Masters of the Broken World (Eador 2)

[tiagocc0]

I have trouble playing with wizards, scout or fighter, but when I use the commander everything gets a lot easier for me, I guess it must be because of my play style

 

[sher]

Commander is not an easy start hero for beginners, but he's quite viable if you know how to play him right.

IMO he's viable on shards with durability issues and on shards that aren't small or tiny. Just like the wizzer is on swampy and/or normal+ sized shards. The commander can become very powerful but he certainly doesn't start out that way - he's arguably the weakest of the bunch when you hire him. What eventually makes him kick-ass, is his army size, his troop buffing abilities, and that he's a pretty decent caster. But that requires levels and a strong economy.

Generally it's a good idea to take shards as quickly as possible. I'd strongly suggest keeping that in mind when hiring heroes, if you don't want to make things more difficult than they have to be.

Well, no :D He's not the weakest noob - wizard is. And wizard depends on gems unlike commander. You CAN play commander without strong economy. He also can cast Web and any other spells - any hero can. His power lies not in extra slots for high-tier troops although it's also his additional power to compensate lacking in pure might and magic. But it's not a hero you can play without a knowledge of many aspects of this game, other heroes have fewer requirements for player's skill.

 

[Grunker]

My problems are not when you get spells and equipment. My problems are managing the first like, 10 or 15 turns. Maybe a bit more than that.

 

[Malakal]

Perhaps Im not very good at this game but I remember a situation where my veteran minotaur mercenary costed me 3/4 of my income in maintenance alone. Not sure how would I fare with more level three units (well I would go bankrupt most likely).

 

[sher]

Perhaps Im not very good at this game but I remember a situation where my veteran minotaur mercenary costed me 3/4 of my income in maintenance alone. Not sure how would I fare with more level three units (well I would go bankrupt most likely).

Mercenaries have double upkeep in gold (and for medals too, and only two medals), so if you're using them then you know what you're doing => they give you desired boost to power early to gain more power. Minotaurs are very cheap though (1 Knight costs like 2 Minotaurs) and you'll not get them in early game usually. Income is not your main source of income anyway, with increased power you can clear more tough sites for resources and items, defeat stronger heroes and so on. If you're not - you shouldn't hire expensive mercenaries at all.

Commander can be played early without strong economy as raider. He can use his high command and army bonuses to form a large host of fresh meat (brigands, thieves) to gain power to overcome opposition he usually cannot defeat. His bonuses make decent units out of green recruits and their numbers will do the job. Meat will die in the process so you don't have to pay them all the time. It is better to do all the killings with your hero or few non-meat troops to level them up, to gain more experience. When start is hard usually you'll get tasks you cannot complete without losses - you can do it first of all with cannon fodder to level up your hero (to gain more bonuses for army) and/or few chosen troops, then you'll get some income and places to loot, level up hero and will be able to hire more troops you will treat not like expendables. If you'll reach level 10 with Commander then you'll be able to make an archer out of him and continue to play as a Scout with small party of hardened veterans to lower your upkeep or you'll be able to play as Commander with large host if you have enough opportunities to gain resources via fighting. There is always the need in finding balance between development of your troops and your hero and with Commander this need is very sharp since he has an opportunity to lead very large army but his own development can mean much more for it than the number of his troops.

 

[Misconnected]

Well, no :D

... You meant to quote Malakal, right?

My problems are not when you get spells and equipment. My problems are managing the first like, 10 or 15 turns. Maybe a bit more than that.

I'd suggest going for a healer, and either swordsmen or archers depending on your hero choice.

Swordsmen are really, really durable against pretty much anything but Orcs in the early game. Use them to tie up enemy units while your ranged guy kills them and your healer makes sure they don't get too badly mauled. Don't be afraid to run your swordsmen around the map, it's more important you try to make sure they fight 1-on-1 and/or that they get terrain advantages, than it is for you to keep them together.

Archers are really squishy and will die to other archers and equivalent (or better) units, so you need to keep those guys out of the way until they can start doing damage. In this case the healer isn't for your units, but for your melee hero. Run your melee hero right up into the face of your enemies and give him a spear or other good counter-attack weapon. Then use your archers to make sure any enemy unit that attacks your hero, dies from his counter-attack. And try to heal your hero as best you can. Again, try to gain terrain advantages. Hills are good against anything, woods are good if you're getting shot and having the enemy stand in swampy tiles is generally good in melee (unless you're fighting lizzers or similar).

Check the building requirements for healers and either archers or swordsmen, and don't try to build anything else until you've got them. Depending on how strong your 1st circle provinces are, spend the couple of turns it takes to get your units exploring your capital province. And vaguely apropos, if you're on a small or larger shard you should seriously consider getting a Scout hero as quickly as possible for province exploration. Fully explored provinces make more money and I'm pretty sure they have a lower chance of disruptive random shit happening. Scouts have a skill that lets them explore provinces much, much more quickly than anyone else. Scout boy doesn't need to fight anything, he just needs to explore provinces forever.

Pick your spells based on how you use your army. Web is neat & stuffs, but if you mostly run a warrior right into the enemy what you likely need are spells that restore stamina. And as soon as possible, spells that heal and buff his armour.

...

Not-late game the real power of the commander, beyond the sheer size of the army he can field, is his army buffing skills. Consider them carefully when you level, because what you need depends a lot on your army composition. In a way, the commander hero is like having an army playing on a lower difficulty setting, if you use him right.

 

[sher]

Well, no :D

... You meant to quote Malakal, right?

Mmm... No. My point was that Commander can be played as first hero but it requires skill and knowledge that beginners do not have. He do not need strong economy, high-tier units, large shards and so on, only player's skill. Your impression is exactly my first impression of this class though. But it was first impression His main power is his army buffs indeed and those buffs affect low-tier troops far more significant than T3-T4 troops.

The game is vast so many things are not obvious at all. Sometimes you'll learn something only by watching like others do things because they are simply not for your usual style and you cannot discover them by yourself since you have your ways to do the job and AI is already too slow to show your lacking in efficiency.

 

[Malakal]

Really? I found army buffs to not be that important. +1 hp is nothing, even for level one unit. +1 attack or defence is more significant but still well within the norm. Even +3 isnt that much of a deal unless I understand stats in a bad way. And for higher level units those bonuses dont even matter.

 

[sher]

unless I understand stats in a bad way

This.

All spells and buffs shifts statistics for "measly" points. But if you're following the flow on edge then it's the difference between victory and defeat. The major factors in this are the great numbers you're opposing, degradation of combat abilities with wounds and exhaustion and the ability to resist spell effects. Usually your melee unit will be attacked by multiple enemies and has no large window in HP and Stamina when he will perform at full strength. So +1 or +2 to ranged defense will mean that unit will receive 0-2 damage per round under fire or 5-15 if its ranged defense already high enough but not so high to ignore damage. You'll be able to make such unit with high ranged defense missile magnet and neutralize all enemy shooters while counterattacking melee attackers. Same goes for melee defense when you can rest under the blows without receiving too much damage. And additional spell resistance is valuable even for T3-T4 units since spells are not about damage mostly but about nasty effects.

 

[Misconnected]

Mmm... No. My point was that Commander can be played as first hero but it requires skill and knowledge that beginners do not have.

Oh, OK. You just went on to list all the same advantages as I did in the post you quoted, so I felt slightly confused.

Anyway, I don't really disagree with you. The commander is weaksauce when you get him. Your skill at the game doesn't change that fact, so obviously starting with the commander is going to make things harder on yourself than they could be - initially. Then again, it's very much possible to open with the commander and if you're playing the campaign you'll most definitely play multiple shards where opening with the commander is the way to go. Indeed, I'd suggest opening with him on most normal sized shards unless you have a really, really shitty start.

The buff skills we very much agree on. And even something like hp+1 can make or break the right kind of army composition - for example, if you use an almost all archer army right out the gate, that +1HP is the difference between most troops 1-hit-killing your troops, or 2-hit-killing them. Throw in a healer or two and a commander with a spear, and that +1HP can easily mean the difference between swiftly gaining a veteran army of guys with double shot, or going broke from constantly having to replenish your troops.

But I'd still suggest starting with a warrior+healer+archers or a scout+healer+swordsmen if you're new to the game. Either will cut through the first 1-2 circles of provinces without too many problems or need for good understanding of the units.

 

[sher]

Mmm... No. My point was that Commander can be played as first hero but it requires skill and knowledge that beginners do not have.

But I'd still suggest starting with a warrior+healer+archers or a scout+healer+swordsmen if you're new to the game. Either will cut through the first 1-2 circles of provinces without too many problems or need for good understanding of the units.

Indeed. Starting with Commander is very risky when you do not know true unit capabilities since you'll have to survive his first levels and he has nothing except extra T1 unit slot, some spells and ability to finish off enemies with moderate melee weapon. He's much weaker than regular T1 at first. You will need to use troops well - that's what commander is about. Troops and their combinations, how they complement each other. And you will not know these things for a long time since usually player will go through lower difficulties, Warrior and Scout that will orient him in direction like "Hero is all!" Then he'll get starting Commander without equipment and "personal" skills at all. It's very confusing and leads to wrong conclusions. But starting Wizard is still weaker - he only gets his underwear and spooky wand to kindle bonfires.

The only disagreement we have, it seems (if there is any, really), is the moment when Commander stops being walking joke on battlefield destined to die in a couple of rusty goblin knife strikes and player will actually begin to value him as troop on his own. Maybe you've slightly exaggerated commander's weakness just to keep inexperienced players from choosing him as starting hero. Starting with him can become very rough very quickly and will lead to defeat on shard with ease - there is no much room for mistakes with him. But Commander->Scout is really fearsome beast if you know how to cook him right and fast.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Been a while since we had an Eador patch.

Improvements:

- Added diplomatic interactions with other Masters.
- Added alchemy (turning gold into gems and vice versa).
- Changed and improved unit information screen.
- Added new achievements.
- Fixed and improved Phoenix unit model.

Fixed:

- Untimely recalculation of troops’ mobility after constructing the buildings that increase it and using ‘Fair Wind’ ritual.
- AI spending money and advancing ineffectively.
- AI building three shipyards in one province.
- AI not hiring an army while exploring a province with a garrison for a long time.
- AI not building outpost while having access to fort.
- Spell efficiency algorithm for AI. Heroes used to learn not the most powerful spells which resulted in development lag of Wizard and Commander.
- AI heroes not always learning new skills on level up.
- Acquiring too much experience during sight exploration with a hero meeting Spirit of Knowledge.
- Ritual not being displayed with fog of war on and being displayed with it off.
- Lack of increase in the price for missing resources during items purchase.
- Bonuses for units with knowledge of dead lands and desert not working.
- Game crash caused by quest checking after finished battle and dialog display for heroes under AI control.
- Game freeze during turn ending caused by AI hero’s item equipment.
- Rare game crash caused by map generation and exiting the game.
- Incorrect award display for victory on the Arena.
- Rare game crash on exiting city screen caused by hero’s unprocessed dialogs from previous shard.
- Too strong province guards on early campaign stages.
- Bug causing heroes to be stuck in a province due to AI player using a ritual that triggers an event.
- Injury animation for Executioner unit.
- Blinking of ‘Cancel’ and ‘Change’ buttons in the city screen.
- ‘Attack Shard’ window’s tooltip covering functional buttons.
- Game’s icon disappearing from Alt-Tab menu in Windows Vista, 7 and 8.
- Improved creation and removal mechanism of the render’s context.
- Possible game crash with the ‘Incomplete draw buffer’ error.
- Possible game crash caused by changing graphic settings.
- Possible game crash caused by launching the game on several Intel video cards.
- Disconnect in multiplayer caused by a match being inactive for a long time.
- Commander that uses some of Scout’s skills can now shoot with crossbow.
- Synchronized attack and animation for Centaur, Ballista and Catapult units.
- Removal of one fragment of the castle’s wall during its assault.
- Interface elements for provinces that aren’t bordered with player’s not being displayed with Fog of War off.
- Game freeze caused by pressing Escape button in the city screen.
- Bonuses for mixed skill sets of Commander not working properly in some cases.
- Reduced sound volume prior to and after a battle.

 

[J_C]

Since they don't want to fix the music bug which mixes up the battle music with the overland map music, I've given up on the game. I'll stick to Genesis thank you very much.

 

[Volrath]

Is this worth a pirate yet?

 

[DakaSha]

Been a while since we had an Eador patch.

Improvements:

- Added diplomatic interactions with other Masters.

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool. I thought i was just misunderstanding something. No. It was actually a feature they just didnt add
Almost as bad as the multiplayer button in Genesis despite the game not having any multiplayer

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Been a while since we had an Eador patch.

Improvements:

- Added diplomatic interactions with other Masters.

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool. I thought i was just misunderstanding something. No. It was actually a feature they just didnt add
Almost as bad as the multiplayer button in Genesis despite the game not having any multiplayer

wut?

 

[DakaSha]

Been a while since we had an Eador patch.

Improvements:

- Added diplomatic interactions with other Masters.

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool. I thought i was just misunderstanding something. No. It was actually a feature they just didnt add
Almost as bad as the multiplayer button in Genesis despite the game not having any multiplayer

wut?

wat

 

[InspectorRumpole]

Just didn't understand your post...

 

[DakaSha]

Just didn't understand your post...

I had been wonderign why the diplomacy button was grayed out, and thought they added a condition to using it. turns out it just wasnt implemented. The game was released before they implemented diplomacy

roofles

 

[Metro]

Wow... seriously? That's pretty bad.

 

[Bulba]

we should be all thankfull that they have included some near usless functions like sound or generate a map at the release

 

[Heresiarch]

Good, 8 patches to go.

 

[sher]

Heh. I have great/bad news.

Great news first. There is very good mod for original Eador called New Horizons. It's balanced, has decent graphics that blends with original game very well (I was very surprised actually), has tons of new content of great quality: units, items, abilities, spells, events, races, pictures, tweaks etc. It's like massive content expander for the original game without loss of quality. "Must have" thing for anyone who likes original game, total conversion actually. And it has some patch to alter campaign but I didn't try this patch yet, or campaign.

Bad news. I don't know if there is an English version or plan of translation - I'm playing like there's no tomorrow right now. Again

 

[tiagocc0]

I had heard about it before, but at the time there were no translation for it either.

 

[InspectorRumpole]

They are looking for translators it seems. Any volounteers? http://af.gog.com/forum/eador_series/eador_new_horizons/page1?as=1649904300