Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era - official prequel

[Yankee Zulu]

Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era is the official prequel hailing back to the origins of the genre-defining, critically acclaimed series of turn-based strategy games. Explore the map solo or in multiplayer, triumph in iconic battles and establish peace on a continent where it was never an option.

Should oldfags be happy? No, oldfags are never happy.

[maidenhaver]

Never paying.

[rusty_shackleford]

Should oldfags be happy? No, oldfags are never happy.

I hate the HoMM games for killing the mainline franchise and destroying the setting. The setting of HoMM isn't the actual M&M setting.

[Tweed]

Should oldfags be happy? No, oldfags are never happy.

I hate the HoMM games for killing the mainline franchise and destroying the setting. The setting of HoMM isn't the actual M&M setting.

That's a lie, they shared the setting and told an interwoven story.

[Kowe]

The artstyle here is similar to Song of Conquest. Just more cartoonish, which doesn't really suit HoMM.
With Ubisoft, definitely no high hopes for the game but cautiously optimistic that it is at least moderately decent. They are more likely to **** it up than not.
As the people in the comments have pointed it out, Mr. Paul Romero is missing for this game's soundtrack.

Even if they mess it up, HoMM 3 (GoG version) is still going strong and has a great deal of mods. Most notably Horn of the Abyss which will have a new town being introduced in the future, Factory.
There is another one in development, Day of Reckoning.

[Xenich]

The artstyle here is similar to Song of Conquest. Just more cartoonish, which doesn't really suit HoMM.
With Ubisoft, definitely no high hopes for the game but cautiously optimistic that it is at least moderately decent. They are more likely to **** it up than not.
As the people in the comments have pointed it out, Mr. Paul Romero is missing for this game's soundtrack.

Even if they mess it up, HoMM 3 (GoG version) is still going strong and has a great deal of mods. Most notably Horn of the Abyss which will have a new town being introduced in the future, Factory.
There is another one in development, Day of Reckoning.

https://heroes3wog.net/horn-of-the-abyss/

Yeah, great site with enough content and features to keep one busy for a life time. I love the Launcher tool for all the projects, thousands of features and mods all nicely packaged into a nice utility.



If developers had half a brain, they would develop this new game with a powerful engine that has extreme flexibility for modding new content as well as reproducing past content perfectly. This way, the new engine would take over and become the standard for the community (recreating all the old games with the new engine and expanding off into future projects).

Sure, it may eat a bit into their "milking" the base (but to be honest, component feature upgrades of new content expansions that increase the features in the engine would achieve this while still giving the community everything it wants. If they did that, they would guarantee a fan base for another couple of decades keeping the franchise alive and maybe spurring a new overlap into various other genres due to its popularity.

What they will do, just like the past engines is lock it all down, create a bunch of gimmick garbage that has no flexibility basically causing the community to stick with HOMMIII while the new project is forgotten after a bit.

[wndrbr]

With Ubisoft, definitely no high hopes for the game but cautiously optimistic that it is at least moderately decent. They are more likely to **** it up than not.

Ubisoft is just a publisher. The game is actually being developed by a bunch of homm fans fron the vatnikland, same ones who made Iratus Lord of the Dead.

https://heroes3wog.net/horn-of-the-abyss/

Yeah, great site with enough content and features to keep one busy for a life time. I love the Launcher tool for all the projects, thousands of features and mods all nicely packaged into a nice utility.

I also read somewhere on the russian forums that Ubisoft have actually contacted HotA devs and asked their permission to use some of their concepts (though not sure if it's true or just someone spreading false rumour). The sixth faction is probably gonna be the Cove from HotA.

[wndrbr]

Q&A with the devs.

tl;dw

- the game has been in development for 4 years
- it's a multiplatform release, will come out on all the relevant platforms
- the game's systems are balanced around multiplayer and cybersport
- HOTA is one of their main inspirations
- the game will have a map editor
- devs are promising a modding support, but they can't say anything in detail yet
- the game will be an early access title, to catch all the bugs and balancing issues
- similarly to HOMM5 there's gonna be alternate upgrades for your units
- another gameplay feature they have poached from HOMM5 is the skills/abilities system

A large chunk of video was dedicated to the descriptions of various multiplayer mechanics, I'm not an expert on these things so I can't translate it properly. They talked about the simultaneous turns, chess-like timer during combat, AI bots, progression and ratings, and other stuff.

HUD:

► Show Spoiler

[Xenich]

With Ubisoft, definitely no high hopes for the game but cautiously optimistic that it is at least moderately decent. They are more likely to **** it up than not.

Ubisoft is just a publisher. The game is actually being developed by a bunch of homm fans fron the vatnikland, same ones who made Iratus Lord of the Dead.

https://heroes3wog.net/horn-of-the-abyss/

Yeah, great site with enough content and features to keep one busy for a life time. I love the Launcher tool for all the projects, thousands of features and mods all nicely packaged into a nice utility.

I also read somewhere on the russian forums that Ubisoft have actually contacted HotA devs and asked their permission to use some of their concepts (though not sure if it's true or just someone spreading false rumour). The sixth faction is probably gonna be the Cove from HotA.

That's actually good news then. We may see something of value come from all of this.

[Xenich]

Q&A with the devs.

tl;dw

- the game has been in development for 4 years
- it's a multiplatform release, will come out on all the relevant platforms
- the game's systems are balanced around multiplayer and cybersport
- HOTA is one of their main inspirations
- the game will have a map editor
- devs are promising a modding support, but they can't say anything in detail yet
- the game will be an early access title, to catch all the bugs and balancing issues
- similarly to HOMM5 there's gonna be alternate upgrades for your units
- another gameplay feature they have poached from HOMM5 is the skills/abilities system

A large chunk of video was dedicated to the descriptions of various multiplayer mechanics, I'm not an expert on these things so I can't translate it properly. They talked about the simultaneous turns, chess-like timer during combat, AI bots, progression and ratings, and other stuff.

HUD:

► Show Spoiler

I like the view and the ability to pull out to have a more downward view like the older games. The new ones were such a pain with the near over the shoulder up close play, it completely ruined the experience.

[Kowe]

Seeing the Dragon Utopia in the video. That model is from HoMM3. The ones in V and VI look different. Dragon City from I and II are more similar to it.
Even other assets shown on the map bear strong resemblance to III, so it is promising that they take it as main inspiration. Well, they did state that it is HotA as one of them.
HotA in MP also has timers for each player's turn. Some of them are a bit insane with how short they are, so only suited for experienced players or veterans. Thinking of Lexiav and the other top players.

In case, anyone is curious, HotA has the Factory town available already. Couldn't find much info on Day of Reckoning. Just nice to see that it has a Norse-inspired town in development, amongst other things.
Hopefully, HoMM:OE has the same modding capability if not more, as HoMM3 has had.

All the points listed from the Q&A give hope that this will be a good game.

[J1M]

4.5 years of development.

[Tweed]

The only real crime that occurred from letting HoMM and M&M cross streams was losing the Forge and the canon evil ending to MM7 because of the dipshit HoMM players that never played the RPGs.

[J1M]

I am quite frankly shocked these things have a plot. Always came across as painfully generic.

[rusty_shackleford]

Should oldfags be happy? No, oldfags are never happy.

I hate the HoMM games for killing the mainline franchise and destroying the setting. The setting of HoMM isn't the actual M&M setting.

That's a lie, they shared the setting and told an interwoven story.

They completely nuked the M&M setting, especially anything related to sci-fi, to pander to HoMM babies.

[Xenich]

I am quite frankly shocked these things have a plot. Always came across as painfully generic.

They always have had plots backstory etc.. they just played in mini-campaigns that unfolded with each map and objective.

You can call them simplistic in story, but they are a strategy game, not an epic story RPG. While any game can benefit from a rich and deep story, all too often this attention detracts from the game play.

I prefer gameplay over the story anyway.

I hate the HoMM games for killing the mainline franchise and destroying the setting. The setting of HoMM isn't the actual M&M setting.

That's a lie, they shared the setting and told an interwoven story.

They completely nuked the M&M setting, especially anything related to sci-fi, to pander to HoMM babies.

That is unfortunate, I think HOMM would have benefited from the some of the early M&M games content in that respect, it would have made for some interesting game play.

[Kronus]

- the game's systems are balanced around multiplayer and cybersport

[Yankee Zulu]

some new details

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 6936657387

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Devlog#2: Game Modes pt.1 : Classic and Single-Hero
Previously, we told you about the many ways to play HoMM and the modes that Olden Era will feature. Today, let’s delve a bit deeper into some of them.

There’s no existing statistic to show which modes are the most played in the series. It’s probably a toss between randomly generated maps and custom scenarios (especially since not all games in the series featured a random map generator at all). So instead of the most popular modes, we’ll start from the most all-encompassing: the ways we approached randomly generated maps and templates for both single- and multiplayer.

Classic Mode
This is the basic way to play the game: hire heroes, explore the map, build your kingdom, conquer towns, defeat the opponent by extinguishing all their heroes and towns. In Olden Era, we recreate the classic gameplay loop familiar to lovers of the series — but there are some advanced considerations we’re taking into account.

Remember when HoMM just appeared in your local video game store? These were the times when players would slowly and meticulously explore the map, manage castles, and steadily gather massive armies. That took dozens of hours, and the final battles were spectacular. For all intents and purposes, this is how the game was “meant” to be played.



But over the years the way people play the game has evolved. This is, honestly, a fascinating phenomenon — worthy of analysing on its own merits. Diehard fans of Heroes, particularly of HoMM3, would look for ways to optimise their playthroughs — lose fewer troops, fall upon their opponent faster, defend a castle with a single unit. These strats, of course, are particularly important in competitive multiplayer (that also evolved into flourishing over the years), but even in singleplayer people found ways to topple much stronger opponents or juggle armies around the map in ways that were clearly unintended, but created new gameplay dynamics.

Let’s talk about a couple of such “strats” and important characteristics that we took into account when designing Olden Era.



Pacing

A single match in “Jebus Cross” (the most popular competitive multiplayer template) takes no more than a couple of in-game weeks. You heard that right: modern competitive HoMM playstyiles are fast. It makes sense: fall onto your opponent before they have time to prepare, and you win.

Now, let us be clear: we do NOT think that all games of Heroes need to be this fast. There absolutely is merit to huge maps that take months of in-game time to explore, and we will support those.

But it would also be unwise to ignore this tendency for quicker matches, because it doesn’t just come from nowhere. For streamers, faster matches are better content (and we can’t just ignore this factor in 2024). For players themselves, it happens because faster strats are often simply the most efficient.

Our general approach to this issue is creating various systems that would support both faster and slower matches. For example, alternative win conditions that do not require you to capture all opponent’ss’ towns are a good way to allow for faster matches. Alternative hero caps can change the pacing of even familiar templates. And more traversal options and ways to deliver armies make big maps more fun to play.

Hero Roles

While you can buy a number of heroes in Classic Mode and nothing stops you from using them all in similar ways, people generally designate a “main” (the hero they’ll level up) and “supports” or “couriers” — heroes that just run around the map, collect resources, deliver armies and generally help around.

As we already mentioned, our AI uses these roles in its actions. We also kept this in mind when developing Hero Skills and specializations: some of them are meant to be useful for supports and not just mains!

Supports matter!

Hero Chains

The next step after designating hero roles is… strategizing. Since the power of a hero often comes from their armies and artefacts, you can juggle those around, transferring from one hero to another and using various heroes as “mains”, which is exactly what competitive players do. This allows them to explore the map MUCH faster, but you need to make sure that every hero in your roster can reach the point you need them to reach (like another hero or a town) in time. This is called “hero chains.”



Hero chaining is very skill-heavy, so we intend to keep it in the game. For example, just like in HoMM3, in Older Era the amount of movement points your hero has depends on the speed of units in their army (an important aspect of chaining). So hardcore players that want to play the game the same way as HoMM3, can do that — and can challenge their chaining skills.

But other players feel that chaining is tedious and requires too much micromanagement. For them, we created alternative ways to transfer armies and artefacts to keep their “main” well-supplied. One such way is a Remote Foothold building: you can place a hero’s army and artefacts in a Remote Foothold and then grab them from any other Remote Foothold on the map. Yay, teleport!

(You can just exclude these buildings from a template if you want the super-classic experience that fully relies on chaining.)

Another way to transfer forces immediately is the “Assemble!” spell. Casting it allows a hero to interact with another hero from afar, as though they were standing next to each other, to transfer anything they need (which is probably troops). So it’s kinda like a chain, but faster, less tedious, and its links are connected from afar like magic. It plays like a nice compromise between the classic chaining experience and the quick Remote Foothold approach.

"One-Unit Stacks"

In HoMM, you often have to fight strong opponents with a weaker army. This is where "one-unit stacks" come in — single-unit troops that absorb counterattacks, shield ranged units, or lure the enemy to the far corner of the battlefield. Of course, you can’t win using only these troops. The main damage is dealt by "strike stacks" — strong units gathered into a large single stack. The combination of "strike stacks" with "one-unit stacks" allows you to fight very challenging battles with almost no losses. Proper troop distribution has become a real test of skill.





The first thing you need to use one-unit stacks is QoL (it’s tiresome to split single units from a stack manually) — we got that covered. But we also feel that it’s interesting to have systems that interact with this type of troop. An upgraded “Impending Fate” spell can kill all one-unit stacks on the battlefield, leaving your opponent’s shooters unguarded.

And keep in mind that one-unit stacks still have access to active abilities — and while some of them depend on the number of troops, the others do not. All enemies adjacent to a Thunder Qilin receive additional magic damage, and it doesn’t matter how many units there are in a stack — so how about throwing a bunch of one-units stacks of Qilins into enemy ranks and then casting Armageddon?

And that’s just the simplest thing that comes to mind. We want players to find many ways to exploit and counter-exploit one-units stacks.

***

The way Heroes are played today isn’t quite what was intended from the start — the developers of the classic games likely didn’t plan for hero chaining or one-unit stack abuse. But we can benefit from the many years of gameplay evolution that the Heroes community went through. We think it’s fascinating and want to preserve these “strats” in Olden Era (sometimes optionally) while making sure their tedium is alleviated for those who are more interested in more modernized gameplay.

Single-Hero Mode



Despite the acceleration of gameplay, rounds can still take a lot of time, and hero chains require a great deal of micromanagement, which is appreciated by some (as it’s an opportunity to show skill), but tiresome to others. Over the years, the community has developed a different type of template that Olden Era supports as a full-fledged game mode (with a separate ladder and everything): Single-Hero Mode.

This mode is more straightforward and fast: the player has only one hero, and their death means defeat, which ends the game. Managing one hero requires significantly less time and effort and raises the stakes.

In Single-Hero Mode zones are explored more slowly, and the game takes more in-game days. Because of this, the map templates themselves differ from the classic ones. For example, some templates have more creature dwellings, and the methods for acquiring adventure spells for rapid map exploration are simplified — they may be available from the start. This mode is particularly suitable for first-timers as it is easier to manage a single hero.

We will devote another blog post about this mode later, scheduling it closer to the internal milestone.

We are proud to continue the best traditions of ‘Heroes’, however we’re keeping in mind how the gameplay has changed over time and how the community has adapted some features to their needs. In the next devlog, we’ll share some details of the mode we’re especially thrilled about: Arena.

[Luckmann]

Is this also going to be some pseudo-online ********, or am I going to get to play this one?

Edit:

[...]
- the game's systems are balanced around multiplayer and cybersport
[...]

Oh, nevermind, then.

[wndrbr]

@Luckmann it will have a proper singleplayer campaign.

[Luckmann]

@Luckmann it will have a proper singleplayer campaign.

Yeah, but it will just be an introduction to the systems intended for le heckin competitive gayming, and we know it.

[wndrbr]

new gameplay. The music is a placeholder from HOMM5.

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't quite get the point of new editions of games like this. Why not just keep playing the old one?
It's not like there's a new story or something, it's the same exact game.

[Tweed]

I don't quite get the point of new editions of games like this. Why not just keep playing the old one?
It's not like there's a new story or something, it's the same exact game.

I think it has something do with the thing they call money.

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't quite get the point of new editions of games like this. Why not just keep playing the old one?
It's not like there's a new story or something, it's the same exact game.

I think it has something do with the thing they call money.

I mean from the player's perspective. What's the hook?
It's like making chess 2.

[Tweed]

I don't quite get the point of new editions of games like this. Why not just keep playing the old one?
It's not like there's a new story or something, it's the same exact game.

I think it has something do with the thing they call money.

I mean from the player's perspective. What's the hook?
It's like making chess 2.

Chess is for grognards and requires too many steps to up get running on modern system. Chess 2 is easy to install and play!

[Yankee Zulu]

New gameplay video

[Tweed]

Unbelievable! Looks like soulless slop!

Think I'll stick with old and busted HoMM 3 with countless hours of user created content.

[Finarfin]

I think it has something do with the thing they call money.

I mean from the player's perspective. What's the hook?
It's like making chess 2.

Chess is for grognards and requires too many steps to up get running on modern system. Chess 2 is easy to install and play!

Unironically yes.

[Trickster]

Looking bad. It's even worse when you remember that they need to poach the demanding audience of HOMM 3 if they want the game to not be a flop. So far it's looking like a 100% failure.