And yes that's what alignment strict means in this case. You need to avoid evil actions as much as possible though I guess it's impossible since some events will give you -karma and it's even harder since you can start with necromancy or summoning.

Based on my own experience and the opinions here, the way it seems is that you can always start 3x barbarians but you can't necessarily always start 3x swordsmen. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that you can do 3x swordsmen under all circumstances and if you want to play as 'good' then it's impossible to be competitive. So there are actually a few issues here.

Furthermore, no one really has gotten into the question deeply which is to say if we took a 75 turn or even a 50 turn (whatever is acceptable) snapshot of economies what would empires look like ? How would they look with ideal conditions and with bad conditions ? Would the economy (including levels) of the swordsmen opening be better than the barbarian opening? Under what conditions does one beat the other ?



These are things I want to know but I doubt people are willing to solve and I am not as good as some of you here so I can't really find out myself =p

Most failproof - brigands. Slightly weaker than barbs, but 3 times cheaper.

Currently top place holds Scout+swordsmen.
http://savepic.su/1812984.htm
http://savepic.su/1801723.htm
http://savepic.su/1784315.htm
http://savepic.su/1806842.htm
http://savepic.su/1772810.htm
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/2116/46626386.jpg
http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/7743/65212580.png
http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/8921/15221743.png

This is strategic game about ruling empire, not FPS with 1 button paragon/renegade "RPG" element.
What do you expect from ruling empire with different races, while each one have own ideas about "good" and "bad"? Sure, you can choose "karmagood" answer in event with sacrifices in lizardmen province. But they will start to hate you and eventually will rebel.

Brigands are -1 not +0/+1, but it's still good to know in any event.

Since you're being a bit uncivilized we can turn this thread into something else - it's solved after all.

Your blatant fanboy mentality kind of shows here when you call it a strategic game and then bash something like Mass Effect. It's as if you can't see beyond the game's admirable traits and critique it reasonably, but that's expected.

But it's kind of amusing and cute that you think that this game is about ruling an empire or strategic.

How about you think about things this way: Is the current system remotely balanced?

Did it ever occur to you that it is a bit misleading or even wasteful to have the karma system be utilized in a linear fashion? I mean to say it is the most competitive to go from evil or neutral to good but not vice versa or start as pure good. Can you see beyond your fanboyism and recognize that this is more or less a flaw under most circumstances?

And why do you even bring or try to impose real life mentality into this discussion? Do you know what each of the races actually think? Does it really matter? If I am ruling an empire, like you're saying I am, why can't I just commit genocide on the unclean goblins and round up all the elves in concentration camps or we can call them gulags.

Let's face the facts. You're not managing an empire, that part is more or less abstracted. What you have right now is instead a system that punishes players for being 'good' at the earlier stage of the game and rewards them in the later stage. To make matters worse you probably only have one or two competitive openings depending on the circumstances that are surrounding you. Furthermore, you only have ONE road to victory and that's... guess what... military.



But you know what? Despite how shallow it really is the game is fun and that should not stop a person from looking at it critically - which you have probably long stopped.

Hopefully by now it should be clear as to what I expect out of a strategy game if not, then I'll summarize: I expect completeness (or as close to it as possible) and internal consistency.

stra·te·gic adjective
1 : of or relating to a general plan that is created to achieve a goal in war, politics, etc., usually over a long period of time
2 : useful or important in achieving a plan or strategy

I assume that this game is strategic and is about brutal conquering and not about growing wings and halo or tail and horns, based on your taste.
Karma is not a priority, thus specifically hidden from player.

On a side note, you can genocide goblins with pillage option and round up elves with human eater guards.

Then every game is a strategy game because it involves some amount of strategy, that's why throwing out dictionary responses is pretty meaningless.

It's an abstraction, I don't have my Auschwitz - I have 'pillage' . Should I respond likewise and throw out a definition of pillage for you? I hear you like to read from the dictionary.

And are your argument is down right retarded, you do realize that karma isn't hidden from the player? There are titles and depending on which version you play you can see the karmatic values of almost everything. Karma is part of the system and it's fundamentally broken/pointless.

But let's cut to the chase since you'll never understand what is being asked without some help so let me force feed it to you.

I know English isn't your first language but please try to actually respond properly instead of acting like an idiot - and we know you're smarter and more mature than that (or do we?) .

The question isn't about karma and what role it should serve as but whether or not the system - read : the system - is complete. I am arguing that is isn't while you are talking about something completely different. You're talking about what I prefer to do, and to be honest, I play to win when it comes to multiplayer (another aspect that escapes your mind for some reason) .

However, don't you think it is down right boring if everyone does the same thing and it comes down to randomization as to who wins? You can't even say "Well at least there are other perfectly competitive openings" or play styles or anything. You always want to go either evil-> good or neutral-> good, you always want to open up with brigands or whatever else. By choosing to go swordsmen, by choosing to go good you are gimping yourself, by going wizard you are slowing yourself down. Don't you see a problem here?

No matter how skilled the person is, he or she cannot open or do anything else because it is mathematically inefficient. So every player who wants to win will do the same thing which leads to a very stale meta and a very shallow game.

And you know what, the role playing element is actually one of the features of this game and it's highlighted too. It's as much about conquering as it is about being good or evil or neutral and right now the game punishes you for being good , you can't even finesse around it because it's impossible without relying on blind luck; you will be punished by the game, first and foremost, then by other players (humans) .

Anyways, stick to the subject and stop talking about me and talk about the mechanics.

Why so defensive, steinernein. Gremlion wasnt being rude, his english is not that good and he just lays things out as they are. He is not a fanboy like me for example, he had some of the harshest criticism for the 3D Version of Eador I have seen here. He frequently points out flaws and bugs of Genesis nobody else even noticed.

Why would you call the karma system bad game design, just because it has some shades of grey in it? I much prefer that over a more strict system where you would not have the options of the other side available. And I extremely like that you sometimes just have to be bad due to the situation, much more refreshing than the usual good vs. bad silliness in games. Here's a shocker: everyone in the game and in the real world thinks they are the good guys and doing the right thing most of the time.

Now back on swordsmen, I always start with them on expert, I dont see why it would not be possible.I once tried spearmen and it was a total disaster. I mean I won in the end, but with like 20 reversions.
Also why is it so essential to conquer the first ring in some timeframe anyway, I find it much more important to loot enough gold to afford the healer unit, a library and the quest crystal. Then I can conquer the rest, ring 2 and the free settlements of ring 3 in one go.

You're being unnecessarily rude towards Gremlion. He doesn't mean anything bad by his laconic writing style, he just has a lot of experience with this game.

What you're kind of right about is that the game seems to have some rather serious balance problems. The punishment for playing good is really often too big. Starting with Wizard is really frustrating because of the continuous gems shortage. Even his equipment buildings need lots of gems to build, in addition to the wands sold there being underpowered.
Wand combat in general just sucks needlessly. You already have to give up a round of casting to fire your wand, and still it does almost no damage. Even with Wand Master 3 and a shaman's wand you do 7 damage at 4 range and with only 4 shots? With no wand skill and the starting wand (3/4/4), a wizard can't even kill a slinger in 4 shots.

Wait, you were serious?
I don't like arguing on the Internet, accidentally everyone have opinions.

Current pvp meta on Genesis' birthplace - Sniper is the strongest class due to doubleshot + amazing kit - he can kill most heroes on first turn. Second place - Strategist with sick initiative bonus - he can have something like 10 horse archers with pathfinding, effectively wiping most heroes on first turn too.
These classes usually banned by homerules.

As for openings - again, current meta - swordsmen start is the strongest.
Yes, with barbarians you would be able to take some strong sites earlier. By losing barbarians. With swordsmen you will take these sites slightly later, but with bigger profit. Swordsmen - investment into the future.
Veteran swordsman can take hit from troll or ogre without much trouble, some T4 can't kill him - like vampire will deal around 8-10 damage only.
Even if you start with barbarians, then hire swordsmen + healer - opponent will already have 4-5 level swordsmen and clear T2-T3 sites.

As for "alignment strict" - I understood this like "always choose karma positive answer" - this is impossible, because some events have forks, like red-head halfling. You can't know right answer by default. There is none.
Sometimes for pvp we disable events in cfg file. Feels like more fair game, when nobody gets free 900 gold from gold rain (who cares about abysmal penalty).
And only one flaw still left - impossibility to set mirror maps in generator.

I just want to mention this about those times when you don't know if what you do will get you -Karma.

This really does reflect real life and because of that I enjoy it. I mean I believe most people are familiar with the phrase "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" or similar sayings.

"The greatest harm can come from the best of intentions" for any other Terry Goodkind fans this was Wizards Second Rule.

And as for the game being "balanced" well this means a lot of different things to different ppl. I do not believe there is a game in existence that has a great balance with no overpowered starts for some things over others. For any Heroes 3 fan just think of Rampart/Necro skellies. The very fact that going Evil early gives you a quick advantage over taking the hard path of being good is to me the essential nature of "balance". I mean it's called the "Straight and Narrow" for a reason right?

And as Grem pointed out starting with and staying true to the good path will help you out in the long run but does mean sacrifices in the start.

Now I do also agree that their maybe should be a way to get a bit more info before taking certain actions like being able to ask those beggars if they would like help getting stable employment or getting them medical help instead of just giving them the money ofc. lol

Defensive? More like why can't people actually respond to what is being asked. I talk about the system, people talk about my preferences not about whether or not the system could use work.

Sort of like how you're completely on the wrong page. First of all, why are you even talking about 'shades of grey' because that has nothing to do with whether or not the system is intuitive or complete. Second, why - much like Grem - bringing real life into this? Do you not understand basic English? We're talking about - well, I think I am talking about the game system - and how it unfairly punishes players and gives them false choices (like three false choices ).


Can you also figure out that I am talking about the highest level of play which is against human opponents, not the retarded AI that requires mainly pattern recognition rather than actual deliberate thought. But you know what , despite your trashy post you actually have something worth discussing and that is 'why is it so essential to conquer the first ring as quick as possible' .

Did you think of that yourself or did you have to ask someone for help with that? I don't know if you missed the discussion but the whole point is to avoid RNG as much as possible and this thread title along with its contents (other than this nice little departure) along with the other similarly titled thread points out the pitfalls of what you normally do.

Furthermore, I think you're not even reading since you bring up spearmen and note how crappy they are. Do you realize what it means and why that is relevant with my contention with this, otherwise, fine game?

Before Gremlion trolled me (or did I bait myself into this?) a person asked me what the point of this discussion was and what ulterior motives I had and I answered... the goal is to figure out the best builds and the most economical pathways. And guess what? Three swordsmen and building a crystal is not it especially in multiplayer. What are you going to do when you have ZERO quests that can be accomplished because all your sites are lizards, undead, orcs and you need to kill 8 shamans. Are you going to beg your opponent for a rematch? Great strategy there Clausewitz.




Where can I find logs of these PvP games, I want to investigate it myself, and if they're in Russian then I can translate them in a few days, it'll give me a chance to brush up on the language without resorting to Google.

My point is this Gremlion: don't you think having to homerule ban things and to have only one viable start (barbarian or swordsmen - whichever proves to be universally the strongest ) in competitive play kind of stupid and a big flaw?

If so then you should be able to understand why the karma system is also broken and needs to be fixed because there are no choices, only false choices; you absolutely must go neutral / evil -> good . If such a system exists it is really a waste of memory.

You can actually have competitive play even with asymmetrical maps and you usually mitigate it by playing in a series, so I do not believe that it is necessarily a flaw but you can make your own maps and save them like you did before right?

Thank you, sincerely, for responding properly to my questions.

This game doesn't reflect real life nor the choices we make, it's a very entertaining abstraction. The events themselves lack context that real life offers, just take a look at Wikipedia and browse all the historical entries for example. I mean yeah like 'feed the poor' and then suddenly 'overgrowth!' is kind of cute - it's a nice touch really - but hardly reflects our reality.

But the discussion isn't about how the karma system reflects beliefs but rather how the game mechanics interact with each other and I find that the karma system is superfluous or horribly mismatched because there is only one superior route (more or less). The game does not reward you at all for 'skillfully' staying good the entire time nor does it give you the chance. Do you know what this means? It means that also certain alliances (foreign quarter) are off balance too because of karma. It's a system that needs work and that's really all I am saying, I am not saying it needs to be removed but I am saying it needs an update.

A game doesn't have to have all its aspects balanced, all it needs is a healthy meta game. If Gremlion is telling the truth (I don't think he has any reason to lie) then the meta game is already pretty damn stale and that means multiplayer games will be chock full of house rules which leads to a fractured community (aren't we already fractured?). Furthermore, you can come within say 5% (there is a lot of variation behind this) winrate between the players and it will probably be acceptable to many competitive communities especially if you play in a series match. You want 50/50 but to do that would require way too much sacrifice for the sake of 'balance' but that doesn't mean you don't work towards it.

In this current game there is no such thing as 'straight and narrow' because the person who plays evil at the start and then transitions into good will have stronger rewards than the person who stayed good throughout. That's why the system is superfluous. The sacrifices you make at the start as 'good' are pointless and only set you back with no tangible rewards - you basically punish your economy for a minor bump that can be easily paid for at the mid game.

Since none of you are getting the clue let me just lay it out straight: the better karma system would be something that allows players to stay good, evil, or neutral and open up new pathways (economic , military or otherwise) while allowing other players to interact with each other based on karma (for example, if your opponent has high karma then you may have access to certain abilities or units).

tl;dr : karma system is a good concept but horribly balanced along with the rest of the game leading to a stale meta and does the community harm.

Ok so you are not defensive, it was just the unprovoked calling of peoples posts cute, trashy, uncivilized, uncritical fanboys, english illiterate,clueless and trolls that got me the wrong impression!
Then you suddenly wanna know about pvp in a game where probably next to nobody on gog has ever played or even heard about any pvp match except Gremlion, whom you then promptly start to insult when you dont like his answers.
Also why do you assume that it would be disagreeable to say that the game is very flawed for competitive play? I dont think anyone would disagree.

Do you read English critically at all? It's pretty apparent it was an attack whether or not it is intentional is a different story and I think, for the most part, he and I are beyond that now unless he wants me to apologize for taking his 'laconic' style offensively which can be arranged. However, I think you really should stick with the topic..

Because you can't figure out your audience can you? It's pretty apparent that the person(s) I am talking with have a good fucking clue as to what is up specifically the multi-player part. I suggest you really read through the thread to get some contextual understanding but chances are you'll miss it anyways. Furthermore, it's funny how you say I only bash him when I don't like his answers.. it's as if you're totally oblivious to the fact that he was NON-RESPONSIVE and so I said, why not we'll shit fling and see what happens. I accepted every answer he gave me that was on the subjects I asked for and I wouldn't have mind at all if he actually commented on game mechanic interactions rather than bring real life or whatever else into this.

The only assumption I am making here is that people actually want Eador to have a thriving community both in terms of the single player and multiplayer aspects. If you're so damn clueless as to why I am interested in the multiplayer aspect why don't you just type in Eador in the GoG store and see what two games come up then go ahead and visit the Snowbird forum and take a look there.

The reason I am here and not there is because there is a greater chance to find people with the information I am looking for. Frankly, unless you're willing to discuss game mechanics or stay on the theme, I don't really see a point in poking at the matter - what's done is done, move on.

You have posted too much information for me. I couldn't decide what the matter most for you and chose most obvious. I prefer more simple questions, where I don't need to care about nuances.

On the topic - playing in strong roleplay bonds will hinder you against more flexible opponent. This is common sense.
Usually pvp game will be around 50-60 turns (and it can take 6-8 hours). This is not enough for karma to kick in. Players will barely change their title at all. Though I remember pvp game where one player dug up ancient tomb and got dead uprising with vampire and ghost in demesne. On 15th turn.

good pvp logs, lots of screenshots:
http://eador.com/B2/viewtopic.php?t=1450
http://eador.com/B2/viewtopic.php?t=2093
http://eador.com/B2/viewtopic.php?t=1439