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gnollking
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 05, 2026 07:07 PM |
bonus applied by Galaad on 05 May 2026. |
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GK's Olden Era Maps
Download latest (recommended difficulty 125%/100%/Hard)
My first custom map (with hopefully many more to come) is ready for playtesting! This is a small map, designed and balanced for 1v1 games (no guarantee about how competent the AI will be, but I think it's alright). If anyone ends up playing the map, I would be really happy hearing any and all feedback! (If you play against another player, I would love to hear which side came out on top.)
There are no quests or events in the map, since they are not yet supported by the beta map editor, but the plan is to implement them once we get more updates.
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To play, copy the downloaded .map file into this directory:
steam/steamapps/common/Heroes of Might and Magic Olden Era/HeroesOldenEra_Data/StreamingAssets/maps
You may also find your AppData folder and use the following directory:
%appdata%/LocalLow/Unfrozen/HeroesOldenEra/users/Steam_XXX/my_maps
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Please OE devs make the minimap picture show lava as red on the minimap, it's not really water in the map 
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted May 05, 2026 08:38 PM |
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Olden Era first Heroes Community map, nice!
Will try it out when I get the chance.
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gnollking
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 05, 2026 09:32 PM |
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Galaad said:
Olden Era first Heroes Community map, nice!
Will try it out when I get the chance.
Thanks! One of the hardest things to implement with the current editor was balancing the neutral guards. I had to disable the easier difficulties, since starting the map with those settings would simply not generate guards at all in some positions (leaving paths completely unguarded), which obviously negates the entire purpose of a map like this. The intended path to take is quite straightforward, but the choices in which fights to take in which order is a major part of design in all of my maps.
To be honest, I would not normally upload a map like this without extensive testing, but seeing how new the game is I wanted to hear early feedback from players.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 05, 2026 11:40 PM |
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Looks tightly packed - dense. First look says, tough nuts to crack, so it will take time to play it.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 06, 2026 05:53 PM |
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Okay, I started the map as Grove with unfair/hard/unfair settings. I managed to flag everything in the initially controlled zone, including the Phoenix dwelling, which is probably, how you imagined it. Setting and guarding involve a couple of difficult building decisions, but be that as it may, as it happens, once you open the Pandora Box (which wasn't that difficult a nut to crack, with that specific configuration of guards (probably luck)) things got a lot easier. In any case, doing that allowed to take out the guards of the Phoenix dwelling, both before and in., again, probably as imagined.
The map itself is fun to figure out so far. Couple of hidden map objects (I missed the Knowledge power-up on the left upper side of the town, for example, very dense, and you can save a lot of time, if you manage to let a secondary make all the pick-ups, which I screwed up in wekk 2 so far, but it will get better.
However, the fights in the Eastern zone have been pretty easy so far - week 1 was tighter. I'll keep reporting.
I edit this.
Nearing end of week 3. East is explored. I'll take the 2nd town next week and then it'll be going South on the West side.
Ok, I think starting week 2 it's all about logistics (excuse the pun). It's a map for Snatch! In reality, a hero with Logistics and a player who can coordinate cross-traffic and maximizing delegating Snatch! will play the map way better than anyone else. There should simply be a way to get Logistics in the initial zone of control (weeks 1).
Or maybe guarding strength beyond that zone is too low.
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gnollking
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 07, 2026 04:09 PM |
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Thanks to everyone (both here and on Discord) who played the map and provided valuable feedback! After doing a couple personal tests as well, the map has now been updated. Changelog for 0.9.1:
[+] Added a Wise Owl to both starting zones that grants Logistics.
[*] Fixed hero cap not rising when capturing your second town.
[*] Heavily buffed all neutral stacks outside the starting zones.
[*] Buffed guards in front of starting zone Pandora's Box and T7 dwelling.
[*] Buffed some resource banks.
With these changes, the map should be much less of a cakewalk after clearing your starting zone. The 100% Enemy Difficulty setting should be pretty good now, with 150% being a real challenge for those who want to really push themselves.
Let me know what you think!
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gnollking
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 07, 2026 04:41 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
However, the fights in the Eastern zone have been pretty easy so far - week 1 was tighter.
Yep, that's what we noticed as well. The latest update should be much better in this regard. I pretty much had to guesstimate the initial AI values for all of the guards. Should be much better with it going forward with future maps.
JollyJoker said:
Ok, I think starting week 2 it's all about logistics (excuse the pun). It's a map for Snatch! In reality, a hero with Logistics and a player who can coordinate cross-traffic and maximizing delegating Snatch! will play the map way better than anyone else. There should simply be a way to get Logistics in the initial zone of control (weeks 1).
I'm not sure what you mean by snatch? The H5 subskill? There's no movement cost in Olden Era for picking up resources or visiting buildings. I do agree with the Logistics (and added it in the update). The map is pretty much a race to the middle, and one side starting with it will get a lot stronger a lot faster.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 07, 2026 10:36 PM |
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Ok. Restart with new map.
EDIT: Still got the initial zone cleared within a week, but was more difficult.
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FdgK
Known Hero
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posted May 08, 2026 06:36 PM |
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I think it's quite probable you can claim to be the first person in the world to have released a custom map for OE. Congrats! 
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 08, 2026 09:46 PM |
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The map isn't more difficult.
I think I know what the problem is: too many fights. Hero gains too many levels and powerups and is too strong. Day 12 and I'm level 13, stats of 14 16 10 6 or so. And the harder the fights get - once you win one with no or minimal losses, you win all the others that are comparable. Also, attacking and beating a building with guards (like a Black Tower) seems to give law points ...
All of that means that a sizable part of the battles are redundant. It would be better, if the map was bigger, there were less fights and less objects (you gotta fight for everything), but more difficult ones, so that each ones counts. Longer ways, piles more stretched, more difficult to make the rounds with the allowed secondaries.
EDIT: Ok. Emd of Day 14 I have everything, 2nd town, Town Portal Quilin dwelling plus everything in-between. Hero is level 15 and
16 20 12 10 in stats. Strange skills, Leadership, Diplomacy (which still doesn't seem to work in any way - no join offer whatsoever). Still. I stick to what I said.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 09, 2026 12:05 PM |
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Did you maybe disable Diplomacy= I know that in HoMM 3 editor you could set stack behaviour to never join (I seem to remember it, anyway). Does the OE editor allow that as well and did you perchance make Diplomacy useless thereby? Because I have expert Dippy, creatures fleeing en masse, but no one wants to join me and my Phoenixes, even though Diplomacy should be working now with the new patch.
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gnollking
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 09, 2026 02:18 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
Did you maybe disable Diplomacy= I know that in HoMM 3 editor you could set stack behaviour to never join (I seem to remember it, anyway). Does the OE editor allow that as well and did you perchance make Diplomacy useless thereby? Because I have expert Dippy, creatures fleeing en masse, but no one wants to join me and my Phoenixes, even though Diplomacy should be working now with the new patch.
Hmm, that's weird.
 
All guards are set to default values, with common reaction type. They should be joining normally with Diplomacy. When set to docile, the creatures always join even if you don't have diplo. I assumed it works similarly to H3, where aggressive never joins, and the other options depend on the seed with varying chances.
Thank you for all of the feedback. I think I'll need to wait for some map editor updates before I can comfortably make the map work in singleplayer against the AI. Someone did suggest to make it single-hero, which I kinda like (maybe 1 hero at the start with +1 after capturing the second town, since there's a lot of weekly buildings you can collect). For what it's worth, the map has felt pretty good in 1v1, since there's pressure to keep going before you can take all the fights without losses. Right now, it might be best to play singleplayer with 150% enemy difficulty. That should scale up the guards and hopefully make it a bit more enjoyable.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 09, 2026 03:04 PM |
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Ok, maybe the Diplomacy flaw is in the save, and you'd have to start thew map anew after that. Might do that playing the other side.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 09, 2026 09:34 PM |
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I found the Orb of Inhibition. I don't think that artefact is ok on such a map and you know exactly why. I supose you'll have to manually exclude that artifact. Diplomacy triggered once. Looks crappy.
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gnollking
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 10, 2026 02:05 AM |
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Update 0.9.2:
[*] Hero cap is now 1 per town. This means 1 starting hero, with +1 after capturing the second town.
[*] Extra loss condition changed from losing your starting town into losing the starting hero.
[*] Changed Schism second zone dwellings from Star Children into Kittenhorns.
The hero cap change makes the map feel quite different. The starting zone is a bit more difficult (no more extra army from day 1 second hero). The Star Children dwelling guards were so tough they were rarely worth capturing. Maybe Kittenhorns will be more useful. Losing the main hero makes more sense as a loss condition than the irrelevant starting town condition. For now, this should be final update until I can add events and quests.
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gnollking
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted May 10, 2026 02:07 AM |
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JollyJoker said:
I found the Orb of Inhibition. I don't think that artefact is ok on such a map and you know exactly why. I supose you'll have to manually exclude that artifact. Diplomacy triggered once. Looks crappy.
The map editor doesn't currently support disabling artifacts. Someone else also reported that the Angel Wings were broken, so I would like to ban those when we get the support for that. I think the artifact that disables both Luck and Morale will also get banned, since Luck is a pretty common build for Grove.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 10, 2026 11:24 PM |
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Ok, I started the new version with Schism. I got the important stuff, but couldn't clear the whole zone. Not nearly. I think I had less options to pick a target and ways seemed longer.
2nd hero, yeah, but map feels better that way.
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 13, 2026 08:35 PM |
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Feedback. Imo, the map is too full with stuff. In theory, if both players meet in the middle, the time is right, because you've levelled out by the time you hit half (on higher enemy strength this will happen sooner. At this point it is impossible to buy out - not enough gold.
The map makes no sense to play against the AI the way it is now: it would seem the AI can't handle it. Playing Schism I was through the red portal and onwards and opponent still hadn't their second town (aand consequently still just one hero. Also, I never lost units after breaking through the initial's zone heavier guard leading to the island. Too many level-ups, power-ups, artifacts. I mean, again, that's the trouble with the game which I already mentioned: You increase enemy presence -> hero gains more levels. It's why HoMM 4 did what it did with difficulty and that would be the solution for the game.
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