Eador Genesis

[InspectorRumpole]

The thing is that even if the AI got a perfect start and found the labyrinth at the exact perfect moment to get minotaurs for the commander just when they got tier 3 slots for all of them I still don't see how they level up 5 of them to level 30 in under 100 turns. Even taking no loses (and the AI can be pretty retarded about that) and fighting a battle every turn (which is impossible because you have to move) where did the XP come from? That's why it seems like a bug and not super leet russian AI scripting.

Yeah, it's impossible.

I figured the AI gets some sort of head start when your playing on the harder difficulties.

Sometimes I wish I was a fly on the wall and could see wtf is going on in their domains :D

 

[Raghar]

Sometimes I wish I was a fly on the wall and could see wtf is going on in their domains :D

When you defend your shard you can see what they are doing.

 

[Raghar]

I just had brutal stuff on average shard. I laughered 3 other opponents on turn 78. I normally finish in 199 or later. I didn't even have time to recruit third hero.

Five horses are murdering everything.

 

[Boon947]

Boon947 Do you know if there's any plans involving reworking how the enemy "cheats"?

Sadly, I have no involvement whatsoever in NH dev. A long time ago, I tried so hard to get in. But the main dev (who controls the source) never trusted me, so I'm just the translator. (I'm teaching myself SDL2 to try to rewrite Genesis like this (if you thought Genesis looked like the 90s, that prototype looks like the 80s).

 

[Serus]

I started playing this game a few weeks ago, started with vanilla now i'm playing New Horizons. Great stuff, such shame that it wasn't translated in English (and properly distributed) when it was first made, it wouldn't be a great hit but it would have a following for sure. The best Master of Magic inspired game i ever played. Sad so few players know about it.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

I started playing this game a few weeks ago, started with vanilla now i'm playing New Horizons. Great stuff, such shame that it wasn't translated in English (and properly distributed) when it was first made, it wouldn't be a great hit but it would have a following for sure. The best Master of Magic inspired game i ever played. Sad so few players know about it.

I've never played MoM sadly, but isn't AoW generally considered the closest to MoM?

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Oh, and I think I figured out how to avoid the AI getting lvl30 and maxed out armies at turn ~100

I have been tinkering with the map settings, and when you set Water and Mountains to "low", the AI will just pummel you.
But if you leave it at normal, it's much more balanced.

 

[Serus]

So which heroes people find strongest and which the weakest ?
My favourites so far:
1. Commander -> scout. Army with a lot of buffed low tier ranged units, kill the enemy ranged/casters and what survives fights your first line made of higher tiers units.
2. Wiz -> wiz as a nuker/blaster type is insane but requires some time to develop (high initiative is a must to go first in battle but it is tied to an otherwise useless skill wand mastery)
3. Warrior -> anything - with proper equipment seems to be very strong (but New Horizons removed the round attack skill from weapon mastery... can it be aquired somewhere, maybe on some item ?)
4. Commander/wizard combinations... large army

On the other hand:
1. Scout -> scout seems to be the only good combination for scouts, it shines early and mid game but isn't as good against late game multiple strong enemies and against large armies.
2. Scout -> anything else is missing the crucial double shot ability. Without this ability why go scout as first class at all ? If you want scout skills go anything else -> scout instead.

New Horizons changes a few things about heroes and thier balance but many class combinations seems to remain the same, or very similar to original.
Also the amount of unit types in NH is insane - i am still trying new things...

Edit: Big thanks for the people who translated New Horizons to english, my russian is to weak to enjoy it in original. And to authors of the mod itself too of curse.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

I think it all depends what kind of army/race you're going for.

I almost always go for a mixed class now, since high Initiative is the most important skill imo. It allows you to take out key enemy units before the other hero can react.

I just won a long game on Expert, using a Gangleader (Scout>Commander) and having a Drow army.

The high Initiative (6) gave me time for my lvl 3 and 4 units to cast their spells, and for the rest of the army to go into shadow form if needed.

The +1 movement on all units was also extremely useful.

However, I did come into trouble when i tried to take on a Guard, which consisted of 5 War Elephants, 5 Executioners and 5 Bodyguards.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

2. Scout -> anything else is missing the crucial double shot ability. Without this ability why go scout as first class at all ? If you want scout skills go anything else -> scout instead.

Diplomacy, scouting and pathfinding are all intendant on shooting power and play more like command/utility abilities and your damage is still good before level 10. For pure single target damage scout+scout is the best, yes, but I use scout+commander the most because I like having more command in mid-late game and scouting skills aren't great past level 3. You also get insane mobility, a lot of command and command skills, you avoid the problem pure scout has with large armies. The looting buff might seem small but it's a nice bonus. Scout+wizard gets a buff to scouting skills (false alarm etc), which is super powerful but you miss on command and splitting between magic and bow skills is iffy. Scout+warrior I never use, splitting between bow and melee is terrible.

Commander + scout can get so broken it's not even funny. It gets hard countered by some spells and a few super fast/super resilient units but it rolls over most regular armies with no loses. My favorite is commander+wizard, great command and decent support magic. Pure commander and commander+warrior are both good too (the mixed one less so because having to take warrior skills on a commander is miserable).

I rarely use warriors, I just don't like their playstyle. They're good but you take a lot of loses and stack armor until nothing can touch you. And if something CAN touch you (you were not prepared vs magic/poison/fatigue/spiders/whatever) you're just dead. Meh.

 

[Serus]

Diplomacy, scouting and pathfinding are all intendant on shooting power and play more like command/utility abilities and your damage is still good before level 10. For pure single target damage scout+scout is the best, yes, but I use scout+commander the most because I like having more command in mid-late game and scouting skills aren't great past level 3. You also get insane mobility, a lot of command and command skills, you avoid the problem pure scout has with large armies. The looting buff might seem small but it's a nice bonus. Scout+wizard gets a buff to scouting skills (false alarm etc), which is super powerful but you miss on command and splitting between magic and bow skills is iffy. Scout+warrior I never use, splitting between bow and melee is terrible.

Commander + scout can get so broken it's not even funny. It gets hard countered by some spells and a few super fast/super resilient units but it rolls over most regular armies with no loses. My favorite is commander+wizard, great command and decent support magic. Pure commander and commander+warrior are both good too (the mixed one less so because having to take warrior skills on a commander is miserable).

I rarely use warriors, I just don't like their playstyle. They're good but you take a lot of loses and stack armor until nothing can touch you. And if something CAN touch you (you were not prepared vs magic/poison/fatigue/spiders/whatever) you're just dead. Meh.

Sure i get why scout skills are good, but i find that i can get diplomacy/scouting/whatever after level 10 when i want them. Just seems suboptimal to me to start with scout instead of getting scout at level 10 or pure archer but i don't claim to know this game very well. That's why i posted - i hoped to initiate some discussion and maybe learn some tricks, spell/skills combos etc in the process... :D

Edit: and yes i know this is an old(-ish) game... i'm just late.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Well, it's the question what of hero you want to start with. As I said, I don't like warriors, wizards are a little too dependent on the map and scrolls and tend to push you to the evil side which I usually don't do, commanders are the best if you can afford the upkeep but it's really hard on higher difficulties, you need to fight almost every turn (preferably conquer a new province) and making a mistake will cost you the game. Scout is more forgiving (you can spend a couple of turns exploring without going into negative gold), has good damage and survivability because of the ranged attack working very well with support from swordsmen/pikemen or barbarians, and scouting or diplomacy can make a huge difference even early in the game. I usually go scout > do a quest or two > add a commander, maybe add a 3 hero later in the game if it's a larger map, but it depends on your playstyle, difficulty and the map.

 

[Serus]

I just ran into the overleveled AI units bug. My first hero was still under 20 when i met an AI army with the hero and all units at level 30... The fun part was that his army had 5 trebuchets (level 30 of curse), my whole army was killed in first round... funny stuff. It makes me wonder if the game is even playable in campaign mode in later stages (haven't played far in the campaign, mostly random shards) but if it occurs with some regularity then i don't see how to play the campaign mode in later stages (it doesn't happen early but shards are of smaller sizes early, i assume later in the campaign they get bigger and the bug can happen).

This was New Horizons obviously.

 

[Valky]

I finally have free time to play again and now when I run Eador Genesis, the game plays extremely fucking slowly with the framerate completely gutted. I know my computer is more than enough to handle it, and Eador is the only game that is getting nearly slideshow framerate now. Anyone else have this issue?

 

[InspectorRumpole]

I finally have free time to play again and now when I run Eador Genesis, the game plays extremely fucking slowly with the framerate completely gutted. I know my computer is more than enough to handle it, and Eador is the only game that is getting nearly slideshow framerate now. Anyone else have this issue?

Mine runs smoothly after the latest Win10 update, but I've had the problem before.

Try setting the eador.exe to Win98 compatibility and enter this in your Eador.cfg:

***MAIN SETTINGS***

Sound (0 - off/1 - on): 1

Windowed (0 - off/1 - on): 0

Run background (0 - off/1 - on): 1

Refresh delay (min 5, default 40): 10

Poll mouse delay (min 2, default 25): 10

Keyboard delay (default 500): 250

Keyboard repeat (default 500): 250

Sound buffer (min 100, default 20000): 20000

Color depth (16/24/32, default 32): 32

Sleep time (default 50): 25

Antiblink Delay (default 1, max 10): 0

YuPlay (0 - off/1 - on): 0

Intro (0 - off/1 - on): 0

Wallpaper (0 - off/1 - on): 1

Alternatively you can set up a custom Windows Power Plan, and set it to use 50% CPU power. It works, but it will make the AI turns slower. (can be quite unbearable in the later phases of a game on a big map)

 

[Valky]

Thanks so much, the game runs normally again! Weird that it just came up, it was running fine ever since I installed it and nothing changed to now when it started going like that.

 

[Raghar]

It's free for next few tens of hours on gog now. https://www.gog.com/game/eador_genesis

In case you wanna it and didn't pirate it already. (or wanna legalize your pirate copy)

 

[InspectorRumpole]

So what is everyone's score while playing skirmish shards?

I'm playing on Expert, and this is how it looks.

I always get a lot of reversions because I want to test my army against strong foes, and that really drags down the score a lot

 

[golgo21]

whats your turn time when playing on skirmish on big shards?mine is like 2 mins after turn 80 and it makes the game unplayble.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

There's a turn timer setting??

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I think he's talking about how long the AI takes to complete their turn on bigger maps later on (past day ~70-100).

I looked around the Russian forum a little, it looks like the next version will feature reworked lizardmen, reworked upgrading to veteran units and additions to the nature magic school. Also, there are people who complain about the mysterious level 30 AI armies out of nowhere on the Russian forum too, but I don't know if anything is being done about it.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Ah right.

Well, when I was using the "Power Plan fix" to get Eador stutter free, the time it took the AI to finish its turn was unbearable as well.

But after I didn't have to use that anymore, it has gone down considerably.

 

[golgo21]

i have an fx 6300 and didnt use any fix,turn times on a large shard with 4 AI opponents went up to 2-3 minutes.
people on some forums wrote that older one core CPUs performed better than modern ones.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

That's possible.

I forgot to mention that I'm running Win10, and after their latest Service Pack the game runs a lot faster than before. Did you try setting Eador.exe to Win98 compatibility ?

 

[_V_]

Question about the mage class:
I always had most fun running a straight mage (archmage) with an undead army as my main hero. With 2.70b I got my mage to lvl 30. I'm ok with the undead lvls being a little a little nerfed for new summons. Not sure about some of the spell changes.
Anyway: Lvl 30 archmage and I don't get a tier 4 unit slot (and only one tier 3). That means no vampires... So, was I only very unlucky with my upgrade rolls that I'm missing out on command? Is that even possible? Or is the mage being fucked over a feature?
Is there any way to get tier 4 units (vampyres) with a mage? Would multi-class to commander (necromancer) do it?

EDIT: It's a feature. Seemingly easily fixable by changing stat_progress.var