I think you'd be right to wait.

Eador Genesis (the first game) is great, and very cheap at the moment (plus it gives you the extra 15% discount on the latest game if you decide to get it).

Eador: Masters Of The Broken World is a straight remake of the first one. It has prettier graphics, but horrific bugs and questionable support. There have been quite a few updates but as of early 2016 it was still irritatingly buggy. I can't personally say what it's like now, but from what others say, it still isn't fully fixed.

Enter Eador Imperium. This one at least contains a new campaign. It might also contain all the lessons they've learned from Broken World, and be a fantastic new entry in the franchise. Or it could be a buggy mess that will never be fully fixed. Given the track record, I'd say it's too risky to go for until a few genuine reviews come out (as opposed to early access looks and first impressions).

I think the main problem is that many publishers and some game developers think they can make more money by releasing new games, expansions, DLC.

Because people pay for games, expansions, DLC. They don't pay for bugfixes.

This mentality makes them forget that unplayable bugfests lower their reputation, and bad reviews lower their sales.

In the reddit AMA i_ni linked to, they said that they've done a "huge code rewriting for Imperium" which hopefully translates into a more bug-free than bug-infested game.

They also acknowledged that Eador: Masters Of The Broken World still has issues and that they want to address them, and that said code rewriting could help with that. I guess there's still hope.

I doubt there's a developer who doesn't get the relation between bugs -> reviews -> reputation -> sales.

The business model is new sales from new release(expansion or standalone), by the nature of the product under sale:
How many copies of the best games you own you have? Do you buy a new copy of the same game every (few) year(s)? If not, what is the alternative of new sales from new releases?

Well, old games aren't flawless either. I still regret that the old X-Com from 1994 has a few bugs negatively impacting gameplay and balance. And there's no hope of these ever getting fixed. At least there are unofficial modern remakes like OpenXcom. And worthy successors like Xenonauts.

But true, back then games were released when ready, rather than "when release date arrived, and for the hype and marketing reasons, we can't delay any longer".

In fact, I would prefer if developers released their games early, unfinished, even with tons of bugs. Just adjust the price accordingly - an alpha or beta version of the game should be priced at let's say 20% or 50% of the final price. Then I'd be ok to pay the remaining 80-50% of the price for bugfixes.

Wait... you doubt there are stupid people on our planet? Do you even live on Earth?

...

Sarcasm aside, I think there is enough stupidity going on within publishers and developer studios. If they knew better, they'd know having a good reputation and a large fanbase of people who love your games for their quality, would allow them to make more money even if this means increased development costs.

Another reason why I doubt the intelligence of many publishers is that they keep making single-platform games, when making multiplatform games is actually EASIER with modern game engines and libraries. Just look at the fact indie game developers, who have less budget, fewer people, and less experienced programmers, are still making multiplatform games without problem. Sure, optimizing for multiple platforms is harder, testing and support is also harder (unless you rely on community support, which they should at least in case of Linux games), but making a game that just works is easier multiplatform. I can tell from personal experience - I've made some simple games and published one. It would take me more effort to break it not to work on multiple platforms.

Also, there's enough proof that game developers who engage in open discussion with players, explaining the decisions they make, addressing all bug reports, and generally being honest when dealing with players, actually they benefit from doing so. Studios that keep everything secret and avoid hard topics such as "when will you deliver what you promised", will ultimately get so much bad press and no word-of-mouth advertising, that it hurts them for no good reason. All they had to do to increase their sales would be to say something along the lines:
"Sorry we haven't fulfilled that promise yet. We don't have anyone working on it yet, because with our budget, focusing on it right now would cause us to fail at doing a few other higher priority tasks. If you have any suggestions how we could address the issue, let us know."

This simple message would save them from so much bad press. And potentially allow them to get some valuable feedback from players. I think I have the right to say that developers who fail to do that simple step are acting stupid.

Ergo, there's plenty of stupidity within publishers and game developer studios.

(And don't get me started on the stupidity of DRM. I can only hope the reason why developers still use it is because of pressure from shareholders/marketing department etc. rather than from actual belief that it works)

___
PS.: If Snowbird Games are aiming to fix their reputation, I'm willing to give them the n-th chance. Although, as I said, I'll wait until a bigger discount, or until I read some good reviews about Eador: Imperium from people who played Genesis.

Or better yet, wait until they fix their previous game, first.
That doesn't soumd reassuring. It sounds more like "Yeah, maybe we'll get around to fixing it later." At least EA/DICE had the decency to fix Battlefield 4 after its disasterous launch before releasing Battlefront and BF1.

It's called Masters of the Broken World.

Maybe the bugs are features.

We're much pickier now.

Look at the Final Fantasy series: before X on the PS2, pretty much every single game has an item duplication "trick" somewhere. Wanna know how many of them were intended by the devs? exactly zero, they're all buffer overrun or garbage collection bugs, all exploitable from the comfort of your TV. FF6 for the SNES in particular has so many ways of wrecking your savegame and even the entire cartdrige, the recommended way to play it is on an emulator, with multiple backups of both your savefile *and* your ROM; it's said there's at least one such gamebreaking bug per character in the game, and I'm not sure that's exaggerating.

And it's not like PC fared much better; case in point, a few days ago I bought a version of Keen Dreams on Steam whose main advertisement point was the heap of bugs the new publisher had fixed during the DOS -> Windows port. And then there was my beloved childhood game One Must Fall: 2097 which, although pretty solid and one hell of a game, lost in the market to a vaguely similar abomination called Rise of the Robots, which was so horrendously broken it simultaneously proves two things: that awful buggy games existed as far back as 1994, and that people mostly didn't care.

Hi there! I believe there are two questions we must consider separately. First one is about the visual concept. An example: I love Fallout 1-2 and Baldur's Gate 1-2, I've spent about hours with these games. I can play it now without any issues with antique interface and visuals. But I can't play Fallout 3 and 4 and New Vegas and whatever new things Bethesda will create. Same for HoMM 3 and, say 5. I suspect there is a sort of uncanny valley that stops me. I'm ok with 3D, I can even enjoy Farenheit or Anachronox or Deus Ex. It's the tree of knowledge - once you've eaten that apple of 2D you won't like 3D version.

And the second question is about Snowbird's dedication to their games. May I remind you that the latest update for Eador MotBW was released one month ago. We actually support the game for 4 years now. And if we had a thirst for new toys, we would proceed with a game about partially clothed Japanese ladies or scary clowns or some MOBA stuff.

There's a huge difference between obscure duplication exploits and access violation error bombs. I've had much better "luck" getting PC games to crash than I ever did with anything on a console. I have no idea how you wreck an SNES cartridge, but I guess I'll take your word for it. The point is that I would have to go out looking for it. PC releases often enough show their bugs without you having to look for them.

If the problem with Eador was that you could duplicate items by learning dual-wielding and canceling a purchase with a shield in your right hand, there wouldn't be the frustration that you see here.

Heh, wonder now if they came up with the title after getting all those bugs into the game.

Thank you, I'll be here all week!

I bought Eador Motbw at its release.3 years later i still haven't managed to finish the campaign once! I always get to the large shards and the game cannot save or load or the AI cannot finish its turn.A random crash or some gameplay bug is not a big issue.The inability to save or load or continue play is, as you can no longer progress.
I have tried the game with 7 different computers (32 bit,64 bit, winxp,win7) and it always crashes,even with the latest patch.So after 3 years and ton of patches we are still left with an unfinished game and the company says "Hi guys,you see how much we supported our previous games?Now go buy our new one!"
What really annoys me is that there are 2 guys who mocked my negative review and many who down voted it.Till i read this post I thought it was maybe my pc that had issues with the game.I guess many more people get those errors...
In any case, snowbird has 3 games based on the same engine and they are all full of error violations etc.It is either the engine that is problematic or they are hopeless in programming.Who thinks that the fourth time will be the charm and buy the game right now?

By reading many Steam Reviews I came to the conclusion that the game was completely recoded when you compare it with MotbW but there are still issues although it was recoded.