Next question: what do those first three do?

How do you get the keys? I've conquered about 15 shards, and lost two of them, and the only thing I've found is a single note telling that the keys exist - that's the only plot stuff I've encountered on-shard. All of the masters + the gremlin are essentially 'hell if I know' about where they are. Are you supposed to 100% explore stripmine entire maps or some shit to find them? How would you get all 7 in 30 turns?

Also, does anyone have any idea on which endings are available, and how to get them? I'm just curious as to what are my options, as I doubt I'll be playing this twice, so I'd like to make sure I get an ending I'd agree with, heh.

You get first key when wounded old man comes to your castle and asks to kill demons(around 5th shard).
You failed to complete this. No first key = no key ending.

Endings:
Good: help Erdu to build protector.
neutral:keys
evil: kill all lords; build ancient mechanism; give details to Ul-dagan; ally with one of necromancers.

I don't think I ever got the old man event, oddly enough. As far as I can tell, anyway.

I don't remember the old man being chased by demons for finding the "first" key (the first key you get is called the 7th key)

I did on shard 24 encounter a wanderer immortal escaping demons who gave me a scroll that was used to do rituals costing gold and gems to produce a set of ultimate gear ("X of ages" for a mage) when I defeated the demons chasing him.

Then on shard 27 I encountered another... however my heroes were away from the castle when he came and my defenders were decimated by the demons (fielding tier 3 and tier 2 demonic uinits). I tried going 1 turn into the past and buying up better defenses for my castle but he didn't show up again.
Did I miss something plot related here or was it just another ultimate item set?

He isn't chased. He tells you that demons attacked his shrine, asks to kill them and dies.

"I did on shard 24 encounter a wanderer immortal escaping demons who gave me a scroll that was used to do rituals costing gold and gems to produce a set of ultimate gear ("X of ages" for a mage) when I defeated the demons chasing him."

This is plot-unrelated event, which gives complete set. I remember 2 more events: for Basilisk set and Commander set(Veteran, probably)

thank you for clarifications Gremlion

Actually, I think the time factor is hinted at right at the start, when Zarr first tells you about the Demon army and that Eador is being consumed by Chaos.

I disagree, the wording does not at all suggest such a thing.
In fact it suggests quite the opposite with Zarr going on and on about all the possible things that are stopping the demon's invasion, specifically the existance of masters and them building ever bigger worlds of order.

Zarr says that there is "something" stopping the invasion of Chaos, and while that "something" is still resisting the Demons, Eador is safe. This would imply some sort of time constraint or race.

Although the time constraint is not explicitly stated, it can be inferred by the fact that the opposite is false. That is, the premise that the player has all the time they need to complete the campaign is false.

The bottom line from what Zarr says is that the player should not waste time. The opposite of unlimited time, is a time limit.

Just because Zarr doesn't explicitly state the cause, or how long the player has, doesn't remove the validity of a time limit. It just does it in an obtuse manner, which can be rather easy to miss.

Sounds more like a violation of the implicit contract between game and player. Tons and tons of games *say* things like "Quick! Solve my quest! Time is of the essence! Some bad thing will happen if this isn't done in time!". This is done to add the *feeling* of urgency. However, in nearly every game that says something like that *without* specifying any kind of actual time limit (or other conditions the player can monitor), there is no time limit. (This is especially true when the consequences of meeting such a limit are make-or-break significant -- the more time a player is expected to sink into a particular endeavor, the more important it is for the game to be clear about it.) Gamers are used to that "rule"/convention. Along comes a game that breaks the convention, a game which apparently doesn't give a damn about how much of the player's time it wastes (hence no save game feature), and the expectation of an informed and objective 3rd party should be that this "feature" is going to mislead *and* annoy players. Trying to argue against that with language-lawyering is to completely ignore the context of those words, and is therefore invalid logic.

In the end, games are about having fun. Choosing to end someone's 40+ hours of time vested in a game with a loss due to a limit the game did not clearly provide in time for that info to be of real use? That doesn't sound like fun -- it sounds like bad game design. (There used to be a different era of games where it might have been argued that it "adds to game play because now the player will have to start over with this new tidbit of knowledge", but those days are long since past. They only existed temporarily due to a serious shortage of game material in the world, but these days we are flooded with games. So it is the games with the best material that most of us seek these days, the games that provide the most fun per unit time, not the game which will waste the most of our [precious] time.)

You are basing an argument on the conventions of OTHER games. This is invalid logic, based on the preconceptions of the player, rather than about the actual game itself.

You are right, there are plenty of games that tell the players to hurry up and solve the quest as quickly as possible, yet do not actually have a time limit. However, it is flawed to argue that one game which actually means it is flawed simply because there are other games which just give the illusion of a time limit for a sense of urgency and purpose.

Essentially, the other games have created a complacency in players which have undermined the effectiveness of time limits. Illusions only work if they are believed to be real, not if they are treated as illusions. As a result the illusion of urgency has been undermined by games which give players all the time they need, as they manage to complete the game "just in time" and save the day. It is these games which are flawed, because this is bad storytelling.

What works in novels, films, and TV serials doesn't necessarily work in interactive media like games. The writers of non-interactive media have the advantage that they know what the characters are going to do, and therefore can set the stage for the heroes to be ultimately successful in the end.

In tabletop roleplaying games, you have the advantage of a Games Master that can shape the world around the players, and do more or less the same thing as a script writer, but reacting to the players actions and shaping the world around them.

However, in computer games, there is normally no such luxury. The player needs to operate within the constraints of the world as it has been set. This means time limits are typically very rigid, although some flexibility may be afforded if the game is programmed as such. In the case of Eador: Genesis, the limits are fixed, as determined by difficulty level.

Yes, the time limit isn't explicitly stated within the campaign. However, with a turn-based structure in the Astral, the campaign can be considered part of a larger race against time, before the game is lost. This race represents the actions of other parties, since they are assumed to be active in the game, even if they have not been specifically programed as such.

Eador: Genesis isn't perfect, but it is a good game when taken on it's own merits. It is much harder and more complex than other Turn-Based Strategy games. However, if you find yourself criticising this game because of what other games do, then maybe you are better off playing those other games. It is flawed to expect any game to be identical to any other, and then complain when it is not.

I do feel that the campaign dialogue could do a better job of explaining the situation, and I gather that this is one of the objectives of the remake, but even for Eador: Genesis, a relatively simple tweak that would address this issue is if the Astral Turns instead (or in addition) showed how many were left until doomsday.

I have to agree with both Jaded and Garran on this issue, although I can kind of see where Davane is coming from.

It has somewhat annoyed me in the past where no matter what you do or how long it takes you that your always just in time to save the day.

However with a game like this that lacks such a basic feature of even the games that the maker enjoyed you have to realize that you just don't want to accept ANY type of criticism about it. The fact that you literally have to start over from SCRATCH after investing SOOOOOOoooooo much time into this game when you don't meat a clearly defined and perhaps arbitrary time limit is not right. When there is a loss condition for a game other than just being beat up and/or conquered by your enemies it needs to be upfront. ESPECIALLY when the game has no real manual and you have to look up info online in forums like these where it is not easily found.


One way to also look at this is, How hard would it have been for them to let you know about the time limit clearly? Would it have somehow ruined the plot at all to let you know?

Also to let you all know I only really like playing Single scenarios and have not even gone beyond the first map of the campaign and after everything I have read I am kind of glad.

The point isn't that Eador is flawed because it's different. Not at all. The point is that in this universe, players have certain expectations. This is simply a fact. Game developers create games for the players in *this* world, not for the players in some fictitious world where they have different expectations of games. Judging Eador based on fictional player expectations, fictional player reactions, and fictional player enjoyment is the invalid (fictional) logic.

And without players experiencing and reacting to games, "the actual game itself" has no value at all. None. You can't meaningfully divorce the value of a game from the experience of the players who play it.

You may not like that other games have taken this route of creating a false sense of urgency, and you may not like the expectations that players have as a result of that, but that doesn't change these from being the world we live in. A good game developer will find a way to work with that starting point, and provide the best gaming experience they can in *this* universe.

Just an FYI, this is better know as "tragedy of commons". (Though many would argue with you about whether or not fake urgency is really bad or not, as well as argue with you about whether or not real urgency that is so poorly defined is good or not.) And you don't "win" in a tragedy of commons situation by following "the rules" (especially self-imposed made-up ones) which everyone else is ignoring. You "win" (in this case, produce the funnest game possible) by figuring out how to make that happen in the context you actually find yourself.

That's exactly why games tend to use the "false urgency" scheme. There's no way the game developer can know in advance exactly when a player will finish the task. So they simply script it as "just in time". Game developers (generally) aren't out to *punish* gamers -- they're trying to entertain and provide enjoyment.

Funny side story -- I've done some independent game development myself. At a certain computer-related convention I had a kid walk up to me (must have been around 6 years old), tug on my shirt sleeve, and ask me "Are you the one who wrote XXXXX?" After I responded that I was, he said in a very serious tone "You are a mean, mean man" and just walked away. (Perhaps a bit too much of a challenge for a 6 year old to win, but too addictive to stop playing. I guess the moral is that game developers can punish players even when they are trying very hard to provide fun, and the audience matters.)

And even they often do basically the same exact thing many computer games do -- either essentially script things as being done "just in time" when there was in fact no preset time limit at all, or provide the players with some clear indication of what time they have available. (And they do that for the same reason game developers do it -- because the goal is fun, not punishment.)

I consder this to be simply false. Time limits not existing is the default. The game developer has to program them in. It takes zero code to *not* have a time limit (maximum "flexibility"). And if you do have a time limit, it takes no extra code (just some dialog, or an entry in the manual) to clearly inform the player.

That is a gross misrepresentation of what I said. As I stated above, I do not criticize this aspect of Eador simply because it is different from other games, I criticize it because it yields frustration/annoyance rather than fun. Not in a million years will you be able to convince me that frustrating is better than fun. And any argument that is essentially of the form "yes, you may feel *frustrated*, but your feelings are wrong, and due to this bit of technical mumbo-jumbo, you should really be feeling *fun*" just doesn't fly.