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Tags: Alexander Dergay; Aterdux Entertainment; Legends of Eisenwald
Aterdux Entertainment's medieval strategy RPG Legends of Eisenwald was one of the first generation of Kickstarter RPG projects. Successfully funded all the way back in May 2012, Eisenwald ended up having a long and somewhat torturous development cycle, and despite a positive Codex preview in December 2012 and a Steam Early Access release in October 2013, it seems to have gradually fallen off our radar, seemingly another relic of the more optimistic early days of crowdfunding. But in spite of our disregard, Eisenwald's development has quietly soldiered on towards completion, and Aterdux leader Alexander Dergay never lost faith in us either. With the game now due to be released very soon, Alex provided esteemed Codex contributor Deuce Traveler with an Early Access key. His mission: to give the game a second look, and report his findings. Here's a snippet from Deuce's impressions:
Aterdux Entertainment's medieval strategy RPG Legends of Eisenwald was one of the first generation of Kickstarter RPG projects. Successfully funded all the way back in May 2012, Eisenwald ended up having a long and somewhat torturous development cycle, and despite a positive Codex preview in December 2012 and a Steam Early Access release in October 2013, it seems to have gradually fallen off our radar, seemingly another relic of the more optimistic early days of crowdfunding. But in spite of our disregard, Eisenwald's development has quietly soldiered on towards completion, and Aterdux leader Alexander Dergay never lost faith in us either. With the game now due to be released very soon, Alex provided esteemed Codex contributor Deuce Traveler with an Early Access key. His mission: to give the game a second look, and report his findings. Here's a snippet from Deuce's impressions:
'Time is, time was, time is past'. Ok, I admit that I was just looking for an excuse to use that famous quote, but time is the most significant concern you will have in this game. You will need to muster as large a force as you can in order to take down your opponents, but mercenaries have both an initial cost and a daily upkeep which you must be able to meet. Acquiring territory will provide your character with additional daily revenue, but you will need to pay for better mercenaries as the game progresses to take on your increasingly challenging foes. No amount of daily revenue will truly be able to feed your army's increasing appetite. For example, at the beginning of the game, I was able to get by with a couple of pitchfork-wielding peasants and a monk as part of my front line. The monk was especially resilient and able to deal some righteous damage to my sinful enemies. However, just a few hours later, my peasants and monks were no longer adequate against the enemies I was facing, despite their having gone up a couple of levels during their tenure. I found myself considering whether to hire a single higher level noble swordsman to replace them, but his daily cost was close to the three peasants' combined, and I was worried that he would not be enough to hold my front line along with the pikeman I had been using.
Since the game's difficulty was constantly increasing, I was initially unsure whether the enemies were scaling to my character's level or whether they were truly becoming tougher over time. At one point, just when I felt ready to destroy the forces occupying my family's fortress, I suddenly found my men and resources decimated by a random encounter that came out from the west, making me wonder if all random encounters from that moment on were going to be that difficult. Once again, Alexander Dergay provided an excellent explanation: "We had first the idea of scaling the enemies to a player's strength but we decided against it. So, yes, we try to keep everyone interested with harder battles by design. I think you probably ran into one of the two raubritters in the Way Home chapter. So, the enemy forces are the same but since the world is alive and even enemies have their own tasks, they grow in experience, including their garrisons. I personally think scaling the enemies is almost cheating... when you run into a tougher opponent, maybe it's best to avoid him at the moment and take him later on. For us on our own it gets increasingly difficult to balance the game since knowing how it all works makes combat seem sometimes too easy for us. We rely these days on feedback of players and we added those harder encounters after quite a few players told us they needed more and stronger enemies. There is even an achievement for beating two of those raubritters." Props to Alex - I haven't gotten the opportunity to kill robber barons since Darklands. As you can see, though, time is your enemy in this game. You have to take on some of those side quests, but you can't ignore threats for too long while doing so, because your enemy is also on the move and getting stronger.
Read the full article: RPG Codex Re-Preview: Legends of EisenwaldSince the game's difficulty was constantly increasing, I was initially unsure whether the enemies were scaling to my character's level or whether they were truly becoming tougher over time. At one point, just when I felt ready to destroy the forces occupying my family's fortress, I suddenly found my men and resources decimated by a random encounter that came out from the west, making me wonder if all random encounters from that moment on were going to be that difficult. Once again, Alexander Dergay provided an excellent explanation: "We had first the idea of scaling the enemies to a player's strength but we decided against it. So, yes, we try to keep everyone interested with harder battles by design. I think you probably ran into one of the two raubritters in the Way Home chapter. So, the enemy forces are the same but since the world is alive and even enemies have their own tasks, they grow in experience, including their garrisons. I personally think scaling the enemies is almost cheating... when you run into a tougher opponent, maybe it's best to avoid him at the moment and take him later on. For us on our own it gets increasingly difficult to balance the game since knowing how it all works makes combat seem sometimes too easy for us. We rely these days on feedback of players and we added those harder encounters after quite a few players told us they needed more and stronger enemies. There is even an achievement for beating two of those raubritters." Props to Alex - I haven't gotten the opportunity to kill robber barons since Darklands. As you can see, though, time is your enemy in this game. You have to take on some of those side quests, but you can't ignore threats for too long while doing so, because your enemy is also on the move and getting stronger.
They are weak, don't level up, no surprise you felt weaker than enemies - they grew in XP and no matter how you fight or upgrade peasants remains peasants. I was following a Russian letsplayer, he played with three peasants on the easy level. He gave up at the end of the second chapter even though I though he would ran into issues much sooner. Peasants + mercs is a really bad combo.
