r/OldenEra

Two very large buffs to magic heroes:

1. They can cast twice (as Thaumaturgy is exclusive to magic heroes)
2. The damage scaling via stats has diminishing returns in Olden Era

Higher number of ATK/DEF don't do as much as lower numbers of ATK/DEF

https://preview.redd.it/6687q8y1sh2h1.png?width=741&format=png&auto=webp&s=4af0fca1ee675e238db9b879b8114984ad6fcf25

Older heroes games stats never lost their power as you went up, and might heroes always felt MIGHTY.

This means we are finally playing our first iteration of Heroes of Magic and Might!

I think Heroic Strike should not belong to magic heroes.

The main reason is that Heroic Strike is not just a generic “hero action.” It is clearly tied to the Might hero identity. Might heroes are the ones who get Combat, and Combat directly improves Heroic Strike. That creates a very clear loop:

Might hero → Combat → better Heroic Strike → stronger direct battlefield intervention

That makes sense. The Might hero is personally contributing through martial force, pressure, finishing power, or tactical strikes.

But if magic heroes also get Heroic Strike, the system becomes muddier. Even if their version is visually different, it still feels like they are being given a weaker or less appropriate version of the Might hero mechanic. A magic hero should not feel like a Might hero with worse physical scaling. Their core identity should be built around the spellbook, mana, spell tempo, and magical preparation.

This is especially important because Thaumaturgy already seems to be the magic-side counterpart to Combat. Combat improves physical hero intervention. Thaumaturgy improves magical action economy by allowing extra spellcasting under certain restrictions and mana penalties. That is a strong and interesting distinction.

So, in my opinion, the symmetry should be:

Might heroes:

Use Focus for Heroic Strike.

Combat improves Heroic Strike.

Magic heroes:

Use Focus for something like Meditation, Channeling, or Arcane Focus.

Thaumaturgy interacts with that system.

The magic hero’s action should not be another damage button. It should support spellcasting. For example, a magic hero could spend Focus to meditate, restoring some mana, reducing the surcharge on the next Thaumaturgy spell, or improving the efficiency of their next cast. That would make Focus relevant to magic heroes without turning them into pseudo-Might heroes.

Something like:

Meditation: spend Focus to restore temporary mana or reduce the mana penalty of the next additional spell this round.

Then Thaumaturgy could interact with it naturally. Basic, Advanced, and Expert Thaumaturgy could improve how Meditation affects the extra spell: lower surcharge, better mana recovery, more flexibility with school restrictions, or a small refund after casting.

This would also make the design cleaner thematically:

Combat governs martial intervention.

Thaumaturgy governs magical exertion.

That distinction is much more interesting than giving everyone Heroic Strike and then trying to make it fit every class. It also avoids the awkward situation where a magic-oriented skill or subskill ends up improving Heroic Strike damage, which feels like it belongs under Combat instead.

tl;dr: I think Heroic Strike should be exclusive to Might heroes. Magic heroes should have their own Focus-based combat action, probably centered around meditation, channeling, mana recovery, or spell tempo. That would make both archetypes feel more distinct and give Thaumaturgy a cleaner role as the magic equivalent of Combat.

I've been doing pretty much nothing but play PvP hive and i've come to conclusion that this faction is utter trash. Their only good unit is the reaver and it has 1hp and is countered easily. If you do a tiny mistake with that stack you just lose them all and with that, the game. Waurms are good in paper, but getting them is way too expensive and even then you really want them upgraded. Every unit in the roster really wants the upgrade, without them they are all just fodder-tier garbage.

You cannot autoresolve any fights. Reavers must be the most suicidal units in the game. Not that your T2s are much better. Also the dragonflies will be removed from existence in every autoresolve. Even if you are at a point where your faction skill could solo the fight, autoresolve will find a way to delete your units. And fighting the fights is not just "put your weenie rangers in a corner behind 1 stacks and pewpew", which is nice, but it does get a little tiring.

and because Reaver (upgraded ofc, un-upgraded are just useless garbage) is the only unit in your roster you can't really do utopias AND get destroyed against any high tier ranged stack. And even if you are huffing enough copium to think that your reaver stack will instant kill 3 enemy stacks on turn one, the game is still in the hands of RNGesus cause you just might roll 10 in damage get retaliated and lose your powerstack.

And that's just the army building templates, the "army from boxes" templates are just miserable. Because your early game is so trash tier, you are struggling from the day 1. Better hope for small amount of ranged enemies guarding boxes or you will just bleed your army away before you even see it.

Even the heroes you get are trash. No OP spell casters to carry you early, even your "avatar specialist" is not an avatar specialist he just starts with the skill. And since your roster has just 2 usable units, you ain't using heroes specialized in 'em cause they are perma-banned cause there are no must-ban worthy heroes in this faction. No must-ban global spellcaster for certain templates. So the only heroes you are left with are what other towns would consider leftovers. And let's be honest here, even the reaver specialist is trash cause 2-3 un-upgraded reavers is trash it's not gonna help you when you need the most help.

"But the faction skill is OP" Yeah in theory, but most of the final combats are decided in 2-3 rounds MAX. If you can get to 3 focus points on the FIRST turn summoning big dick double striking - taunting - exploding larvae might just win you the game, but that's a big if. Oh wait, enemy has 1 phoenix and you don't have the best initiative - you are screwed.

Goddamn even, after the last patch, opening the town screen of hive takes way longer than any other town. Yeah i have trash PC but still, no problems with other towns.

Please educate me and change my mind. Im losing hope here.

One my personally favourite mechanic of HoMM 5 was an option to no not deploy a unit stack when in tactics mode. It gave a game a new strategic depth which allowed you to prevent uneccesary bleeding of your power stack (or just saving my Peasants xd ). I miss this mechanic because sometimes I want to drop my main army and just take a fodder for some fights. Dragon tower enspecialy. In early game it is super trivial for might hero with combat when I have only one stacks but super hard if I take more units and sometimes I just backtrack to mine / town to drop my units there then I need to go back to pick them up.

Having magic heroes cast TWO spells each round really make them feel like magic heroes.

And as a result they can compete with Might heroes.

It's cool to make an entire skill exclusive to Magic heroes (while Might heroes have Combat as their exclusive skill)

Excellent choice

what maps are everyone gravitating to so far as the most fun? also are there any maps similar to the OG classic Broken Alliance from HOMM2? so many great memories on that one

Title

I like singlehero mode but also like playing multiple heroes like back in the days

Just... moving 12 heroes each turn is... a lot

Micromanaging that many heroes is more tiring than fun

Do you think there is potential?

If the ghosts get bulkier because of MAXHP buffs, then...

less ghosts get summoned when attacking?

am I getting this correctly?

Hi, I've played HOMM3 a lot in my childhood and later on, difference between the city was pretty obvious and i was more like a super casual player, so not even worth played against in hotseed, but i have a hard time understanding how to play certain cities and what's the main power between them in Olden Era.

For example, i get it that Temple is all around balanced city with both strong army and useful magic.
Necropolis playing around having no morale and necromancy.
Dungeon is... just Dungeon, different tactics allow to be more flexiable in battle and i think they don't have any specific magic school preference.

Everyone else is kinda hard for me to understand. Groove remind me about Rampart, but it plays more like Conflux? Units seems to be way too weak compared to others. Hive doesn't remind Inferno at all and i don't really understand what's the main gimmik about it besides ability to become "zerg rush", Schism is my favorite in terms of style and units, but they seem to rely on constant battles to stay strong?

Like, maybe there is somekind of easy to follow guide about pros and cons of each city and what to strive for/what to avoid for dummies? Coz i feel like one and it's hard to choose which one to choose since half of it is a bit weird to me.

All the units and factions have that "old school" array of unique and quirky abilities (some broken, some weird) that add up in total to make a game that is rich in really cool interactions that are more than the sum of their parts.

A lot of fun things to discover for those that want to delve in.

That's a sign of a great game to me

From Heroes 3 Giant maps felt truly giant taking me days to finish taking over from corner to corner ingame like 9 months. In olden era, giant maps feel like an L map on heroes 3 taking 3 months to cover corner to corner

Hi, either I’m missing something or the post-game statistics just don’t exist. I don’t understand...

It's only "Victory".