Eador: MotBW Free DLC Update

[PanzersEast]

Our studio will never forget the release of Eador. It was a complete chaotic mess in the best of Russian traditions.

Emergency patching helped the game to stay alive but it wasn't us who truly saved Eador. First and foremost the game survived thanks to the players, their patience, critique and understanding of the situation.

This is why we decided to celebrate the one year anniversary of Eador. MotBW with a free content update humbly named 'Sacred Gift'.

The DLC adds the long awaited shard multiplayer — now you can challenge your friend over the shard's reign, against each other only or with AI Masters.

Besides, we've added a set of 17 new units:

- Ice Demon
- Black Widow
- Fire Giant
- White Wizard
- Black Wizard
- Fire Dragon
- Cursed Dragon
- Storm Dragon
- Succubus
- Tainted Unicorn
- Dark Treant
- Desert Troll
- Clay Golem
- Crystal Golem
- Obsidian Golem
- Crystal Gargoyle
- Obsidian Gargoyle

These units are based on the old ones but with new abilities. For example, Black widow can lay eggs in dead bodies of fallen enemies, letting it create new spiders; and Succubus gains a 'Mental slave' spell at level 10.

Looking back at our experience, it's quite risky to state that the game is completely bug free. But we hope that today's Eador can be considered beatable, playable and stable.

Thanks for being with us this year!

Full changelist for version 1.4.0:

New:

- Multiplayer shard battle (via Internet) — 2 players + AI.
- Multiplayer battle on a tactical map (via Internet).
- 17 new units.
- 2 new sites.
- 7 new spells.
- A lot of new abilities and upgrades for the new units.
- New types of province guards.
- Generation of random settings for a new shard for custom shard battle.
- Province tooltip now shows active rituals.

Fixed:

- More cases causing Invalid Pointer Operation.
- Bug that caused enemy army's freeze in a province after being captured by the player.
- Bug that caused order for province exploration to be canceled after speaking with traveling trader of rarities.
- Bug that caused difficulty change in config.exe.
- Length limitation for player's name.
- Heroes can't attack enemy castle anymore if it's already besieged by another of the player's heroes.
- Bug that caused mirroring the army upon province attack.

[Nefaro]

oooooo Rly?

Been wondering if there was gonna be anymore big updates for this. 

Now if I could just get through the early repetitious parts with the starter units and reach the meat of the game...  ???  Some day!

[bbmike]

Nice! I was just starting to get into this game when Warlock 2 and AoW3 came out and diverted my attention.

[Grim.Reaper]

also base game only $4.99 on steam right now.....


http://store.steampowered.com/app/232050/

[Martok]

also base game only $4.99 on steam right now.....


http://store.steampowered.com/app/232050/

I just saw that (it was announced over at SpaceSector).  Worth getting at that price?  How's the AI? 

[bbmike]

IMO at that price it's a must buy. I can't speak for the AI overall but for me it is a challenging game. But remember, for me, a lot of games are challenging.  ;D

[PanzersEast]

also base game only $4.99 on steam right now.....


http://store.steampowered.com/app/232050/

I just saw that (it was announced over at SpaceSector).  Worth getting at that price?  How's the AI?

$5 yes, any more than that I would say probably not.  The game can get repetitive but overall it is not a bad game.

PE

[Shelldrake]

also base game only $4.99 on steam right now.....


http://store.steampowered.com/app/232050/

Looks like another must buy for me! Gus should also check this out since he is longing for a 4x strategy game!

EDIT: Just checked my GOG account to see that I already own Eodar: Genesis so there may not be enough new in MotBW (other than spiffy new graphics) to warrant a purchase. What say you all?

[FarAway Sooner]

I'm a passionate one about this game, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.

If (and that's a mighty big "if") Snowbird ever gets this game patched to the point of being relatively bug-free, I would crown it the best 4x Fantasy TBS entrant in the last decade.  In terms of innovations to game play, strategic depth, and replay value, it would easily beat out the Fantasy 4x titles of recent years (Fallen Enchantress, Warlock 1 & 2, and everything we've seen so far from Age of Wonders 3 and I think also edge out all the other challengers since Heroes of Might & Magic III.  When it works, it's that good.

The problem is, it doesn't really work for more than a few hours at a time.  It's been afflicted by numerous and often game-killing bugs.  And while the devs keep pushing out fixes and even new content at a hefty pace fully a year after release, new patches seem to push out new bugs more often that not.  I'm not sure if it's because the code base is a buggy mess or because the devs simply don't have a handle around the software development life cycle.

It's a beautiful game, and the best fantasy 4x game design I've seen in many, many years.  But in its current state, it's a badly flawed gem.  The latest patch introduces a new game-breaking bug, and I'm sure there will be a hotfix out for that in a few days.  After that, we'll see how stable the code-base is.

In it's current form, Eador is the best game that wasn't quite.

Grim.Reaper, it's much less technically reliable than Genesis, but even before this latest DLC, it offered a number of things that Genesis never has, including:

• Dramatically improved UI, with the introduction of tooltips, etc.
• More content (e.g., 3x as many random events, different Shard types to enhance replay value, etc.)
• Better documentation (although it's still not as comprehensive as it should be)
• Quicker campaign play (although quicker is a relevant term--finishing a Genesis campaign successfully typically takes 200-400 hours of game play!)

It's a flawed gem, but for the right kind of player, it's a gem nevertheless.  For $5, how far wrong can you go?  That's $1 more than a Starbuck's latte...