I was losing interest in the very long EG campaign, but have now been attacked on my "Homeworld". Hopefully this changeup with provide some needed change. The popup help says that this gives me "my advantages"(or something like that) plus seeing the whole map. The latter is self evident, but what are "my advantages"?
All the bonuses you got on shards for free - bunch of contracts, preplaced buildings, warriors in garrison, probably even items in treasury, additional gold/crystals (probably higher income)
The campaign in this game is really long and doles out the buildings very slowly. In other Eador news, I'm also still too cowardly to increase the difficulty from beginner because while I'm winning consistently the AI is so good that I always feel like I'm on the edge of a total disaster (and I have to keep using the go back one turn button).
Yeah, I'm not too keen on the campaign. Battle after battle without upgrades, and you're always at war. I usually play on Skilled because I have more fun exploring than I do fighting the AI. I'll establish my borders and gradually clear my territory, then I'll go to war. The AI mostly leaves me alone as long as I've taken enough land. I found the AI to be a little too lethargic on Beginner. Sometimes they wouldn't even expand beyond the first ring of provinces.
I've been playing on Expert, and I *just* won my first game at that level. At this level, I'm finding that it's *much* easier playing as evil. It's harder to create a positive cash flow because you have to field larger armies in order to conquer neutral provinces. When you're playing as evil, though, you can choose a nearby province & just pillage the shit out of it in order to fund your expansion. Sure, it'll eventually revolt & hate you forever, but that's a small price to pay for extra cash in the early game. It's a shame, because I actually prefer the good-aligned units & races. Oh well. I'll just have to console myself with my piles of pillaged gold
There are sites which are easier for evil units and there are sites which are easier for goodies. swordsmen with 2 medals of defender become immune to skeletons and zombies. Take scout, and just look at perspectives - if you can kill ghoul - you can attack T2 undead. If you can kill sorcerer and ghoul at range - you can attack necromancer site. I doubt that with 3 barbarians+healer and scout you will be able to kill 3-4 zombies, 3-4 skeletons, 2 ghouls and sorcerer.
Wow, I just lost the campaign to either a bug or a damn annoying mechanic. I'm being attacked on my Homeworld and the AI gets behind the lines by using a shipyard to get a province where I don't have one. Ok, I'll accept that part. Good AI. Although it would be nice to be able to build a shipyard myself! So he besieges homeland, with a strong hero I have killed off a few turns back, but he apparently restocked much faster than I could and came right back. I have a strong hero with no army left after that last fight and a weak one with a weak army. I figure I'll take the army with the strong hero and kill off the enemy hero and make the army retreat. I attack with both heroes figuring if I can't kill the hero with with the first stack I will with the second. I don't get a choice as to which hero I attack first with but it defaults to the stronger. I kill the hero but lose both my army and hero and get the returning to castle with the body message. I figure good, his leaderless army has to retreat and my other stack will not engage and I will save Homeland and work toward resurrecting my main hero. But not only does he not retreat, but the Hero is still alive and kills off my other Hero and my garrison, and I lose. WTF? How does my Heroes have to get dragged back home and the AI's doesn't?
If you win the fight where your hero died you can do a battlefield resurrection for the usual cost. Same rules for the AI and the player. Losing the campaign must suck though.
Damn. That sucks. Helpful tip for next time, though: as long as you leave at least one unit garrisoned in your keep, (I always use the militia from my first hero) then you'll force your opponent to besiege your keep before he can actually take it. That buys you at least two turns to rush a hero over there to relieve the siege. If you don't have any heroes left alive, you can restart the shard by choosing to go "Into the Past", then choosing "Return to Astral".
He was besieging but was able to beat both my stacks then the small garrison. I did not go into the past because I thought I could cherrypick the Hero and cause the retreat... It's cool, I am playing a standalone game and get to play around with stuff I have not seen in the Campaign....
Nah. The location of the victory doesn't matter. If your hero dies during combat but you're victorious, you'll get the option to insta-rez, paying the standard rez cost. I think you have to be fighting an AI opponent to get the insta-rez option, though. There've been plenty of times when my hero died to independents and I couldn't insta-rez.
Quick question on diplomacy. I've run into an AI player who's actually friendly. (Well, he shows as having "respect" for my side--whatever that means.) Can you win with an alliance, or is it just last man standing?
If you're allied and more powerful than your ally, they'll cede the shard to you when everyone else is eliminated.
There were some debates about lake ships, so dev made it impossible by default, but gave an option to put in. In Eador.cfg make "Lake ships 1" Probably you hadn't enough money/crystals. If you have good standing with good aligned Lord, sometimes they will give you shard for free or offer to cast lots. You can ally with one of necromancers, but when on shard stay only you and ally, they will take shard for themselves.
It's not a necromancer. Are you saying that in a singleplayer, non-campaign game, an ally would give up? And can you win if the only one other than you left is an ally?
My #1 cause for game losses: pursuing an alliance with the dwarves or elves. They remind me of hard to execute special moves in fighting games: if you could pull off those moves, you could pretty much instantly kill your opponent. But since I could never quite make them happen, I would end up just standing there while my opponent pummeled me. Oh sure, I was pretty good at the basic punches & kicks, and could probably win more matches if I just stuck to those. But I want to twirl up into the air and rain fire upon my enemy, damnit! So anyways... yeah. I have yet to successfully conclude an alliance with either the elves or dwarves. Curse them!
Is there a way to repeat tutorial messages? I'm fairly far along but mistakenly closed one before reading what to do next, and nothing is glowing or blinking. Although I think I'm screwed either way because I ended the turn and thus can't go back.
...and in my very next game, I manage to ally with the dwarves. Scratch that: I didn't "manage" to... they were practically begging me to ally. I had uncovered a Bandit Lair right next to my capital in the course of expanding, and then I discovered a dwarven province in my second ring. So... yeah. Alliance formed. Unfortunately, there isn't any iron to be found on this map.... which makes the dwarves kinda useless. If it isn't one thing, it's another. You can read all the tutorial messages in \\GOG Games\Eador - Genesis\Text\hint.txt
"Sire.... remember that huge barbarian/thug army that your level 14 scout was leading?" "Yes. Wait.... what do you mean 'remember'?" "Well, a random event spawned a phoenix in the province they were defending. The phoenix destroyed the provincial guards, your scout & his army, all the buildings in the province, and killed every last citizen in the province." "..."
what the fuck? Crossover doesn't produce a text folder after installation. To the Google! Could I talk someone into paste-binning it or something? I'll pay you in likes. Aaaaaaaand found it! Thanks for coming along for the ride!
I just want to add that this is the best $6 I've ever spent on gaming. Since GoG lets you buy gift copies for people, this makes a great inexpensive-but-awesome present for people who might be inclined to play this sort of strategy game.
Aw, MAN, the gauntlet has been thrown. I've been trying to win at Competent on a Large map with no luck. I may have to try Expert/Average next. Curse you for the hours of my life soon to be lost, Mark! :)
Warts and all, It's like, one of the best games ever. Easily the highest dollar-to-entertainment values of any game I've bought to date. I really hope the big mod version gets translated soon...
Timing is pretty critical in this game as you increase in the difficulty level. The AI is pretty good about filling out their provinces with the best guards they can hire, so you really want to hit them before they get their guards up to a level that they become impenetrable, or at least where they've gotten past you on the curve and they're building up strength while you try to level your way to be able to even start taking provinces from them. My wife can still lose shards on Beginner, usually because she waits too long and lets the AI build up too much. It gets worse the harder you set it.
I was playing Expert/Large. To be fair, though, I had 11 reversions. I'd say 5 or 6 of those were done just for convenience or to try out a new battle strategy, but the other 6 or 7 were mission-critical. My biggest mistake when I first started playing Expert was that I'd often buy whatever building I could afford, rather than focusing on which buildings I needed to get to a specific unit or spell. So I would have all sorts of random economic buildings (and I'd be raking in a stupid amount of gold/turn) but my armies were always a tier behind the AI. My piles of gold weren't very helpful when I didn't have any decent units to buy.
Eador does a great job of a war-focused game's version of guns-or-butter. Your basic econ buildings are important (including population/mood boosts), but you can pile up huge gains by chasing one-time lump sums (via evil-type event resolutions, Enchanted Coffer, etc) and spending them on improved military that compounds its value by letting you conquer new provinces/lairs.
Here's an odd thing I've encountered. I've recently discovered scouting enemy provinces to see which has the weakest guards (so many times in this game you discover something like this that seems obvious in retrospect...). So, I've got my big ol' commander army, and my opponent has the Guards guard (the one with crossbowmen, swords men and halberds), which is an annoying battle of attrition that I would rather avoid. I use a shipyard to get behind his front lines, and see big juicy provinces guarded by halflings, and militias, and hunters. I pick one, but when it gets to resolving battles, I'm fighting Guards instead. Where did those halflings go!? "Ok." I think, "No problem, he must have had enough gold to replace all his nearby armies. He can't afford to keep doing that if I keep breaking through." But, when I check the map again, the other armies are still there. So, he just happened to replace the one army I was going to attack with his best defenders? I call shenanigans. Especially when this happened multiple times.
AI have second turn by default. If you try to play hotseat vs self, you will see that second player have solid advantage, for example, he can build fort in province which first player plan to attack. Most annoying cheat from AI - it can get alliance without quest, he have some chance to ally nonhuman race on moving into province.
http://www.snowbirdgames.com/forum/index.php?threads/second-beta-stage-—-sign-up.1058/ Sign-ups for getting in on the 2nd-stage MotBW beta are up. Basically register on their forums and send them an email per their instructions in the link. Previous beta participants should still email to confirm they want a key for this next stage.
Well, sure, but the annoying part was that I kept getting unlucky. It's probably nothing, but it felt like the AI knew what move I was making, and that seems unfair.
I understand your frustration, since I've had similar experiences, but I've also experienced plenty of times when that hasn't happened. And the AI seems to be moving its heroes without any idea what you're doing with yours, as you can see by its repeated invade/retreat attempts on provinces that you occupy. Also, I'm not sure from your original post how many turns went by, but the AI can only buy one provincial defender per turn (just like us), so unless you took many turns to make your eventual amphibious assualt, it wouldn't have been able to replace all of those guards that you saw. After playing something like 70-80 matches, I haven't found any conclusive evidence that the AI cheats in the particular way you describe. However, it definitely cheats in the way it acquires non-human allies, as Gremlion has noted. And it's fucking annoying.
I thought the thread already confirmed that the AI is *not* limited in how many guards it can buy per turn.
