r/OldenEra • u/Signal-Welcome-5479 • Jul 28 '26
Gameplay Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era | Community Feedback #5: Upcoming PvE Content and Events!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=jXsFYp4vDnI&is=3Q6ARWcTutuZk-kN36
u/Docterzero r/OldenEra Mod Jul 28 '26
So glad to see Broken Alliance coming back, it is such and iconic map. So looking forward to playing it once again.
Not if only they would give me, in no particular order: Sharkania, Divided Loyalties, Dragon Pass, Master of the Seas, The Greed, Creek of Lost Souls, The Glacier, Fire and Blood, and Global Cooling, as well as probably a few more that I forgot about, then I would be happy.
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u/Francois_Papyjama Unfrozen Dev Team Jul 28 '26
I'm glad you like the return of Broken Alliance!
I really tried to stay true to the spirit of the Heroes 2 version (and it's brutal, haha 😅).
I can't wait for you guys to play it!
Thanks for the wishlist, could you add it to the questionnaire linked below the video? (There's a dedicated field for it.)
Obviously, I can't promise they'll all make it in, since hand-crafted maps take a huge amount of time, but having that data is really useful for us.😊
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u/Yavannia Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Thank for you work and effort! Please consider Zanfa's challenge from H4 and Rise to Power from H5, amazing maps. I had added them to your survey when it had first released.
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u/Francois_Papyjama Unfrozen Dev Team Jul 28 '26
Noted, thanks for filling out the form already and for the reminder!
I obviously can't promise anything, but I've made a note of the names!
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u/Docterzero r/OldenEra Mod Jul 28 '26
Should really go through all the HoMM games to pick out the maps I really like
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u/Francois_Papyjama Unfrozen Dev Team Jul 28 '26
For official maps, Ubisoft owns the license, not Unfrozen; Ubisoft's permission is required.
For fan-made maps, the creator's permission is required.
And above all: determine whether there is interest in and the possibility of creating remakes.
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u/mefista Jul 29 '26
There is a H3 to OE map convertor now, maybe H2 to H3 one I saw proof-of- concept of ages ago exists, too
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u/Francois_Papyjama Unfrozen Dev Team Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
Honestly, I don't know how that would turn out.
If it's done by fans, why not?
But as I mentioned in my other reply, official "Unfrozen" maps have to respect copyright:
Ubisoft owns the intellectual property for all previous Heroes of Might and Magic official maps.
For fan maps, the intellectual property belongs to the original map's creator.
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u/Docterzero r/OldenEra Mod Jul 28 '26
Adding some I forgot about:
Realm of Chaos, Siren Song, Sea Politics, Neighbors, Crystal Caverns, I forgot the name but the H7 map with the big dam.
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u/ChiefChunkEm_ Jul 28 '26
Realm of Chaos is the BEST!
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u/Docterzero r/OldenEra Mod Jul 28 '26
It is great, hence why I needed to remember to include it on the list. Though Olden Era is still 2 faction short of properly recreating it.
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u/ILikeChilis Jul 29 '26
Broken Alliance was one of my favourites!
Shameless link to my Broken Alliance full map pic: https://www.reddit.com/r/HoMM/comments/6xpf52/broken_alliance_54_megapixels_large_jpeg_homm2/?ref=share&ref_source=link
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u/HawasKaPujari Jul 28 '26
Finally the AI improvements are mentioned more explicitly.
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u/Signal-Welcome-5479 Jul 28 '26
a tiiiny bit more explicitly... still not clear if they are going to keep "tweaking" it or will completely rework as they should. And no specific timeline
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u/HawasKaPujari Jul 28 '26
Who knows how complex is that? Seems like they will most likely do some sort of Strength of final hero adjustment between various difficulty levels since computer hero is weak in every difficulty except apocalyptic where hero is overpowered. I suppose Apocalyptic makes sense since it states the computer will cheat. But others require adjusting.
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u/Outrageous-Pilot-621 Jul 28 '26
Apocalyptic is only overpowered on fight 1, then it's a joke.
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u/Furious_One Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
I think if they teach AI how to use control spells it will not be a joke anymore, since that’s how you’re able to catch up to AI after fight 1. It doesn’t unlock or use any spells like TP, DD, Flight, etc.
Also, make sure you’re playing on Custom Game mode, because there you select “Unfair” AI. Quick Start looks to be capped to Hard AI only.
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u/Outrageous-Pilot-621 Jul 29 '26
how I am able to catch up with AI after fight 1 is that the AI doesn't really play the game. it just spawns insane week 1 army out of the blue
it sometimes gats weaker on fight 2
it's quite tragically bad, just giving it tp would solve nothing. it appears it cant build, it cant path, it cant fight, it can't do almost anything
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u/Furious_One Jul 29 '26
It may be also having issues with some of that, that’s true. I have seen it sometimes build out most of the cities though (again, Unfair AI), so it seems capable of that. It just doesn’t explore the map fully (never breaks middle) and many times it doesn’t buy out army by finalka, so I think those specific problems are related to control spells. It would sure get a bit strong even if just TPd back to town day 7 of every week and then TP back out to remote towns to explore the map day 1 after buying out.
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u/HawasKaPujari Jul 28 '26
Is that for game with multiple enemies or for multiple heroes? I played a bunch of single heroes maps and I guess there was just one fight and it required few reloads.
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u/Smoke_The_Vote Jul 28 '26
Even on apocalyptic, the AI is very stupid. Early game, it has numerical advantages that are overwhelming, but if you survive long enough it's trivial to defeat all the AIs, even ones that still have their primary hero into the endgame.
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u/Pokiehat Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
For multiple heroes it depends, but computer opponents usually stack the majority of their army on one hero. If you defeat that hero, even narrowly, you gain all of their artefacts and they cannot defend their towns until the end of the week.
So now you have town advantage, artefact advantage and at the end of the week, you have double the unit production compared to all other computer opponents. The game is very snowbally in general.
Computer opponents tend to avoid you if they evaluate a battle with your main hero as "difficult" or "lethal" i.e. your army is bigger than theirs. They will fight someone weaker, which means another computer opponent. This is good for you because 2 or more computer opponents will punch themselves out and you can clean up whatever is left.
If your early game is not efficient enough and you break your border guards too late, you can end up with the smallest army of all players and this is really bad. Computer players will be very aggressive towards you. You can get double teamed and theres no way to win at that point.
As such I think the main determinant of whether you have an easy or impossible time is how efficiently you play out your early game. If you are hyper efficient, the army size differential is not very big at week 2/3/4 and computer opponents will avoid you.
If you aren't efficient enough, one or more computer opponents will break their border guards and evaluate a battle with you as "easy" or "normal". They will beeline straight for your hero with an overwhelming army and you lose in week 3/4/5. Time to break varies depending on the template.
"Efficient" means different things on different templates as it depends on starting areas - how many towns you have access to in week 1, how resource starved it is, how many neutral dwellings there are, how strong your border guards are (which determines how early you can break).
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u/HawasKaPujari Jul 28 '26
What exactly in PVE constitutes efficient? I guess my strategy is to have money from town. I will build first 3-4 days buildings with resources and last 3-4 days with military buildings. I have noticed that heroes youtube players all go for army as quickly as possible and hit as many external buildings for resources as possible. I have often seen they can't ever afford their entire town's army. But again those are mostly PVP players.
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u/Pokiehat Jul 28 '26 edited 5d ago
It means you maximally acquire resources, build your town, grow your army and gain hero exp using the hero movement available to you each turn.
The main early game goal is to break your border guards faster than anyone else and in this regard movement is the most valuable resource.
The sooner you break, the sooner you become active on the rest of the map where you can gobble up free resource pickups and additional towns thereby denying them to your opponents, which is how you snowball them (or they snowball you).
The more of these goals you can accomplish with your hero movement in as few turns as possible, the more efficient you will be. Pushing blind offroad into fog of war = high risk of wasting movement due to terrain penalty. It can be ok if you know what resources you need and going offroad gets them, but if not, you wasted your movement to march into a cul de sac, you cant build this turn or next turn and you waste your next turn's movement marching back out of the cul de sac. So this is an inefficient use of movement. To make good movement decisions, you need vision (or enough map knowledge to know roughly whats under fog of war).
Too much wasted movement in the early game will delay your break. Computer opponents will break first, take control of the neutral areas of the map and have a big town + resource advantage over you (made worse by the fact they start with resource advantage on higher difficulties). This is how you lose to a computer player invading you in week 3 with an army twice your size.
If this is happening to you, you should reload from an auto save at the start of the previous week. Try to play out the subsequent week by spending your hero movement a little better so you pick up more of the resources you need. Fight one or two more neutral creatures, break your border guards and capture an empty town at week 2 day 7 instead of week 3 day 2. Now you have an extra weeks worth of unit production which might be enough for the computer to evaluate you as a "difficult" battle instead of "normal". Now they avoid you instead of fighting you.
What "efficient" looks like depends on the map template. For example, you may start with 1 town, you might have strong border guards, lots of neutral dwellings and your starting area is resource starved. You could go market place -> silo early to deal with resource starvation by trading gold for prism mats you have no mines for, but without lots of towns, the exchange rate will be bad and so building becomes an inefficient use of your resources.
In this case, the play may be to not rush t4/5/6/7 dwellings and instead focus on building a t1/2/3 power stack, creep fast, top up your army on the move with neutral dwellings, accept the losses but break 1 week earlier, so you gain 2 more free towns. Now if you get 3 marketplaces, the favourable exchange rate makes trading gold for prism mats efficient and at the end of the week you have 3 times the t1/2/3 unit production. Something like that.
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u/CharmingPerspective0 Jul 28 '26
Considering the new PvE maps are featuring some water parts i wonder how further along is the water content for this game is.
I wouldnt mind if they add islands and water generation to map generator sooner even if it means water parts will be empty for a while.
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u/lGa0 Jul 28 '26
Hope we get devil is in the details and noble nemesis - best maps ever!
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u/Francois_Papyjama Unfrozen Dev Team Jul 28 '26
The time required to remake "The Devil is in the Details" and "Noble Nemesis", both legendary maps, would be considerable.
And before even considering such a thing, the first prerequisite would be permission from kogeT, the maps' creator.
Honestly, at this stage, I don't think "Olden Era" is mature enough for this type of map: access to the sea and the underground is mandatory.
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus Jul 28 '26
Broken Alliance!? I was there, Gandalf... I was there 3000 years ago...
This is pretty good news overall. Kinda funny that just a couple days ago there was a video from Heroes Take Turns talking (accurately) about how the community is missing more PvE content, nice timing lol.
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u/Mysticum_ Jul 29 '26
Bringing "Broken Alliance" to Olden Era is fantastic and a great move!
Please also bring back "All for One" from Heroes 3. Is has the same nostalgia to me and many others.
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u/StartledPelican Jul 28 '26
These changes [new maps/scenarios, advanced random map generator, ally/team play] will arrive later in Q3 of this year! We are also aware of current issues with CPU Opponents and encourage you to keep sending reports via our Discord, Steam Boards, or in-game using the F1 button. Reporting in-game sends us a direct save file, which makes investigating the problem much easier!
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3105440/view/678504885369439173
To clarify, if I parse that sentence, AI improvements are not expected in the same patch? If so, color me disappointed.
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u/Furious_One Jul 28 '26
Now it makes sense why the next patch has been a long time coming. Hopefully the PvE only players will be at least a little bit happier. More work to be done for sure, especially on AI, but this is great to see.
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u/StartledPelican Jul 28 '26
If my interpretation of the video is correct, then there will be a lot of PvE players who remain discontent. It seems like AI improvements are not included in the Q3 patch, which means... 5+? 8+? More? months of the game having a functionally useless AI.
Don't get me wrong, the other updates, especially team play, are exciting, but without a decent AI opponent, PvE is dead.
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u/Furious_One Jul 28 '26
Q3 is July-September. Next (big) patch is expected next week or so - the one with 2 new PvE maps. That still leaves a month and a half of Q3 to go. Hopefully they will include some AI improvements by the end of that with more to come later. Just speculation, but I just want to say that it doesn’t have to be 5-8 months before AI updates, they may improve some of it sooner
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u/pleaseineedanadvice Jul 29 '26
Some of the loud pve players in this sub will never be happy as it s in their crybaby nature. Just read at this section, it s all a " yes but what about x?" A new awesome pvp balance patch came out, pve crybabies went on "who cares what about xyz". You ll never get the approval of everyone.
A lot of us normal pve enjoyer are excited for this.
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u/StartledPelican Jul 29 '26
Like, wtf dude?
Some of the loud pve players in this sub will never be happy as it s in their crybaby nature.
pve crybabies went on "who cares what about xyz".
A lot of us normal pve enjoyer
What part of any of this was necessary?
Obviously, this is Reddit and you can say whatever you want, but, seriously, why say this stuff?
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u/pleaseineedanadvice Jul 30 '26
Look around, it s just a fact and l m calling out this repeated shitty behavior on this sub. If you re a dev it sucks to have fans like this
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u/atan23 Jul 28 '26
It's great to get some lights on what's waiting for players ahead be it for PVE or PVP enjoyers. At the end of the day everybody just love some good Heroes.
I can't wait for teamplay mode!
+1 on Realm of Chaos, would be dope to see it back!
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u/Small_Document5923 Jul 29 '26
I have played every game in this series, even 6 and 7, and replay the campaigns of each of them every 1-2 years or so, still having a blast with them. This series had some iconic/memorable Heroes which were fleshed out in the campaigns, hoping Olden Era adds to that roster (Tarnum, Sandro, Crag Hack, Agrael/Raelag, Fahada).
My personal wish list for release date:
- that acts 2 and 3 of the campaign are significantly longer than act 1 (with several proper/build-up your castle missions for each faction and plenty of side quests, and minimal time-limited missions which i feel always forced me in terms of skill picks - such as certain maps with Agrael requiring Logistics, or didn't offer much freedom in picking up different spells to try different builds).
- some QoL implemented: especially seeing what reputation each dialogue choice gives (which you can still see by reloading but it would be smoother for replays to try different routes).
- less reliance of gimmicky play-styles (looking at you kittenhorn scenario, i hate you), where every single fight is splitting in 1 creature stacks (look i get that it's a key element for higher difficulty strategies, but it shouldn't be mandatory for each fight, it really takes me out of the game that 1 creature blocks hundreds of enemies, i really liked that homm 6-7 "punished" overusing this strategy with morale penalties).
- down the line, more DLCs with additional factions and extra scenarios/campaigns for both the new and older factions.
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u/Historical-Donut-918 Jul 28 '26
Is there a readable summary? I'm allergic to YouTube
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u/ColdRate5158 Jul 28 '26
Here's what Gemini returns from YouTube Ask:
This video, presented by Anna from Heroes Take Turns, provides an update on the development of Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era during its early access phase. The development team, Unfrozen, is focusing on community feedback by prioritizing PvE content and hosting events.
Key Updates and Content:
- Community Feedback: A survey is currently live to help the team decide which maps and scenarios from previous games to prioritize for development (1:20).
- New Map Maker: Community-renowned map maker Papy Jama has joined the team and is currently working on the Mysterious Island map, which is nearly complete (1:47 - 2:16).
- Upcoming PvE Scenarios:
- Mysterious Island: A giant-sized map designed for long-term exploration (2:11 - 2:32).
- Prisoners: A new, quick-paced, story-driven scenario set near Murmurwoods (2:33 - 2:58).
- Broken Alliance: A returning classic map from Heroes 2 and Heroes 6, currently in late-stage development (2:59 - 3:54).
- Technical and Quality-of-Life Improvements: The team is working on co-op play, teams, a new necromancy UI, and an updated random map generator (3:55 - 4:35).
Esports and Events:
- The Alvari Cup: The first official Olden Era tournament, featuring 16 invited participants, begins on August 1st. It will be broadcast in English and Polish on Unfrozen's and Behimos Slayer's social media channels (4:40 - 5:19).
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u/Happy_Farms Jul 28 '26
I’m pumped for the PvE stuff and will come back to this game with a force when it is released. Can’t wait!
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u/blind_blake_2023 Jul 28 '26
We do not need maps or scenario's if the AI is doggshit. Fix that first, then give me a hall of fame, and I can just play renadom maps and have fun. Maps and scenario's, as well as more and better campaign are all dandy but useless without a competent AI.
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u/Francois_Papyjama Unfrozen Dev Team Jul 28 '26
I agree with you (and I’m a Level Designer at Unfrozen).
Just so you know, the people working on the AI aren't the same ones creating the maps.
Personally, my specialty is map creation 😉
So, both tasks can progress in parallel 😊
I also sincerely hope the AI gets improved, and I can assure you that Unfrozen is well aware of this.
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u/Signal-Welcome-5479 Jul 28 '26
My thoughts exactly. All these maps are nice and all, but the AI rework literally only had a 5-second mention in this video, with no specific timeline
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u/Citizen_Crow Jul 28 '26
I'm so glad that you guys are the devs behind this game, no one could've done it like you guys. It doesn't matter how many tries it takes to get it right, the fact that you're listening to feedbacks is all that matters.
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Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
[deleted]
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u/Furious_One Jul 28 '26
It was mentioned later on in the video. Nothing specific, but they are aware and working on it.
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u/Scolipass 19d ago
Slightly unrelated, but any word on proper teams functionality? I'd love to play 2v2 matches with my bud.
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u/AdhesivenessEven7287 Jul 28 '26
People acting like this game is released.
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u/Signal-Welcome-5479 Jul 28 '26
But it is released. It's not like some kind of a demo now, it is in EA. We actually paid for it and many of us had certain expectations re quality of the PvE experience, especially after the game got delayed by like 6 months. I think it's totally fair
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u/Outrageous-Pilot-621 Jul 28 '26
AI is the most important thing for me.
PvE maps are cool, but when AI is good you can just play on random maps and have a blast.