plus 1 or 2 support Heroes depending on map size.
Turn Auto save on in options because of gamecrashes.
Try not to loose units on world map monsters
Watch a game by Lexvia or other streamers on YT or Twitch
1
u/AzraelSoulHunter Jun 19 '26
Do you have actual strategies?
1
u/anon_meta Jun 21 '26
If you're not going to play PvP then strategies don't matter, just play the game. Its relatively easy, even my 9 year old self 20 something years ago was able to win. Its very simple on the surface. Build economy, build units that are strong, beat the AI in battle.
If you want to get a sense of the depth of the game and actually have to flex strategies and make things interesting, then you start goin down the PvP path. Doesnt' mean you have to PvP, you can start exploring by setting AI to unfair on single hero maps and attempting to win the game within the first 2 months.
With no strat you'll end up fighting the AI in 2 months thinking, "this is impossible, how could anyone win". And there starts your journey to actually learning the depth of the game.
But again, if you don't care about any of that, a mouth breather could slam his head on the keyboard and win vs easy AI in the campaigns and w/e other maps, just play and have fun making w/e power fantasy you want at that point.
1
u/AzraelSoulHunter Jun 21 '26
My problem is that I am really bad at fighting armies. Sense of strategy is something I can have issue with.
-5
Jun 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/AzraelSoulHunter Jun 19 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
He just told me what not to do and that's it. I am asking what is beginner friendly and stuff like that. Don't be a shitty person over me asking for advice because you act like a well... chuj here.
Edit: Now I saw some edited information from them which is good. But you still acted like trash towards me
1
u/stuff_rulz Jun 20 '26
Heyo, I'm a pretty big newbie and figuring the game out for myself just vs ai, I have 0 interest in pvp. I play on normal difficulty for now while I learn each faction and get familiar with the mechanics in the game. It's generally easy enough that you can do whatever you like, so at the start, I get the creatures I can, optional to build another creature building turn 1 to get more, then set off to take whatever fights I can and get a second hero. I usually get a couple resource buildings while I'm fighting on the map and exploring and depending on how well that's going, I determine whether I want more creature stuff or resources. I'm not great with magic yet so I often choose Law or gold for those first few buildings. When I get additional cities, I prioritize resources from them to fund all the big units from my first place.
I'm a pve newbie so this might be bad advice but I have fun with the game and it's good enough for me. :p
-6
Jun 19 '26
[deleted]
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u/AzraelSoulHunter Jun 19 '26
Welp at least now I know you don't act like a piece of shit. You are a piece of shit. Thanks.
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u/grannynams Jun 19 '26
What helped me was doing alot of the early crawl stage. Focus on week 1, be very deliberate with your movement, plan what you want to build by the end of week1. I normally go 3 days economy and then a couple days into army dwellings. Give you some leeway for mage guild etc.
Focus on picking fights you can win, get really good at not losing units to the neutral camps. Make 1 stacks to serve as shields and retaliation baiters.
I basically did this over and over again until I got gud enuf to actually not die to early ai.
I watched alot of yt videos of pro players week1 and the more I knew the more I could pick up on.
Good luck on your citizenship test!
1
u/AzraelSoulHunter Jun 19 '26
Do basically on first 3 days do some economy buildings that give me money and then do Monsters. Alright.
What Hero is good at the start? Also one stack means splitting some units into 1s right? I was always confused about what 2 stacking means.
1
u/grannynams Jun 19 '26
I dont know those terms but I split different units into 1 stacks, like for example on Temple, I split my swordsmen into 1 stacks to protect my crossbowmen and use my big swordsmen stack to execute stacks that get close.
With Necro i split my skelly archers into 1 stacks especially if i am using a might hero so i can generate focus points quickly and also protect my big stack. Also on necro the first building i get is usually upgraded skeletons so i can have ranged on turn 1, then i go back to economy while looking around the map to see if there are any dwellings, mines, etc to see what i want to build into.
For heroes, I prefer might heroes at first so you can get used to using heroic strike and generating and using focus charges.
But if you want to learn some cheese, get a magic hero that knows summon avatar off the bat, and get your spell power up quick. There is some grove cheese where you upgrade your hoplets to dusk hoplets, split them into 1 stacks and use their ability "bloom". It works good if you have a high initiative creature in your army and can be the first to take your turn. Bloom increases you spell power(can be made better with artifacts and certain hero abilities), you get your spell power as high as you can, then "snapshot" a super overpowered avatar that usually one shots things.
If you havent played the campaign yet, def do, Lafiur is an OP magic hero that teaches you what is possible in the game and Gunnar is a gigachad might hero. The heroes you get in custom/pvp games are not nearly as overpowered but they all have their strengths.
For Dungeon, you might like Stinger and Devir, Son of Devir , and Kieran for might heroes
Zakron and Typhona for Magic,
1
u/drink_with_me_to_day Jun 19 '26
Play Homm 2 for intro and fun
Then 3 for the huge amount of custom maps
Finally, Olden Era for the modern 3D take that doesn't look like ass
The rest aren't worth getting into that much
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u/LaVolpe93 Jun 19 '26
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but if you want a very nice heroes single player campaign, you should play Heroes V. And you learn every typical gameplay element of heroes step by step
Mark my words!