Eador Genesis

[Raghar]

I had 3, or 4 invasions already. It always cleans whole province. Also province's population became really pissed off. Perhaps they are thinking about future invasion.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Soooo, anyone finished a full campaign yet?

 

[Angelo85]

The Eador Remake has been Greenlighted: http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/news/?appid=765
Hopefully this will enable them to make Eador 2.

 

[SCO]

Game makes me burn out quickly.

Too many combats. Once you get either a good warrior or a good ranged army and good commander you can auto-resolve most of them, but that takes forever and is often not playing optimally anyway.
It also suffers from the frustration of all srpgs with a xp for combat system (AoW had this on a lesser way) - heroes level up _too_ quickly so designers invariably reset all items, xp and heroes once you get to the next level.
Unlike AoW most everything you do leads to combat. At least there the armies weren't in _every_ fucking tile in the game.

The grind...

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Too many combats. Once you get either a good warrior or a good ranged army and good commander you can auto-resolve most of them, but that takes forever and is often not playing optimally anyway.
It also suffers from the frustration of all srpgs with a xp for combat system (AoW had this on a lesser way) - heroes level up _too_ quickly so designers invariably reset all items, xp and heroes once you get to the next level.
Unlike AoW most everything you do leads to combat. At least there the armies weren't in _every_ fucking tile in the game.

The grind...

You gotta start playing on Expert+ higher difficulties. The difficulties below are only intended as sort-of tutorial experience.

Instead of grinding stuff, focus on getting things done and winning in the shortest amounts of time.

 

[SCO]

That doesn't make sense. The grinding is necessary _because_ to get 'anything done' you've got to have the money to support the army replacements or level up the hero enough. Also the game is 'naturally' grindy because whatever move you make you'll get into a combat zone of 11 poisoning thieves and if the AI conquers one of your colonies you'll get it too since it's a fucking cheater fffjsjgkg... but i digress.
This only gets worse as soon as the difficulty is spiked. You get less money to blitzkrieg the small levels so you're likely to be rolfstomped by the AI there, and battles last longer and lead to more defeats/casualties due to buffed enemy hp and less xp and gold rewards, you've got negative income because every colony of yours has a thieves den you can't afford to waste turns to root out, etc.

Not to mention the conga line of 3 enemy heroes lining up to rape your nearest colony forcing you to park a hero there until they die, get resurrected and try again, every 5 turns or so.

The only effective strategy i found against this shit is to have a healing army, and progressively move the 'nearest' colony, occasionally dropping a expensive fort to replenish causalities without going all the way back to the stronghold or getting a 2nd hero to serve as a ferry. This still leaves you up shit creek without a paddle if you want to deal with combat events that make pop unhappy, or develop colonies. If you also want to make sure you don't fight terrible back to back fights of enemyhero+guard you've also got to use the fort as bait so you can fight them separately because AI heroes never invade if there is a respectable player hero+army in the tile; just annoy you with 'invade, retreat' messages.

I guess a necro/summoning army would work too, but i'm trying to keep pure.

The worst of all ofcourse, is that when you finish the shard, you're going to do it alllllloveragain in the next shard. I read that you can get a perm alliance with orcs, wish there was something like that for elves.

 

[Emily]

well the grind is only problem if you go for campaign mode, where there are ton of levels (which is a real problem). If you just play 10-20 hours i think you wont even notice, at least i didn't. Until i hit the 40-50

 

[Bulba]

constantly buying new troops? unless you are playing a summoner mage (you need peasants to sacrifice. summon a demon+raise a vampire/ghost from a dead body in turn 1) you should have nearly zero losses or your tactic sucks. perfect game = zero losses and reloads in the entire shard.

 

[SCO]

Cool story bro.

 

[Zeriel]

Really wanted to get into this game, but the GoG version of the game client seems to have some very weird performance issues on my Windows 7 PC (odd mouse performance, other things).

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

That doesn't make sense. The grinding is necessary _because_ to get 'anything done' you've got to have the money to support the army replacements or level up the hero enough. Also the game is 'naturally' grindy because whatever move you make you'll get into a combat zone of 11 poisoning thieves and if the AI conquers one of your colonies you'll get it too since it's a fucking cheater fffjsjgkg... but i digress.
This only gets worse as soon as the difficulty is spiked. You get less money to blitzkrieg the small levels so you're likely to be rolfstomped by the AI there, and battles last longer and lead to more defeats/casualties due to buffed enemy hp and less xp and gold rewards, you've got negative income because every colony of yours has a thieves den you can't afford to waste turns to root out, etc.

Not to mention the conga line of 3 enemy heroes lining up to rape your nearest colony forcing you to park a hero there until they die, get resurrected and try again, every 5 turns or so.

The only effective strategy i found against this shit is to have a healing army, and progressively move the 'nearest' colony, occasionally dropping a expensive fort to replenish causalities without going all the way back to the stronghold or getting a 2nd hero to serve as a ferry. This still leaves you up shit creek without a paddle if you want to deal with combat events that make pop unhappy, or develop colonies. If you also want to make sure you don't fight terrible back to back fights of enemyhero+guard you've also got to use the fort as bait so you can fight them separately because AI heroes never invade if there is a respectable player hero+army in the tile; just annoy you with 'invade, retreat' messages.

I guess a necro/summoning army would work too, but i'm trying to keep pure.

The worst of all ofcourse, is that when you finish the shard, you're going to do it alllllloveragain in the next shard. I read that you can get a perm alliance with orcs, wish there was something like that for elves.

This game has a large number of different ways of doing things on Expert, different hero starts, different units combos and strats mostly depending on starting location (swamp - magic, plain - commander). You can't just do *anything* and win (like "I only want archers!"), that's what lower difficulties are for. On Overlord (according to those who can - I personally can't), there are fewer, but still more than one or two. Just a few points I feel I can address:

1) Army replacements - it's designed in a way that you, should, past the early game (i.e. first ~10 turns where you hire specialized cannon fodder like Bandits, Thieves or even Peasants if you wanna raise undead), pretty much never lose your troops *unless* it's a clash with the enemy hero and you're about to win the map anyway or something extraordinary like a 6-7 Dragon vault just because you can. Veterans are immensely more valuable than new hirelings, not only do they get +abilities, but also medals and new abilities (depends on unit, which can range from quite useful like -armor debuff for Berserker to game-changing like Crushing Strike on that T2 bandit guy, not sure what the name in English). A veteran swordsman with a healer's support (both T1 units), for instance, can take out a Troll (T3). A lvl30 Barbarian can have ~60 HP and hit like a troll (much weaker than a veteran troll, sure - but that's still T1).

2) This game is very difficult to master, much harder than HoMM or AoW games on the highest difficulties. You're really forced to abuse the little things with AI (which, tactically, is still pretty smart compared to other games except for its "rush everything" behaviour), every spell at your disposal, every little quirk of your unit and every terrain element to push through on the higher difficulties. Not to mention you simply can't afford any past-cannon fodder units dying. I personally approach it more like a wargame with an emphasis on tactical element instead of RPG/strategy hybrid, maybe playing half an hour to experiment with stuff now and then trying out new strats but not committing much. It's really a game for the "long haul", you'll be coming back to it now and then.

I also never really play Campaign. At the moment, I'm stuck in the "I wanna really learn to play well on Expert v. Expert" in custom maps vs. computer. From experience, on lower difficulties it does turn into bullshit with more tedium and grind than actual risk-taking.

 

[Malakal]

Really wanted to get into this game, but the GoG version of the game client seems to have some very weird performance issues on my Windows 7 PC (odd mouse performance, other things).

Your PC is too good. Google the answer but in short: make a custom power plan and assign 50% of max allowed power usage, enable that plan, play.

 

[Bulba]

does anyone have tips for playing at higher difficulties, apart from the obvious of not losing units?

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

does anyone have tips for playing at higher difficulties, apart from the obvious of not losing units?

I dunno how much you already know?

Few tips for not-too-advanced crowd (applies on Expert, not sure if above):

Spells are invaluable, even 0 level spells are good (fatigue on living mobs to make them lag behind, spark vs. undead until they get in range) - use and abuse spells & rituals. A well-used spell (not even highest level) can make a difference between zero loss victory and total defeat. The "purple" magic school (Illusions? not sure the English name) is a must, pretty much, always.

Fear (1st level, death magic school) destroys powerful units with low morale (trolls, ogres, executioners...), you can use it to capture some 2+ level provinces quickly, also used for fast alliance with Centaurs. Blindness (lvl2, chaos magic) works as a late-game alternative vs. say enemy Berserker hero (if he didn't bother to learn Dispel).

Tailor your first hero to starting location. Warrior can start anywhere easily (so most flexible), fastest start possible with quick capture of resources using cannon fodder. Commander needs gold to maintain army (plains). Wizard needs crystals to cast (swamp). A very good player can probably start with any hero (I've read reports from a guy playing on Overlord how he picks Wizard regardless of starting location), anywhere on any difficulty and win, but yeah - I'm not on that level.

Counter-intuitive: buy buildings that you don't have the special resources for, first. They get more expensive with time, so better buy them early especially if you'll need them and you don't know when and where you'll get that resource. Most obvious example: the 3-iron steel factory that you need to make that armory shop for +4/+4 armor, if you start with warrior.

 

[Raghar]

The problem with not losing units is when you arrive against hydra by an accident, or when all enemy archers would try to shot your healer. It tends to accumulate, especially with autoresolve. (No don't use that skeleton...)

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

The problem with not losing units is when you arrive against hydra by an accident, or when all enemy archers would try to shot your healer. It tends to accumulate, especially with autoresolve. (No don't use that skeleton...)

I rarely use autoresolve even when odds are totally in my favour, just so I can level/medal my troops and/or hero appropriately, or the battle is already over I just press F10. Unless it's smth like a disposable Ranger who just scouts, or a solo Warrior (mostly Death Knight) with no troops anyway.

 

[Raghar]

mostly depending on starting location (swamp - magic, plain - commander). You can't just do *anything* and win (like "I only want archers!")

Well that funnily doesn't apply on my current situation. I was locked out by one of opponents that expanded into more nice directions, thus I was allowed only into that horrible brutal lands in the other direction. As part has been locked out by ocean. No source of iron either, thus equipment is quite expensive. Funnily I have one swamp, located in that horrible location 3 or 4 away from a stronghold, which has gem income 20. Which is enough when combined with castle for one Phoenix per 3 turns. Other funny things I did instead of throwing towel, was to fight against 12 trolls with a slayer and win. He is now at sufficient level to be able to fight with dragons with sufficient number of units for a distraction. I fought these trolls because I thought I'd get an acorn. But they had only crossbow of wrath in the lair.

BTW I always start with a wizard.

 

[Bulba]

wizard is hardest to start with, but he gets the strongest at lvl 30, while I find that rogue is the easiest to start with and weakest at high lvl (unlike with a warrior you can't just f10 through battles as he heavily relies on his high level troops with priests that tend to die in auto and it takes time to kill large armies).
I was asking for some advanced type of tips, maybe I'm missing some type of start up tactics like robbing your starting province at the begging for extra cash.

 

[Raghar]

BTW I just received citadel as quest reward, and suddenly everyone started fielding L3 units. Is it normal, or is it because I try to conquer shard with L3 buildings?

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

wizard is hardest to start with, but he gets the strongest at lvl 30, while I find that rogue is the easiest to start with and weakest at high lvl (unlike with a warrior you can't just f10 through battles as he heavily relies on his high level troops with priests that tend to die in auto and it takes time to kill large armies).
I was asking for some advanced type of tips, maybe I'm missing some type of start up tactics like robbing your starting province at the begging for extra cash.

You only really need to rob your own province at start above Expert.

Btw, easiest to start is Warrior. Make Bandits or Thief as cannon fodder, let them die every fight (so they don't steal trophies), Warrior gets last-hits on monsters and all XP. This way you should get all lvl1 provinces (including lizardmen and barbarians) in one go, starting from day 1 if you get a lucky monster from tavern.
Turn 1: hire warrior, build tavern; if tavern has a good cheap mob, and a "free province" nearby (?), go attack it; otherwise wait (scout/rob)
Turn 2: build Bandit Den, hire 3 Bandits, attack a province - make all your Bandits die, get all last-hits on Warrior
Turn 3: build blacksmith, buy yourself a chainmail (+2/+2)
etc.

With Ranger I find the start takes longer, as I prefer waiting (scouting or even robbing if I'm really short on gold) until I can hire pikemen who are imba (as you say, making a veteran army is very important for him). Only when I have 3 pikemen in front, and ranger+healer in the back, I can take all lvl1 provinces incl. lizardmen without any of my troops dying.

I used to start with Ranger all the time, until I discovered how much faster Warrior becomes a killing machine, something like lvl8-9 on turn 30 if all goes to plan (mind you, people on Eador forums claim they can achieve lvl10 in 20 turns on Warrior if conditions are perfect). Then I hire Ranger as a second hero to scout provinces.

But yea, all classes are viable for start, some are just much faster. Even with Wizard, you need *some* crystal income.

 

[Raghar]

Well distribution of XP for combat is like this:
A lot for damage in close combat.
Some for damage in ranged combat.
Something for stamina loss from casting and using abilities.
1/3 for hero for leadership.

Kinda wonder wher I seen that.

This is distributed even to killed and summoned creatures. Thus be letting these bandits die, you lost some XP otherwise used by these bandits. Trying to get last hit also seems to be bit pointles.

 

[Bulba]

wizard is hardest to start with, but he gets the strongest at lvl 30, while I find that rogue is the easiest to start with and weakest at high lvl (unlike with a warrior you can't just f10 through battles as he heavily relies on his high level troops with priests that tend to die in auto and it takes time to kill large armies).
I was asking for some advanced type of tips, maybe I'm missing some type of start up tactics like robbing your starting province at the begging for extra cash.

You only really need to rob your own province at start above Expert.

Btw, easiest to start is Warrior. Make Bandits or Thief as cannon fodder, let them die every fight (so they don't steal trophies), Warrior gets last-hits on monsters and all XP. This way you should get all lvl1 provinces (including lizardmen and barbarians) in one go, starting from day 1 if you get a lucky monster from tavern.
Turn 1: hire warrior, build tavern; if tavern has a good cheap mob, and a "free province" nearby (?), go attack it; otherwise wait (scout/rob)
Turn 2: build Bandit Den, hire 3 Bandits, attack a province - make all your Bandits die, get all last-hits on Warrior
Turn 3: build blacksmith, buy yourself a chainmail (+2/+2)
etc.

With Ranger I find the start takes longer, as I prefer waiting (scouting or even robbing if I'm really short on gold) until I can hire pikemen who are imba (as you say, making a veteran army is very important for him). Only when I have 3 pikemen in front, and ranger+healer in the back, I can take all lvl1 provinces incl. lizardmen without any of my troops dying.

I used to start with Ranger all the time, until I discovered how much faster Warrior becomes a killing machine, something like lvl8-9 on turn 30 if all goes to plan (mind you, people on Eador forums claim they can achieve lvl10 in 20 turns on Warrior if conditions are perfect). Then I hire Ranger as a second hero to scout provinces.

But yea, all classes are viable for start, some are just much faster. Even with Wizard, you need *some* crystal income.

hm... maybe that's because I use swords instead of pikemen - much easier start. I can take nearly all (lizardmen a bit too strong) provinces with starting troops + 1 sworsman, 2 swordsmen when peasant dies. that gives nice income and allowes me to avoid robbing my own province (never do it with ranger start).

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

wizard is hardest to start with, but he gets the strongest at lvl 30, while I find that rogue is the easiest to start with and weakest at high lvl (unlike with a warrior you can't just f10 through battles as he heavily relies on his high level troops with priests that tend to die in auto and it takes time to kill large armies).
I was asking for some advanced type of tips, maybe I'm missing some type of start up tactics like robbing your starting province at the begging for extra cash.

You only really need to rob your own province at start above Expert.

Btw, easiest to start is Warrior. Make Bandits or Thief as cannon fodder, let them die every fight (so they don't steal trophies), Warrior gets last-hits on monsters and all XP. This way you should get all lvl1 provinces (including lizardmen and barbarians) in one go, starting from day 1 if you get a lucky monster from tavern.
Turn 1: hire warrior, build tavern; if tavern has a good cheap mob, and a "free province" nearby (?), go attack it; otherwise wait (scout/rob)
Turn 2: build Bandit Den, hire 3 Bandits, attack a province - make all your Bandits die, get all last-hits on Warrior
Turn 3: build blacksmith, buy yourself a chainmail (+2/+2)
etc.

With Ranger I find the start takes longer, as I prefer waiting (scouting or even robbing if I'm really short on gold) until I can hire pikemen who are imba (as you say, making a veteran army is very important for him). Only when I have 3 pikemen in front, and ranger+healer in the back, I can take all lvl1 provinces incl. lizardmen without any of my troops dying.

I used to start with Ranger all the time, until I discovered how much faster Warrior becomes a killing machine, something like lvl8-9 on turn 30 if all goes to plan (mind you, people on Eador forums claim they can achieve lvl10 in 20 turns on Warrior if conditions are perfect). Then I hire Ranger as a second hero to scout provinces.

But yea, all classes are viable for start, some are just much faster. Even with Wizard, you need *some* crystal income.

hm... maybe that's because I use swords instead of pikemen - much easier start. I can take nearly all (lizardmen a bit too strong) provinces with starting troops + 1 sworsman, 2 swordsmen when peasant dies. that gives nice income and allowes me to avoid robbing my own province (never do it with ranger start).

Pikemen become sort of a "living wall" because with high enough first strike enemies simply won't attack anything (they will just idle outside your "wall"), allowing your ranger to just spike them with arrows at 0 risk or damage to troops, so it also lets me take 2-3 circle provinces that have mostly T1 mass mobs. A veteran swordsman is probably better for more focused tanking due to parry skill though, and also better for soaking arrow dmg. I just find expansion with swordsmen in 2-3 circles slower overall.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Well distribution of XP for combat is like this:
A lot for damage in close combat.
Some for damage in ranged combat.
Something for stamina loss from casting and using abilities.
1/3 for hero for leadership.

Kinda wonder wher I seen that.

This is distributed even to killed and summoned creatures. Thus be letting these bandits die, you lost some XP otherwise used by these bandits. Trying to get last hit also seems to be bit pointles.

Sorry but you're wrong. Here's the formula for the "unit activity" which is used to calculate XP awarded at the end of the combat:

UnitActRating = 20*MeleeKills + 10*RangedKills + 2*MeleeDamage + RangedDamage + DamageReceived + 3*SpellsStamina + 2*UsedHealing + UsedStamina + 1

(source: http://forums.ag.ru/?board=fl_main&action=display&s=0&num=1237016518&start=2700#2705)

As you can see, MeleeKills and RangedKills have a pretty massive weight attached. Not just significant, but like 10x and 5x times significant. Hence the key moment of letting your warrior lasthit, not your cannon fodder.

 

[Bulba]

true, pikemen can become better than swords, but the game is hardest at the start and swords are easier to start with. 2nd circle swords are probably still better.