Eador Genesis

[LibertyRansom]

This is part of the New Horizon Mod. You can upgrade a unit after a certain level. If you right click the red arrow, it will tell you the level that is necessary. It does not cost any extra money, although the upgraded unit may have a different upkeep.

 

[G.O.D]

This is part of the New Horizon Mod. You can upgrade a unit after a certain level. If you right click the red arrow, it will tell you the level that is necessary. It does not cost any extra money, although the upgraded unit may have a different upkeep.

Got it. Much appreciated!

 

[boot]

So, what are the starting strategies for the Scout, Commander, and Wizard? Playing on Expert.

I have Warrior starts down already pretty well. (I build forge for chainmail, then Tavern > bandit lair for Brigands. That's enough to clear most free settlements and basic dungeons. Then I build library, school of wizardry, and school of sorcery as I clear the rest of the first ring. Magic weapon/armor + astral energy makes him able to tank early tier one stuff without brigands, and stuff like lizardmen with them.) Then I focus on building the platemail shop, with +4/+4 plate he can work on 2nd ring, and shortly after begin soloing most stuff.) It's very simple and I've done it so many times it has gotten boring, but it's so effective. I'm able to crush the AI within 100 turns very comfortably on Average size maps and smaller.

I'm trying to get Scout and Commander figured out but they seem like they do much better when pulled out later in the game. Early on they waste a ton of turns exploring as their troops heal, or have negative income, or are just too weak to progress through their 1st/2nd ring. None of them totally rape the early game while strengthening the kingdom economy the way Warrior does. Wizard I haven't touched because it seems like they need a pile of crystals and spells scrolls to excel.

I've got Scout into the 2nd ring using Thieves and pushing for the upgraded bow/arrows from Carpentry shop. Thieves actually work very well with Scout I think. I got stuck on 2nd ring though but was my best attempt. Commander I got into 2nd ring using Spearmen, but again, got stuck, and I think I got lucky with starting that time.

I'm convinced Warrior is the best starting hero. The others require too much effort/luck early on, better to recruit later when you have a good bow/pile of gold/pile of crystals.

For those who say Swordsman + healers are the key to everything... Fuck you! They have too high upkeep and if you lose one you're fucked. I don't like reverting turns, playing the same battle over and over until you don't lose a unit is painful and gay.

 

[Raghar]

Well. I tried wizard as starting class in early campaign. It's VERY bad idea to start as wizard in early campaign. First you don't have L4 spells, or available building to obtain them. In fact you don't have even T2 building to obtain these IMPORTANT spells. People were saying, it's not problem with crystals with wizard as second or third class. But when you NEED to use crystals in every difficult fight it's something ENTIRELY different. And of course, you can't use these three no crystal spells, because you need to kill enemies. (actually you can, but you'd need to lean more on your units)

With wizards it's also quite hard to get into ring 2. Enemies are either quite bad for wizard, or swarm you. Throwing away hoards of crystal on summoning ghouls would bite you into the back. With necromancers it's easy to see that high level game isn't well tested. It's much better to get low level vampire and growth it, than get high level vampire and get much fewer chances to get great skills. And there is another problem. Necromancer gets to create vampire, at level 20. Archmage when he gets lucky and finds correct spell, can do that at level 12 if he really spend effort to concentrate to get it soonest possible. Thus a specialist gets his most important spells later than nonspecialist.
Initially it's completely correct that T1 schools are initially limited, but when owner gets T4 school, it should unlock somehow difficult to get building to be able to build up additional school chain one each from T1 up to T4. And then again. 3 T4 schools, and ALL T1 when main province had massive development and investments feels more right. (Perhaps it should unlock after conquering enemy capital. Limit 3x T4 spell schools feels right. Less actually forces you into weird unrealistic behavior on large maps, and feels like forced restriction without reason.) T4 unit for evil... Well you really want that dead enemy body when you do certain stuff. And because T4 unit doesn't get XP for kill, it even rises MUCH slower in levels. You are typically much better with war elephants, or hydra teleport and world of life. (Great for archmage because he can double cast.)

I actually select starting or secondary hero thematically. When there are plains, warrior or commander. On forest scout. Swamps wizard or scout. Hills warrior or scout.

Scout is actually easiest. It solves certain problems at the beginning. And if you want to use it later as secondary hero, it works well for scouting. He's even decent against slugs, bane of all warriors.

Archer Archer - Brutal murderer that can kill nearly everything, and learn every skill, and surprisingly has also decent army size.
Archer Commander - VERY interesting for swamps, high movement, and looting.

Archer Warrior - aka hero. It's bit victim of badly thought design. It gets useless skills. If it was modeled as hero, it would be much better. He's fine with plundering locations.
Archer Mage - aka ranger. Don't put him against enemy commander. His one T4 spell will NOT help him against full army of experienced commander with 2 T4 units. He's decent at defeating locations, and he's very nice with scouting. It's best to do thematic thing and fill his army by basilisk, spiders, unicorns, and other stuff.

 

[Raghar]

This troll has been horribly wounded.

But his team mate is finishing the enemy himself. Trolls are very vulnerable to ranged attack and magic.

There we see small tinny weak commander how he's trying to fight together with his trolls. While he's weak and nearly harmless, his bravery allowed him to fight with his opponents as equal. Actually where did he learn that skill. And that sword he said he want to try, that can't be reason why he sliced enemy to several pieces and when he reattached his limb it merged and healed. I'm bit suspicious after his opponents started avoiding him and rather went fighting 3 meters big skilled armored trolls with heavy weapons.

Typical life of healer in the army. Nearly dead, too scared to even heal himself. While his army is fighting powerful monsters. But, are these monsters? Isn't the army the real monsters? And when commander forcibly fed him by troll blood to give him chance to survive, did he become monster himself?

 

[InspectorRumpole]

I'm playing a game where I made an ailliance with the Elfs, and was just about to think to myself that they were weak, had no synergy, and not worth their high cost.

That's when I noticed the small path upgrade button on the unit screen.

This changes everything, since you can choose their paths when purchasing them.
Just a heads up.

 

[AgentFransis]

Wtf is that? What mod are you playing?

 

[InspectorRumpole]

New Horizons, excellent stuff.

 

[AgentFransis]

:facepalm:
I've been playing an older version. Thanks for the heads up anyway.

Regarding elves, I think they're worth it just for the base elves alone. And the riders are quite decent. They can charge through woods and are more well rounded fighters than the regular cav. But now looking at the files for the latest version I can't even find them so I need to play to see what they done with them.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Yeah, there are indeed no riders anymore.
The Shape shifters are great though, once you get them going.

 

[AgentFransis]

I played the funniest shard the other day. Small water shard, two expert enemies. Very cramped. I start surrounded by six plains with a thieves guild and a ratmen burrow in my cap. TFW RNGesus gives you a free win (as compensation for the previous shard where the last enemy had a minotaur guard on his cap). So of course I go commander and quickly I have my cap circle cleared and an army of ratmen and a couple of assassins. And to top it off RNGesus gives me a witch doctor mercenary for all my healing and ranged support needs. Then at turn fucking 20 Doh-Gor somehow gets to me and declares war. Surprise motherfucker. In five turns I'm sieging his cap. By turn 50 the shard is done, and only because each siege took 12 turns.

Ratmen are very solid. Decent all around fighters and as they level up they get necrophage and summon rat.

 

[Valky]

I have no proof but I swear to god Doh-Gor cheats.

 

[smaug]

I can't find the setting to change the resolution on the New Horizons mod, does anyone know where the setting is at?

 

[razvedchiki]

press alt f4

 

[smaug]

press alt f4

Doesn't work.

 

[Valky]

Try purchasing a different monitor.

 

[Raghar]

I can't find the setting to change the resolution on the New Horizons mod, does anyone know where the setting is at?

Edit ini file.

 

[G.O.D]

Does anyone know what the conditions are for an alliance with the Gnolls? Can't seem to find any info on the webs on the subject.

 

[LibertyRansom]

Does anyone know what the conditions are for an alliance with the Gnolls? Can't seem to find any info on the webs on the subject.

If I recall correctly, you need to be really evil, and also generally have a more powerful army than the Gnoll province. That open's a dialogue option/result that makes you fight a strong gnoll unit. If you win that, they ally with you.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

This looks tempting. I kind of like the whole approach. Should I start with the officially released last version (1.05?) or dive right into the deep end of the pool with the New Horizons mod? The one thing that concerns me though is the mod supposedly has TONS of lore and event descriptions and with that small, single one-page-at-a time page display it's gonna move along like a dyslexic trying to read the complete texts within Planescape Torment.

 

[Valky]

I haven't played New Horizons yet but I would go with vanilla to start.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

I'd go straight New Horizons. Then again I don't read the descriptions, nor play the campaign.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I'd go with vanilla. NH adds some cool stuff but it also raises complexity a lot (do we really need tier 1 units with 2 rows of abilities?) and some of the new stuff is hit or miss. Also NH makes the AI cheat a lot more blatantly and efficiently than in the base game, and the base game is not easy already.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

This looks tempting. I kind of like the whole approach. Should I start with the officially released last version (1.05?) or dive right into the deep end of the pool with the New Horizons mod? The one thing that concerns me though is the mod supposedly has TONS of lore and event descriptions and with that small, single one-page-at-a time page display it's gonna move along like a dyslexic trying to read the complete texts within Planescape Torment.

Start with The New Horizons.

 

[Grimwulf]

Should I start with the officially released last version (1.05?) or dive right into the deep end of the pool with the New Horizons mod?

If you want to play one map just to see if the game suits you or not, go vanilla.

If you start a campaign, go straight for New Horizons. The campaign in Eador is crazy long, so it's very unlikely you'll complete vanilla one and still have the mental strength of doing another playthrough with NH.

What you need to know before making decision about Vanilla vs NH:

1. The balance in vanilla game is broken. It won't take you too long to figure out the most game-breaking spells, of which the most ridiculously broken one is

Spoiler

astral energy

and then just stick to one strategy during the rest of the campaign. Same goes for units. NH will keep you engaged and force you to practice different approaches depending on current map, opponents, situation.

2. Vanilla AI just doesn't work, period. Again, once you figure out the holes in balance, the game will stop being challenging. At all.

3. NH has a single downside and that is aesthetics. It adds a lot of content and some of it might feel misplaced. Witchers are probably the most notable of such additions. The fact that witcher's sprites look just like Geralt doesn't help things either (the NH devs on the official Rus forums stated they plan to change the sprite sometime in the future, though).

NH adds some cool stuff but it also raises complexity a lot (do we really need tier 1 units with 2 rows of abilities?)

It's a complex game to begin with. If you don't like complexity, why even play Eador Genesis?

Also NH makes the AI cheat a lot more blatantly and efficiently than in the base game, and the base game is not easy already.

No. It was stated over and over again by NH devs that the mod was developed with a single difficulty setting in mind. Once set your difficulty higher, you get hordes of AI opponents assaulting your provinces in the first week. Either you played on higher difficulty levels, or you are just bad at the game.

What do you mean by "cheating"? NH's AI has state-of-the-art algorithm. If you don't have ranged units and attack a group that has some, that group will not advance their melee fighters and shoot you from a distance until you get too close. Just one of most simple examples. In general, during tactical combat AI does not make mistakes and punishes your own mercilessly.

Strategic AI, while not genius, is still better than vanilla one. I've completed both vanilla and NH campaigns. First one was a slog. The latter was extremely fun and thought-evoking.