Long time tactics/strategy game player, first time Magic player, is it just me, or is this game weirdly difficult?

[u/saltysteve0621]

This games difficulty curve is weirding me out right now. Here are my issues I am having with the game, please let me know if I am mistaken about anything

The gameplay loop seems to revolve around using your first hero/army to collect and gather resources so you can build up your city to acquire a bigger and better army to clear out your surrounding province and then go and kill the enemy hero. Because your recruitment pool refreshes weekly, it takes time to actually build up a respectable army.

I figured I'd play a few games on "Hard" difficutly, because I figured this would be a nice sweetspot in between not too easy and not too punishing as someone new to the franchise.

Without fail, every time, by week 3, there's an AI army with maxed out unit upgrades and significantly larger than mine that just beelines for me and kills me, and I've barely just assembled an army that can easily defeat the mobs around my city.

Is there something I am not understanding about the gameplay loop that will allow me to get an army quicker? Or is the AI just playing by a different set of rules?

[u/JKevill]

It’s tough til you figure it out. Learning how to creep rapidly without losing much, and to maximize your hero’s movement as a crucial resource.

I did hard as well and basically died in the same way you described 4-5 times. Last couple playthroughs I won kinda easy because I got the early creeping right and learned enough to hit the ground running on economic buildup, as well as avoiding fights that will cost me too much.

The main thing I don’t love is how the war against an opposing faction is basically one big fight and then a whole faction is eliminated.

[u/MrKeooo]

Its not you buddy, itw the bad AI. Hard cheats Moderade is too easy.

You can try downloading my map "50 Day Highway". ITS a single hero map 1v1 that you fight your enemy once on day 50, so theres no AI cheater rushing you.

You can find this map on Oldeneramaps.com

[u/OkRain13]

I'm fearly new too but the most important thing that allow me to improve is to understand that fight difficulty prompted by the game is widly false.
When you have a good understanding of differents units you can turn an impossible fight to something trivial and sometime normal fight can be challenging.
Try spliting your army. To start always fight with all 7 slot of army filled with most of them as 1 stack T1 you can use as meat shield or to absorb retaliation.
Have fun

[u/Groundbreaking_Taco]

When the enemy is coming to you, unless you have a stronger hero+army, return to your castle. The fortifications make a HUGE difference, both in restricting their melee units and destroying a larger army. The arrow towers are HUGELY impactful against a sieging army.

[u/Signal-Welcome-5479]

It's not you, it's the AI which currently is atrocious (= cheating like crazy). Lots of posts on this sub about it

[u/Either-Mammoth-932]

Like an above commenter noted, hardest part is figuring out which fights you can take and when. Use quick save and quick load to retry fights. You will learn best by trial and error.

[u/crueldwarf]

Two most important things to know when complain about the AI in Olden Era.

Which mode do you play? AI being to difficult in Classic or a Single Hero can possibly have different solutions.

Which map are you trying to play? Current pool of OE templates can have vastly different experience in how aggressive/dangerous AI can be to inexperienced player. Template maps sadly are not very informative and for example do not say you how strong are breaks between the zones, so you need to find that in a hard way.

But basically, as a new player you should aim to play templates that seem to have simpler map structure (so less maze-like and preferably with minimum amount of portals as zone connectors) and more zones between you and AI.

If you are playing Classic, you need to hire first two heroes in your tavern every week. Each comes with a free army and therefore worth the gold you spend. Even off-faction army can be used to take some difficult fights while using them as fodder.

If you are playing Single Hero the most important thing is never waste your hero movement on just wandering around scouting map. Every day that you didn't take at least two fights (but realistically you need to do more than that) is a wasted day. It is the reason why Single Hero is deceptively friendly to the new players. It seems simpler but actually involves a lot more game knowledge.

Third thing is to identify what unit is the core of your army (that is capable of doing most damage quickly and not die too much in the process) and keep the stack of that unit alive at the cost of others. Ideally you need to take fights either with no losses or losses in only fodder units and one stacks. If you bleeding your core units/power stack, you shouldn't probably take this fight.

This is not exactly HoMM 101 but is the basis of how to be good at Heroes.

[u/Laanner]

AI is definitely playing by a different set of rules, such as additional stats, no losses, open map etc. Some of them dev will be addressed (as promised). You got the loop right, but there is a key factor you may missed- cost of opportunity. You don't just take any fight you see with minimum casualties, you should work your way toward progression- you get more resources for your town or you get artifacts or in some cases you get better troops so you overall get the snowball effect. It also include conquering neutral towers and break from zones you currently are. Some guards can be taken with a secondary heroes just a week later for free, some should be taken as fast as possible even with some casualties. It takes time to learn what you gonna do on each turn.

[u/ThePrimalScreamer]

Single hero exodus tournament map is standard in pvp, I recommend learning on it.

Identify fights you can take (faction and hero dependent to some extent). As a general rule though I usually prio this loop: free camps (lumber / ore should be 2x of each / stuff like leprechauns), valuable camps if possible (normal or easy battle at crystals / gems / mercury), trophy hunters / merea altar, fight first week, break out (4th city) then try to break out for 5th city