Eador Genesis

I'm finding the Commander the hardest to get going anywhere. I usually start with a wizard and just let him roam and level up. Exploring necromancy right now; battles just have me shifting around resurrecting an undead army from the bones of my slain enemies.

In my last game I made my warrior a "slayer"; giving him a bow letting him deal damage from afar before switching to melee. Was pretty destructive. The general lack of spell casting with the warrior is his primary drawback, IMO. Otherwise, the guy is a big ol' tank.

Does anyone else get notifications of other mages dying a lot around the world? I haven't even conquered my whole "shard" yet but constantly see messages of the fallen. No idea what is going on. Maybe I'm just super slow to get things going.

 

you should try ranger=>warrior type - he gets the ability to switch weapons with no penalty(he can also attack/cast spell that turn) - nice combo for soloing.

 

They are hired outsourcers not a one developer team. It's like a composer in mostly games - got a contract for in-game music, but he is not a part of the developer's team. Still have a notice in the credits.

 

The pirates too, but they wasn't a main problem.
1. Russian market is a very limited comparison with entire world.
2. The game has outdated graphics and a gameplay only for hardcore TBS gamers, so you can't hopes on casual players.

Combine these two and you'll see that the game just can't have any big commercial success.

 

it's main problem was that nobody knew about it. Russian tactical tb games market is pretty large. If people knew about, it it could have sold a few hundred k easily, but nobody did. I only bumped into it by a complete accident myself. It's marketing campaign consisted of that guy posting in a bunch of forums - what do you expect? Also, you couldn't just buy it in the store later on, there is no russian gog or steam that I heard of. how was he suppose to make those sales?

 

Few hundred thousands? It's just about all russian market included casuals, IMO. You can't seriously think about such sells for a hardcore TBS game.
Eador was unknown only at start. After some time the game has gain a good reputation between the community, got some nice reviews from a large portals and noticed by publishers, who released it on CD. All gamers who was a slightly interest in TBS has heard about this game.

 

I didn't nor anybody I know. still you could't buy it anywhere easily. and the market for tb strategies is huge, heroes were stupidly successful. seriously with proper marketing campaign it would have sold that many

 

I must say that starting at expert, as some suggested, is an exercise in frustration, at least in the campaign. On expert there's no such thing as an "easy early-game fight". You need to spend *all* your starting resources to scrape up a build that stands a theoretical chance and even with a swords+healer combo you're pretty reliant on luck and if you screw up the fight you're royally screwed because building up to that point consumes all the gold you had; if you lose a unit you end up with no gold, no units and no relevant income. Reverted to competent (or whatever's the name of the one below expert) for a more manageable experience. Might start again on higher diff once I get a better hang and figure out a couple of starter tactics I feel comfortable with.

I suppose plundering your starting province would make things easier eco-wise, but I just don't like doing shit like that, being the larpfag that I am.

On a side-note - anyone tried the campaign on higher difficulties than expert? I really wonder if its doable at all at higher difficulties without extreme cheese and AI abuse.

The game's pretty awesome anyway. Can't wait for the sequel to come out, same gameplay with improved campaign and graphics is easily a must buy.

 

If the Might&Magic was a commercially successful tittles, there still be 3DO with us. Don't mix together acknowledgment of community and revenue of developers, because it's a absolutely different things. Not to mention that a Heroes has the worldwide market not just a russian language ghetto.
Buying the Eador wasn't so difficult.

I tried it once, but can't make any notable progress and was forced get back to Expert.

 

you can use astral energy for extra boost

 

WTF is with this piracy discussion. Pirates would only made the game more famous. If it was pirated more...

 

I said it before but its worth repeating: swordsman/pikeman plus healer isnt a good or cost efficient start. You need two unit producing buildings and a resource to further increase the cost. Go for 3/4 barbarians, its enough to conquer all first tier provinces no matter how useless your hero is. Then add one ranged unit (I prefer shamans/archers) for every 3 frontline units and you are set for second tier provinces too. With web you can even try conquering 3 tier. This strategy is great because barbarians only need one cheap building and one cheap prerequisite building. And one barbarian wins 1 vs 1 with either swordsman or pikeman, gets better when his hp is low and is nearly immune to morale effects. Doesn't get much armor, but so what.

Another surprisingly cost effective strategy is mage and a spell building. If you have gems you can rely on summoning imps or raising undead and in the beginning you are bound to have expendable gems.

 

That's just an old song of russian developers and publishers who's still think that 1 torrent download means -1 to the sell copies. Don't pay attention to that.

 

Yeah, I was going to tell Monocause to go with barbarians as well. You can micromanage them to barely take any damage versus some of the early game targets. If you get the first attack in, some opponents die in two attacks. Plus it is only 30 gp for a replacement, so you can rest the injured ones, buy replacements and maintain a very high tempo, unless you get unlucky with tough opponents and sites.

But I did want to ask if anyone had any other expert viable opening combos besides barbarians? Does anyone open with spearmen (spear, not pike), thieves, brigands or militia? I'm not using these units at all* and the time I tried to open with brigands was a disaster as there are only a few unit slots and brigands are much weaker than barbarians.

*Well, if I really need early game guards I might build the militia building for the guards, then use the militia in the late game as an ablative shield for a warrior who normally goes solo.

 

Well that start where I was beaten up was with spearmen. Spearmen are nice when you use them to soften enemy up, and also have higher speed. Two hits from spearmen followed up by T2 archer or other ranged unit would make a difference, or double shot from a sling. Thieves are complementary units, they soften the target and someone else would kill the target without retaliation. Brigands are cheaper than barbarians, and have higher defense, but they don't have berserk and would kill your economy when you have 4 of them or more.

 

I've been doing my share at bumping up the sales of this gem, got about 10 more people to buy it so far. Don't quite know how, but the guy responsible for it managed to strike just the right balance of just about everything with the game. Campaign could be a little faster though, am at 5th shard and only now am seeing new stuff cropping up. Even got a tamed unicorn, damn those things rock at higher levels.

 

Nope, barbarians only. Militia is too weak to really do anything unless you get them to shield your hero. Slingers wont kill anything before it reaches them. Archers need wood or are expensive. Spearmen are weaker than barbarians with almost the same perks (fast, throw before attack). Pikemen and swordsmen are expensive without iron and dont have the killing power of barbarians. Healers are a waste of a slot unless you have a decent army going, also get one shotted by anything. Thieves are nice as secondary units (no retaliation, throw attack, poison) but wont tank anything. Brigands are just weak and have very bad abilities. Crossbowmen are even more expensive than archers, slower and have lower range in exchange for some more attack power they wont use since by the time enemy is in range they are meleeing them (work very good with range enhancers tho like commanders). Shamans rock versus anything not resistant to magic but wont be enough alone.

I dont get the "they are cost effective" argument other people presented for other units. You need to be really pressed to not be able to afford a 30 gold unit that wont die easily and thus can achieve veteran status.

Another thing going for barbarians is you can cheaply and quickly buy an inn in campaign thus allowing you to build their building turn one and conquer another province in the first move giving you up to 12 gold extra income (if its a relatively developed plains). You need what for swordsmen, foundry? Thats few extra turns in which you could conquer extra provinces.

 

Which of course means nothing

 

I

fixed

 

It was sold as digital download on a service "yuplay", for one.

The fact you never heard of this service before, and pretty much no one else did, speaks not of the faults in the game's marketing, but of russia itself.

 

Ho-hum. Good things sadly don't sell themselves, that's a myth.

 

I find myself checking the surrounding provinces for shops now before deciding what to build first. If there is a leather/archery store in your home province or right next to it, it's probably worth while to go with a scout and build around that. Likewise for plate/warrior or knowledge/wizards.

Though I was very disappointed in the demonology spells so far. Fiends are really fucking weak units for a tier 2, and dark pact on a tier 2 unit only makes a fiend. I guess it's a super late game thing, where the idea isn't so much that you're getting an awesome unit you couldn't get otherwise, but rather that you're not really losing a unit if you let your tier 3/4 unit die, just trading it in for the demon version.

Ghouls are fucking amazingly powerful though. Once I had enough slots for 3 of those I didn't even need zombies any more. At decent levels they disease, poison, and ruin morale. Disease rapes. I can't imagine what higher tier necromancy units can do. And ghouls have 2 movement, so you aren't stuck with a 1 mobility army.

 

Yes, necromancy seems to be way better than demonology from my observations. Imps are a joke due to their hp. Hounds arent bad but only comparable to harpies in level two tier. Fiends arent worth mentioning as you said, nothing really goes for them. Demons just suck. Havent seen a devil so cant comment on his stat but he should be a level 4 unit with all included perks.

Undead on the other hand are very good. Skeletons have nice ranged defence and pack quite a punch, zombies are slow and tanky, but man ghouls are indeed amazing. But ghosts are just crazy, their defensive stats make them almost invulnerable to harm. My level 15 warriors couldnt beat one randomly found in a crypt (physical damage does almost nothing). Then there are vampires that I havent seen but I imagine arent bad either. Im toying with the idea of playing a dedicated necromancer for once but would need raise ghoul spell for that.

 

I have the necromancy school unlocked to tier 2, it includes the raise ghoul spell. The main problem is getting to the point where you can have a few ghouls. If you lack command points, you can't keep them between battles, which fucks you. And if you lack necromancy, you aren't allowed to use them (need level 3, 2 is only zombies.) And of course you go through a shitton of gems if they die constantly, which they will if you're fighting through armies of ranged units.

But even with all that, they're damned good for a tier 2 unit. 1 ghoul can easily fuck over 6 tier one units before it dies, and disease is pretty hard to resist. And they can last quite a while with corpses to eat.

 

I honestly find imps to be great. Having summoning skill at 2-3 and being able to summon them 3 tiles away.. move them i the same turn and attack archers/shamans and shit in the back is amazing. They make battles that would otherwise be a pain very very easy. Not only do they destroy the back line but the AI will start attacking them and they do a lot of damage (and maybe more importantly stamina damage) before dying due to decent armor values and a powerful ranged attack. They wouldnt be that good as army units maybe (due to the low HP you mention) but as in battle summons they are great

If all you do is view the units as a bunch of stats and dont take their utility into account then yes they suck. But I, personally, have used the imps to great effect. Prob my fav non sorcery tier one spell.