My points are being missed here.

Due to randomness, many maps on competent four player are unwinnable at the start. This is either because:

1) Maps don't have sufficient resources and income in the first ring or two;
2) Enemies are unbeatable at ring 2, and sometimes ring 1, by a hero until he has leveled. But it takes too long to level him or he lacks the enemies of appropriate levels to fight;
3) Random events destroy your kingdom;

There are other reasons but they are the main ones. The problem is that you won't know this until an hour or so into the game. This is the reason I say that I do not believe that players can win consistently, even if they follow the perfect strategy, on these maps.

There is a lack of information in English sufficient to play the game. For English-speakers, it becomes a try and die, in which each try takes several hours. At that rate, in order to learn how to play the game, and given the above situation, it would take hundreds of hours to be able to even win the percentage of maps that are actually winnable. The really annoying part of that is that the information is out there in Russian apparently.

The beginner levels are way too easy and don't do anything at all to prepare you for the competent level, which I note, is the third easiest of the eight difficulty levels. It's not like I am getting frustrated by the highest difficulty here. It's the third of eight.

I hope that clarifies my issues. I'm not sure why I am bothering, because so far when I have posted these issues, I have been bombarded with posts by silly people claiming that the game is easy and that I am stupid for not being able to win it. I realize that these are trolls. I don't mean to include everyone in my responses to them. I'm not used to dealing with those kinds of people.

Can you make an example?
Generate "unbeatable" map, post 0 turn save, and write down everything you did turn by turn like here http://www.gog.com/forum/eador_genesis/scg_i

At least first 20-30 turns.

Some starting placement are much better than others, I agree, but it's part of the game. Sometimes you're surrounded by enemies and it's even worse. But you can win 'most' games even with a bad start if you don't let your hero get killed, and you level him fast enough. The AI is rather good but it's predictable, and you can exploit its weaknesses.

1. very few maps have resources in the 1st ring, mostly in the 2nd or 3rd. If you start with scout and get 1 diplomacy, you can bribe for little money free settlements with resources and have them before the AI. It isn't rare that you can get horses this way. Also nomads can be bribed, even if it's more expensive.

2. small and tiny maps tend to be harder than average, especially against other masters. If you do them soon enough, when the masters aren't around or there is only the first one, they are rather easy. In the first turns the AI will have the same difficulties as you, in small maps only 1-2 provinces will be exposed to the enemy, most of the times. Protect them with adventurers (that you get from inn), it will give you some more time. Once your hero reaches command 3 you can attack tougher guards.

3. there are also good events, try to keep your karma positive, it will cost you a bit in the beginning, then it pays off. Exploit events (even losing karma) at the beginning of the game, when you need most money and gems, then always choose the 'good' answers to improve your karma.

To level fast your hero you can:

1. take quests from crystal: avoid fighting goblins/undead/imps at the beginning, quests involve mostly those. You can also avoid battlemages for shaman quests.

2. You can fight brigands/militia (command 0), lizardmen (command 1), knights/inquisitors/holy lands (command 1 + web), harpies (command 2 with scout + barbarians/healer), necromancers (command 2-3 with scout + web for ghouls).

3. if you find a fairy tree you can hire 1 fairy and nymphs. When you have fort and 2nd level units, guardsmen are very good. With command 3 and 2 guardsmen you can beat most guards (also mercenaries).

If you don't have resources in the rings near you, explore them, you can find iron in hills and wood in forests rather often. Use your scout (with army) to explore forests/hills (faster thanks to exploration bonus, risk of ambushes), second hero (also alone) to explore plains (little risk of ambushes).

I take these spell schools in this order:

1. web/astral energy: very early, 2 webs and 1 AE for free turn+magic resistance.
2. wizardry: magic armor/weapon, magic weapon also replenish ammos for archer/healer
3. vulnerability/burn ammo: vulnerability weakens executioners/knights before web, burn ammo against shamans/sorcerers (best with wizard).
4. haste/slow: mainly for slow (good against ogres/knights/executioners/minotaurs...) and fair wind ritual (it lets you save precious turns, especially if you're under attack).

Fear is also a good spell, but you can use scrolls and also buy them if you need. Sell all scrolls, if you think you will buy the correspondent school.

There is a large random factor to the start. This is no different than other strategy games such as Civilization (each and every one of them) that could put you in bad starting positions like small islands or at the tundra, or a number of other things. And there too, you'd have to play for at least an hour if not more to realize you are screwed beyond hope (if you are on any decent difficulty and not the easiest).

My point is that such is life when it comes to random generators. a RNG will f*** you up on a regular basis. Is Eador better or worse than an imaginary average of other similar games in this respect? Perhaps a little worse (or rather perhaps unforgiving), but not much.

The only way to enable the kind of "consistent" victories you talk about is to gimp the RNG so much it's hardly random anymore, which easily leads to games that are too similar and too easy to win the same way each and every time.

Well, no - it could apply a 'sanity check' to ensure that the starting areas aren't ridiculously bad*, and (as came up elsewhere) preventing the surprise-you-lose events from occurring during the first 20 or so turns would also make a big difference (since you'd have enough time to at least potentially be able to respond to them when they started to happen).

* And they really ought to do this in games like Civ, too.

It's a fine line to walk. Of course they could do some checks (and I don't disagree that at least a few can improve the experience in this and other games like Civ), but at the end of the day each check will place a limitation on the RNG, and probably have somewhat larger consequences than you imagine. To take an example out of thin air, perhaps everyone should have either redwood or iron within two rings, however, among other things this dilutes the entire point of special resources if they are there for everyone, and how does it affect general distribution of these and other resources when those resources get "locked" in particular areas of the map?

There is no such thing as a "sanity check" that doesn't have somewhat larger repercussions for map generation than is immediately apparent.

I do agree the events can be unnecessarily harsh though, and some of them could have benefited from timers that kept them from occuring early on. That would have far less impact on the game than messing with map generation, and would make it a nicer experience. Most times you can go back in time if something truly atrocious happen though and do something else so it doesn't happen.

What are these surprise-you-lose events you're talking about? Simply leave the first militiaman in the garrison and you cannot lose with inquisitors or else. Or not? As for other provinces, to lose them isn't a big deal. Once your hero is strong enough, you don't care about income anymore, you loot enough money after fights, you go straight to the enemy's stronghold. Bad events are overestimated.

I had an undead uprising in my home province around turn 10, complete with (from memory) 3 ghouls besides the skeletons and zombies. Wiped the floor with my hero that was in the province at that time, and then besieged my castle - with no way to fight them off as my only hero just died (not that I could have built an army to stop them that early either).

So they happen. Tough luck when they do, but it's not a gamebreaker to me... If they happen that early it's not such a big deal - assuming I can't just go back one turn and fix it (in this case saving the hero would do little good - no way he could defeat that force).

Another example is an event involving harpies. You either give the harpies babies to eat (in which case, you're citizens will hate you and rebel), try to pay them off (which, even if you're lucky enough to have the amount needed so early in the game has never worked for me), or try to fight them off. Given that between six and eight harpies are involved, that's basically a death sentence for your hero in the first 20 turns at least.

Dead uprising could happen only if you dig up ancient tomb or forced old witch to leave. You must expect some consequences.
Harpies - if you can see that you have no chances, give them what they ask. Province will calm down someday. Early uprisings are good for experience.

What really can randomly happen - invasion from barbarians(I have seen one invasion from second circle to first on the same turn when I conquered that first ring province - 8 barbs on half dead army) or dead lands.

However, there is no way to intuitively connect forcing an old witch to leave with an unstoppable undead invasion. This is the kind of info you cannot get from tooltips or other ingame help. I'm sure it's in the manual or documented in Russian on the forum, but really no help. It's still an early death sentence at least once - and more if you don't happen to go here and ask the right question to find out that those two events are connected.

Also that just means the witch event is what should not happen too early (at least in home province).

Yes I've had those too. Not quite early enough to ruin my game, but they can be harsh, and it seems invading barbarians are randomly given their strength. Sometimes it's just 3 barbs - other times it's an army of 8 with shamans and thugs or whatever... I haven't been able to tell what might influence that if it's completely random...

I may have mentioned this on another thread before but one other thing I dislike is the way Quest Rewards are given out. They ask you to choose between 3-4 things but they don't give you any stats on the things your choosing. You only know what to take if you refer to somewhere else OR take it and reload if you don't like it.

This game punishes you for not knowing every damn item there is and that's just wrong imho. Especially when they put in a auto ironman mode that really hurts the score if you go back a turn.

About witch - it is not an event. This is site, which you can find during exploring. Personally, I always leave her unharmed for +1 crystal income.
I found this on my own in var files.
About barb strength - matters where are they from. If you are in second ring provice - you can get invasion from first ring (2-3 barbs and shaman), from second (6-8, maybe thug) and from third (up to 3 thugs, afaik). Look for neighbors.

So these events aren't really random, there's a way to prevent them in most cases. I didn't have often undead uprisings because I rarely loot tombs. There are also demon invasions, I don't think the witch event can be linked with undead. Barbarian/undead/demon attacks can be prevented by clearing neighbouring barbarian/dead/chaos provinces. I don't consider these invasions a bad event, though, there are a lot of quests that involve demons/undead and having some more to kill isn't a bad thing. To lose a province means you lose some income and little else.

About witch site:
First, look for
witch's hut in site.var - encounter 462
witch dialog in dialog.var. - 989

Now open these files.
If you "drive old hag", this sends us to encounter 467
Which have
*Effects*:
Param1: 30
Param2: 465

Param1: 60
Param2: 466;

Means 70% chance on first, if it didn't happen, then 40% chance on second
Going to encounter 466
Index: 8
Power: 729

Index 8 means "start event" # 729.

Event.var
#729
Index: 17
Power: 727
Param1: 2
Param2: 4

index 17 = event #power(727) will happen in 2+random (4) turns
event 727 - have Dialog: 993

Dialog,var:
/993 Восстание мертвецов
Window: 2;
Bitmap: 36;
Text: #The dead have risen from their graves and attacked the settlement in the province of %s!#
Answer1: What a nuisance!;
Answer2: It happens...;#####

Also dead uprisings and chaos invasion could be generated by corresponding sites (altar and gates)