Best Opening Strategies in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is a complex strategy game. You get bombarded with tons of information right at the start, and you might be wondering how to get a good start in a game.

There are so many paths to take, and a lot of them are viable, but a few compounded mistakes at the beginning can drastically change the outcome of the game. Here are some opening strategy tips you can use to get you started in Olden Era.

Best Starter Strategy for All Factions in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

After playing a few matches and finally getting the hang of the game, I’ve noticed two great opening strategies that catapult progress as fast as possible, and these openings are applicable to any faction you play, with very slight variations.

Full Economy Opening

The first strategy is to get your economy up and running quickly. That means getting the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd columns up and running in your cities. These buildings give you Gold, Law Points, and Astrology Points daily. That gives you some raw gold, which eventually can be turned into other resources. However, most of the gold should go to your army at first.

You want to open with at least three income-based buildings, including the Tavern. However, before the first week ends, you also want to build two or three base recruitment buildings. For example, when playing the Schism faction, you’d want to get the Aga’Shoth Stables, Summoning Rites/Disturbing Summoning Rites, in the first week. This allows you to recruit more units overall, strengthening your first army.

In the second week, you’ll focus on improving your income again while unlocking more units. You want to keep your army intact until you can favorably win fights without losing any units. Up until you get a certain power (getting “easy battles” to show up), you’d want to focus on exploration and getting easy resources that don’t require anything.

In short, the first strategy opens like:

• Build 2-3 income-based buildings while collecting resources with your hero and avoiding fighting.
• Build recruitment buildings (not unit buildings that unlock upgrades to already recruited units) before the week ends.
• Recruit more units before the week ends.
• Repeat for the 2nd week while also trying to get some easy fights in.
• Early Faction Laws go to income from the faction side while mixing in some increased recruitment (growth) laws in the Army side.
• Reach a strong army size and start clearing, especially capturing outposts that give daily and weekly resources.

This opening really snowballs your progress fast, and it goes even faster if you can find another city while exploring in the 1st and 2nd week of the match. The reason I love going with this strategy is that it has a faster pace since you don’t really fight, and once you do start fighting, your army is strong enough to clear using an autobattle without losing any units.

Army and Outpost Rushing

For the second opening strategy, you’ll want to focus on your army quickly, using every resource to get as many recruits as possible in the first week. You’ll still mostly roam around early just to get resources and avoid fighting until you get some army size. There’s a lot of potential for randomness here, since you might miss some key resources for certain buildings, but your goal for this strategy is to start fighting quicker and get some outposts occupied early.

You’ll mostly revert to the first strategy and eventually build your income first, but you want to get your hero strong quickly, getting levels, acquiring artifacts, and eventually getting more power to clear areas even faster.

Both strategies are almost similar in the way that you want to capitalize on getting early recruitments in the first week while trying to build up your economy. The first strategy is a bit safer and passive, while the second strategy needs some useful outposts like resource storages (weekly) and daily resources like Gold Mines.