Anyone playing Eador. Masters of the Broken World?

I preordered this game a while ago and just started playing it yesterday.

I'm really liking it. Feels very Heroes of Might and Magic but has a lot of its own systems in place and setting to make it feel quite fresh.

It was an impulse buy for me at the time and now I'm really happy I've got it.

Apparently there are multiple endings and such and I have seen a karma system in place so I'm really interested to see how that goes down within this type of game.

Also, of all things the tutorial is one of the best I've played. It's fairly relaxed and not overbearing on what you want to do, providing everything you need as it comes without forcing you to do anything it wants to.

Has anyone else checked this out? Interested to hear how others are finding it.

Hmm. Guess no one is playing. Shame. I'm having a blast

I'm thinking about getting it. But im gonna wait and see if Stardrive is any good before i go with one or the other.

How's the diplomacy and politics in the game? / Is there any?

@peritus: I'm playing the campaign at the moment which does a good job of easing you into the many mechanics of the game bit by bit. When it comes to taking a shard it is about destroying your enemies castles and nothing else.

However to take the different territories of a shard you can do it in a variety of ways. If you want to take a territory of a human village for instance, you are approached by their rag tag militia which offer you the opportunity to buy the province from them, making the mood of the populace much higher than if you were to go in slaughtering.

Likewise other races such as lizard men can be turned to your cause by completing quests that they give you.

I've just conquered my first shard (not including the tutorial one) and the game has now revealed the existence of other demi gods such as yourself. The diplomacy system seems really interesting as it just started with an introductory conversation between the two of us debating what we should be doing with our near omnipotent power.

The deity I was having a chinwag with was very much of the mindset that the mortals should be left pretty much to it, helping them through whispers to reunite the shards of Eador together, whereas I was arguing the only way for them to achieve this near impossible task would be for me to take direct control, removing all sense of ambiguity surrounding my existence and intentions so my thralls know what to do without question.

Needless to say the deity is not pleased with me, and seems eager to at least attempt to take me down if I step out of line in his eyes.

That's all I've had so far is that brief taster, but the writing and the dialogue options make it seem like a more natural way of negotiation, with each deity I meet having their own agendas, own beliefs and their own ponderings on our existence.

While I love the Civilisation series, the somewhat robotic way of performing diplomacy in the game through the same options for everyone made the leaders seem less like people and more like caricatures. In this it feels like true conflicts of interest can develop just out of opinion, belief and everyone's definition of responsibility, making it much more engrossing than disagreements forming from not trading or settling too close or just Montezuma being an arsehole.

I feel like I'm only scratching the surface of this game, but the game helps you get each new system it throws at you without holding your hand too tightly. I'm just excited to see what it throws at me next.

@johnsublime: A thread on it started here in a way: http://www.giantbomb.com/eador-masters-of-the-broken-world/3030-40776/forums/why-is-no-one-talking-about-this-game-1433885/

The tutorial is indeed really good and makes getting into it relatively easy.

The game itself is very hit and miss. In pretty much every aspect there is no good part of it that doesn't come with some caveats.

It looks pretty, but has a lot of really lackluster creature/hero designs, and is poorly optimized.

The combat is generally well done and tough in a good way, but is extremely slow as even at max speed setting and fast forwarding enemy movement you are still left with slow attack animations. Making each fight take much longer then they ought to. AI is terrible at quickresolving fights, loosing your units left and right even when there is no need to and even the combat message would say there would be no loses. Necessitating that you manage every little fight yourself.

The overall strategic Civ like map is interesting, but somewhat more stretched out then needed with exploration only not taking forever with a ranger, as well as many actions taking a turn each when they ought not to (like visiting an unowned shop). Certain units only having 1 move slowing down an entire army to a crawl and making you never want to take them. Quests being on a per hero basis and requiring returning (also with the same hero). It all really feels rough like player convenience and time were barely considered. Even HoMM and Civ games proceed at a faster pace.

It's also really unfortunate that the game is full of bugs. Issues both minor and major abound. I must have run into a dozen bugs playing the first campaign shard alone. From misaligned water textures on combat map, to missing object names, to finding a ruin with 0 enemies and a game hang in because it can't proceed to an empty fight, to consistent crashes on game loads with the game using improper ram addresses and having CTDs, and so on, it's a loooong list. And this is after the major patch which already addressed several big issues.

I'm only on the second shard and really really want to like this game and do like it in many of it's aspects, like I said I find the combat and overall strategic map interesting, but it just feels like the game is trying to push me away all the time.

It could have definitely done with an extra month or two of development and QA. Polishing out some core mechanics and unit designs as well as fixing the myriad of issues.

I downloaded it but have yet to play it. From what I have seen so far from the trailers I think I will enjoy the world map and god managment stuff, but the Heroes style combat is kind of a turnoff for me. Hopefully it doesn't play the same way that game does with stacking units and whatnot as that will be a huge negative for me. Will see how I feel once I get to actually dive in and play it.

@crusader8463: No stacking, every unit is an individual piece not a numbered stack. You can still have 5 archers in an army they would just be separate units, with their own xp, and stats. Kind of like Disciples a bit. The combat grid is similar to Heroes tho.

@tennmuerti: That's good. The thing that killed me with HMM is that I tend to play strategy games with a turtling strategy and all I could do in those games was build more dudes and stack them. But then the AI would always out perform and get like five times the units I did and I couldn't even hurt them.

@johnsublime: Thanks for you're very informative post, i think you sold me on the game. It sounds pretty good!