Olden Era: Gold vs Law vs Astrology Points Explained

Three resource bars, three completely different systems, and the game does a bad job telling you how they relate. If you came from older Heroes games, you know Gold. The other two, Law Points and Astrology Points, are new to Olden Era and people on Reddit and the Steam forums keep asking the same question: which one do I care about first?

Short answer, Gold runs your whole game and you should never starve it. Law and Astrology are long-game investments that pay off over many turns, not on turn one. Here’s how each works and where to put your attention in the opening weeks. Tier and balance talk applies to the current Early Access build (launched April 30, 2026) and will shift with patches.

Gold and the Resource Economy

Gold is the engine. You spend it on buildings, on recruiting troops every week, and on most of the moment-to-moment decisions that matter. Alongside gold you collect Wood, Ore, Precious resources, and Alchemical Dust. The fancy resources mostly gate your top-tier stuff. A tier 7 unit doesn’t just cost gold, it wants gold plus other resources, so you can’t brute-force your way to dragons with a pile of coins alone.

The thing to internalize: gold is per-week pressure. Every week you want to recruit the troops your dwellings produced, and if you’re broke when growth ticks over, that production is sitting there unbought. Keep enough gold flowing that you can always afford the week’s recruits. That’s the floor. Everything else is built on top.

So when in doubt early, the answer is gold. Capture mines, build your income structures, and don’t let a shiny Law upgrade tempt you into going broke.

Law Points and Faction Seals

This is the system most new players ignore, then regret ignoring. Law Points convert into Faction Seals, and Faction Seals buy Faction Laws, which are permanent buffs for your whole faction for the rest of that game.

Where Law Points come from:

• Your towns’ main income building, which you can upgrade to double its Law output. This is your steady drip.
• Winning battles. A fight gives you Law Points equal to 20% of the XP your hero earned from it. Important catch: XP from chests and stat-boosting stones on the map does not count. Only actual combat XP feeds Law.
• Mines. Ore and Wood mines are worth 300 points each, Precious mines 250, and Gold mines 200.
• Dwellings. A tier 1 dwelling is worth 600, and the value climbs all the way to 2,400 for a tier 7 dwelling.

Those points roll up into Faction Seals. You can earn a maximum of 100 Seals in a single game, and the Faction Laws come in five tiers gated behind spending thresholds at 5, 15, 30, and 50 Seals. Because the cap is 100 and the full law tree costs more than that, you cannot buy everything. You have to choose. Pick the laws that match how you actually play that faction, not the ones that look coolest.

My take: don’t sweat Law in the first week. It accumulates in the background from the mines and dwellings you’re already taking. Glance at the law menu around the point you hit your first Seal threshold and grab something that fits your plan. Treat it as a reward for expanding, not a separate chore.

Astrology Points and the Observatory

Astrology Points are the strangest of the three because they’re not about your economy or your army at all. They’re about the overworld map.

You generate Astrology Points by controlling points of interest on the map. You spend them at the Observatory to unlock global map spells, the kind of effects that change how you move and scout across the whole world. We’re talking Town Portal to teleport your hero home, other teleports, scouting reveals, and effects that can damage an enemy army while it’s marching. These are powerful and they’re a big reason controlling map objects matters beyond just the resources they give.

One catch worth knowing: global spells have hero level requirements. You can’t unlock a high-end map spell and immediately fire it off with a level 2 hero. So early Astrology Points are slightly awkward, because the best things to spend them on want a hero who’s already grown a bit.

Early-Game Priority Order

Here’s how I’d rank them in the opening weeks:

1. Gold first, always. If you can’t afford this week’s recruits, nothing else matters. Capture mines and build income before anything fancy.
2. Let Law accumulate, spend it when thresholds hit. You’re earning Law just by expanding. Don’t go out of your way for it early, but do check the menu and buy a law when you cross 5 Seals, then again at 15.
3. Astrology pays off mid-game. Grab the map objects for their resources and the Astrology Points come along for free. Hold off on big Observatory unlocks until your hero is high enough level to actually use the good spells. Town Portal alone can be worth the wait once you’re flush.

The mental model that makes all three click: Gold is your right-now budget, Law is your faction’s long-term identity, and Astrology is your control over the map itself. Feed gold constantly, invest Law deliberately, and bank Astrology for the moment your hero is strong enough to abuse it.