YES!!! I finally did it. Average sized map, Competent difficulty, 4 AI players. I'm annoyed that my scorecard shows 1 reversion, since as far as I can tell it was because of a power outage. At the end of the game, I had a level 28 Master Necromancer, a level 27 Mercenary, and a level 10 Dark Knight. The hardest nut to crack was the last AIs home province, which had the Warlock provincial guards. I lost to that group once, came back and barely beat them, then was counter-assaulted by 2 enemy Heroes, the last of which sent my Necromancer packing. When I finally made my way back across the continent, he had only been able to replace the Warlocks with Mercenaries, which I annihilated. The garrison itself was surprisingly pretty tough, but no match in the end for my horde of level 15 Zombies and Ghouls with Griffin and Ghost back-up. This ranks among the most engrossing, epic games I've ever played. It was brutal and amazing. One for the ages. I think I can take a break now. I've been obsessed for the past 5 weeks, and it's time to take a breather. But I know I'll be back...
I make it a point to eventually take out Dragon Lairs, Cult sites, and Ancient Caches. Those places are where I find the best equipment. Solo Chieftains with good gear (20+ Warrior/Warrior) are what I generally use, but I have really come to respect Sharphooters (20+ Scout/Scout) for their ability to take down big critters like Hydras quickly. Doubleshot with a good bow is fantastic.
Dang, well done there Jason! That is quite an impressive score. I am still on my first long beginner game that I can't seem to win, but love reading up on the adventures of others. Wish I could spend more time on it right now myself.
How about an AAR Jason? Five weeks of obsessive gaming -- not bad for a $6 release that simply showed up on GoG, seemingly out of nowhere, one fine day.
What's the problem? I'm playing it fine on a recently rebuilt Win8 PC. Have you tried the CPU throttling I noted upthread?
When you said upthread you weren't kidding, waaaay back on the 2nd page. But thanks, that has solved everything :)
Lost a Shard in the Campaign.:( Got so busy playing Wackamole with Heroes, I forgot to put a unit in the Home Garrison. Does the AI cheat by always moving second? Because if I have two adjacent provinces with one army, and the enemy can move to either, if I stand in place it always seems to attack the other, but if I move to the other it alway seems to attack the one I left.... Or maybe, it just seems that way. :)
I've tried savescumming it, and it appears that they pick an action w/out knowing what you're going to do. Having said that, it seems like whenever I don't savescum, I *always* choose incorrectly.
Schrödinger's turn! The AI attacks my provinces and retreats without fighting enough that I don't think it cheats like that. It's just pretty good at exploiting your weaknesses. If you move a hero, you also get a chance to defend against attacks on both the province he left and the one where you moved him, which is a pretty big deal.
I think that you only get to defend against attacks on the province you leave if your movement path intersects the movement path of the invader; I'm pretty sure I've lost provinces that I just moved out of w/out getting a chance to defend them.
So I'm playing the tutorial (?) and it wants me to attack another Lord's province that has 10 stacks in it. Is there a trick to this, or do I just need to keep grinding until my wizard and his 5 units are powerful enough to win that? I've pretty much taken all the rest of the map.
You might be right, but I have had a ton of combat popups where I'll be moving heroes around between provinces and it will either let me defend with one who just arrived or left, or it will ask me which one of the two heroes I want to use if they were swapping places. Then the AI almost always runs. Maybe you have to be moving between adjacent provinces you own to allow it.
Yep, you need to get more awesome until you can murder the guards. Don't forget to check spell shops if there are any on the map -- having a single 2nd-level spell is a huge difference-maker.
If you have taken all the map buildings too,FYI, you can open more up to strengthen yourself by exploring.
Hello, I've seen people talking about the death knight being awesome but i've tried it and wasn't convinced. I think the only benefit is the life leech. But you loose so much useful skill just for a little life leech you could find on item. And with my death knight i wasn't able to solo drake wich i can do easily with a warrior/warrior type. I play the campaign and so far on my last shard i found a ring with 20% life leech and a two-handed swordt with 11 attack, 9 counter attack and 40% life leech.... and i have round attack :) I always start with 2 heroes, warrior and scout. My warrior rapidly goes god like more but my scout is kinda weak. I only use him to explore province and when my warrior is lvl 30 my scout is only.... 15 :( Any good strategy for the scout ? I also feel like hybrid heroes are slightly less powerfull than a pure warior/wyzard/scout/commander. And for the wyzard, pretty awesome heroes but not to start with imo, I take him as thirs heroes and usualy i have ether the 4th lvl spell "summon devil" or "raise vampire" or "summon golem" and he's unstoppable. If you have the "mind control" spell + "summon devil" on a wizard/wizard" you can take control of the biggest ennemy ( for exemple a cyclope) and then sacrifice him to summon your devil in a single turn. Pretty awesome but rly stamina hungry ( 14 in a turn :s) Oh and another question, about playing evil side. I tryed once to play with a full thief army but it's not rly strong and all my town were in a bad mood wich forced me to hire gard every where. I turned out to be a rly bad game for me since i don't feel like evil unit are stronger but they have a bad effect....
About moving order: First phase - attacking provinces Second phase - moving on own territory. So, you can attack AI province with hero and if you have higher initiative - you attack before he can move out. If he have higher initiative - he can attack your province. djed Mage/warrior better than warrior mage.(more spells, better ability, no warrior penalty on exp for first 10 levels) Anyway, power of these multiclasses in heavy armor (high defence) + tier 3 and 4 spells - these heroes can survive heavy hit and cast heavy damage spell (suicide killing of veterans, for example). Very useful in "potential" multiplayer. These heroes can kill dragon with Invulnerability spell (+20 to defence). In most cases vs AI pure warrior + vampiric spell is more than enough. Human player will easily dispell pure warrior casts. Scout have way higher than warrior damage possibilities. He don't receive damage from counterattack and can attack at range. With crossbow he deal good damage to heavy armored targets. So, as scout you can start hunting on caster sites, inquisition (Nobody expect it!), knight order. With couple of web and magic weapon spells archer can take on lone hydra. (Killing will require higher level, but at least you can fear her to flee - and get all loot from T4 site) Best hybrids - Commander/wizard (for T4 spell, Stop Time, teleporting hydra...) and commander/scout (with ranged tactic +6 to ranged damage and pathfinding - true commander of horse archer horde) subjob of scout useful in PVP for mobility and initiative. Evil side - thiefs and brigands - meat for undeads. Cannon fodder. They must die each battle. Slightly worth leveling - barbarians, but they lose effectiveness. T1 evil units especially cheap, so you can dump sites with tons of dead bodies, get good money drop and build T2 evil units. Thug - 35 hp, potential skill for x1,5 damage. Some of high level thugs can hit for 50+ damage.
AND, Masters of the Broken World has gotten the Greenlight! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93959913
Awesome news and congrats! Now just get everything fixed up and you should have a veritable hit. If you can get this to play as cleanly and efficiently as Genesis does this should blow the genre for the Western world out of the water.
I've recently been experimenting with a slightly higher difficulty level (Expert), and it seems like there's only one viable option for your first hero: the scout. Doesn't matter what map you get, or what tier 1 troop types you're planning on using, the scout is always the only hero that can successfully function in the very beginning. You don't have enough gem income to support a mage. (and the free spells don't seem to cut it anymore on this difficulty level), The warrior is simply too fragile in the very beginning: no matter how much you baby him along he dies every time from a stray arrow or a strong breeze or somesuch. And the commander, well... that class starts out weak on all difficulty levels. Have y'all had the same starting experience? Or have you figured out a way to start with a non-scout hero?
First hero doesn't matter - you can own first ring with just 3 brigands/barbarians/swordsmen. Second ring - with 4-5 units + free spells(really, killing stamina is a very viable way). Amazing start from william_blake as commander + fast alliance with lizardmen: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/74473397/alliance_l.rar
Hmmm? In my last game, my first ring consisted of: 4 lizardmen 3 lizardmen 4 pegasi 4 barbarians (3 barbs and a shamen) 4 barbarians (3 barbs and a shamen) 1 free settlement The 3 normal units would have been able to take out the 3 lizardmen & the free settlement, but the hero was absolutely required for the other provinces. My 2 games before that start had similarly prohibitively difficult start locations. The hero seems to be a necessity... and not just any hero: the scout hero.
Yeah. I've found that Barbarian/Shamen groups are not reliably conquerable with starting heroes. Scouts seem to do the best with them, but I tend to avoid them until I get more experience. Fighting fire with fire and bringing your own Barbarians seems to be the best tactic, but it's still rolling the dice.
Commander have 4 slots for T1 units on the start. For evaluation of start location biggest meaning have amount and quality of sites in your home province. I had games where I could get level 5 hero in 5-7 turns without leaving home province just by clearing sites like gargoyles, Knight order, Inquisition. +you had good start, because you had full first ring. Sometimes you get start near the border +1-2 water tiles. And this is harsh. But yeah, scout one of the best starting heroes.
Yeah, while playing the shards, I'm finding I'm really annoyed by the water tiles and borders at the start of the game. Losing those directions for expansion really hurts.
Yeah, I thought I had a really good start at first too. But after playing it out for a bit.... not so much. My second ring consisted almost entirely of water or the edge of the map. Only 3 provinces were land provinces, and every one of them had a massive barbarian force sitting on top of it. What's more, my first ring was entirely plains except for one forest province. (Which had a redwood resource exposed at the start.) Although that's good news for my income, it meant that I had no chance of discovering additional resources in the landmass accessible to me.
Rarely you can find horses on plains during exploration, guard - barbarians. Although there is no building which can reveal them, so this is purely blind luck.
Yeah... one of the 2nd ring provinces had an exposed horse. Of course, that province had an extra serving of barbarian guards as well. Unless... do you mean that you can sometimes uncover horses by exploring, like other resources? Because up to now I have never uncovered a horse resource; they always seem to be exposed at the beginning of the game, if they're there at all.
Yeah, this is possible. But so rare that even Adrageron (creator) forget about this and insisted on idea that horses never hidden until proofpic :) 40 and 41 positions in dialog.var, if interested
Actually there are 2 types of starts: you can avoid losses and you can not. If you can avoid losses then you'd better to hire expensive soldiers and make veterans out of them - you'll save time since you can avoid returning home for reinforcements and you'll get much more powerful army. Scout is great for such start since he can kill or cripple dangerous enemies to prevent critical harm to his troops. Warrior is great too but not so flexible. If losses are inevitable then it's better to use expendables. Warrior is good for such start and Commander too since Commander can field large army and provides passive bonuses for his numerous troops. If you'll start with Warrior you'll clear dangerous enemies with expendables to make way for second Scout and his army of soon-to-be-heroes troops and Warrior will get enough XP to go solo without troops at all or act as leader of expendable army if you'll need it to clear some tough location. Warrior and Scout form excellent pair where each partner complements his buddy fighting style. Developed Commander is great on his own but not so flexible as pair mentioned above.
I've found constructing equipment buildings and buying equipment can be helpful early on in keeping your hero effective. This is particularly true of the Commander, who has some pretty crappy stats because he has no useful equipment early on. IIRC his ability to damage the enemy is actually worse than his Tier 1 units until he gets some kind of weapon. They all have bad defense until they get some armor, which is most important for the Warrior and the Commander. It is rather start dependent, since sometimes you end up with new armor or weapons from loot, and I've definitely built the Forge and purchased Chainmail only to immediately get a Chainmail suit in my next battle loot. But overall, I think taking the time and effort to build and purchase items can make a difference at the start, particularly for the Commander, who is otherwise going to have a bit of trouble being even as effective as a green Tier 1 unit. Disclaimer, I've only played at the Competent and Skilled levels, and they both are pretty tough for me. Kudos to Mark M for playing on Expert, that's impressive!
I would say equipment is super important for Warriors, but not so much for the Commander. Even with decent equipment, the Commander is still fairly useless in the early game. Rather than waste time & money in the early game on the Commander's gear, I've had better luck investing in some magic buildings & loading him up with spells. Even so, the Commander spends a lot of time on the far edge of the battlefield, doing nothing and just looking pretty. Look at it this way: you have very limited resources, especially in the early game. You can spend those resourcs on one of three things: equipment, troops, or magic. (Actually, there's a fourth option: you can spend funds to improve the economy itself. But let's leave aside that fourth option for now.) Since equipment helps the Commander the least, I tend to give it bottom priority. Counterpoint: my unbroken streak of early & decisive losses on Expert.
I agree it's important to get those magic spell boxes equipped with something useful. But I generally end up just picking a single school of magic to start with, since unless you've got a Wizard, you're only going to be able to have three or four spells anyway. I usually go with the Sorcery School since both the Web and Astral Energy (renews units stamina and gives them an extra turn) can be quite useful. IMO Wizardry School is too expensive for early purchase, unless you've got a Wizard hero, in which case it's quite useful. And while Sanctuary can be useful, it's got a longer path to get to, so I generally go Sorcery for my first magic building. Once that first magic building is up, I focus on other stuff and don't go back to magic for a long time (again assuming no Wizard hero). So I definitely don't disagree that getting at least one magic building up is a very good idea. However, the Forge is a path to some of the better units anyway, so getting the Commander a +2/+3 defense or +3/+2 defense and a +2/+2 offense bonus takes him from being completely useless to actually being able to do something in a pinch. And at the start of the game, particularly Competent (and I imagine Expert is worse) early game fights are sometimes very close run things. Having a Commander that can actually hurt something can definitely make a big difference in winning or losing an early game battle. Basically when equipped the Commander is like having an extra T1 unit, maybe an extra 1.5 T1 units. Depending on how tight things are, in the early game battles with only 4-6 units per side, that's the difference between a win and a total party wipe. Without equipment the Commander will be completely useless once he's shot off his spells -- his non-equipped attack is pitiful (IIRC it's a 3).
Wizardry pays for itself rather quickly with the Enchanted Coffers Ritual. You can immediately get back 100 gold as soon as you buy the building, which brings the effective price of the building down to 120 gold, which is right on par with the other magic buildings. Then, 5 turns later, you can cast it somewhere else & voila! The building is now cost-neutral. All subsequent castings are pure profit. Of course, finding enough provinces to bless with your benificience can be a bit challenging, what with their "please don't steal all our monies" stance & the subsequent revolt that occurs if you keep bothering them, but still.
Can somebody explain what just got Greenlit on Steam? It's being called Eador: Masters of the Broken World. Is that a brand new game...a sequel? or the same thing?
I was pairing Extravagance Rituals (improves province's mood) with Enchanted Coffers Rituals for a while. It seemed to work pretty well, though Extravagance has a much longer cooldown. I stopped doing it mostly because it got tedious.
That's the sequel, which is essentially the current game redone for modern-size computer screens. I believe the campaign has been shortened, since they found out almost no one actually finished it, and there may be a few minor game mechanic changes, but it's basically the same as the current game we're discussing here, just with an updated user-interface.
