Spellforce: Conquest of Eo is like Age of Wonders and Thea made a baby

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Yeah, likely it’s more like Dominions where the maps are fixed but if you play a particular map 10 times it’ll be different every time because everything else changes each time you play. If so, I’m fine with that.

That’s funny. I learned about this game from Anno on another gaming board.

First time in a long time that ill be buying on day 1.

I don’t know how much I can talk about it, but it’s really cool so far.

Don’t they have a demo out? If so, I don’t see why they’d care.

No, I got a review copy and made a video, but I can’t post it until the embargo lifts Thursday morning.

My video/preview is live.

Thanks! I’m excited for this. Not sure I’ll start with Goldenfields though just because I’ve seen that start location a few times in videos now. One of the problems with a set map, I guess.

Watching now, thanks Scott, adding to my wishlist. I didn’t like the last SpellForce game I played though, but that seems like it was 20 years ago (I doubt it was really that long ago).

I’ve never really been into the Spellforce games. In 2017 I played the anniversary edition of Spellforce 2 and just found it boring. That’s partially due to me losing enjoyment of RTSs, but even for an RTS it didn’t feel great.

Eo seems like a take of Master of Magic smashed with Age of Wonders 3, and looks much more in my wheelhouse. Seems like a game I’ll pick up at some point. I decent launch sale somewhere could pull me in right away.

I read that there will be a 20% discount at launch tomorrow, and it’s not a full priced game to start with, at $30 USD, fwiw.

After watching Scott’s video, I’m even more excited for the game to drop tomorrow. I don’t buy many games on day one but this is going to be one of them. Fantasy General II was a very well done TBS so I have a lot of confidence in the developer. The only real minus of a day one purchase is some inevitable bugs since there was no EA period. They’re good about fixes though, so I’m not real worried about that.

Hmmm, well this is interesting…
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If GOG has the same launch discount as Steam then I’m getting it on GOG.

That’s probably enough to pull me in :-)

Say, you’ve played both the new Master of Magic and this - which do you prefer? I just played the new MoM a couple days ago, and liked it enough, but didn’t think it was excellent. This seems to have more to it, like more interesting character and enemy skills.

Well, first a small disclaimer - these two games may appear similar in a lot of ways, and indeed CoE is drawing a lot of inspriation in terms of mechanics from the classic Master of Magic (though I think it’s getting even more inspiration from Age of Wonders III, specifically) - but really they are setting about two diffrent goals.

With MoM (or AoW) you are getting a fairly symmetrical board game with you vs. several AI clashing over territory and starting on the same even keel. With CoE though, this is a little more of a narrative driven campaign mode, something that in a game like Age of Wonders I’d usually skip to get right into the sandbox mode. But there is no sandbox here - this campaign is it, and I have come across many an enemy wizard that starts with more units and more advanced capability than I, the underdog, have.

And as you progress, they naturally get more and more aggressive with you - is there a way to win one of them over? Maybe. But so far this feels in some ways a lot like the old Sorcerer King 4X game, in that you are working against forces that start off much mor powerful than you, and the closer in power to them you grow, the more dangerous they are to you.

But for that, it’s a really fun strategy game - just make sure you go in with the correct expectations. This is not a board game/sandbox, so much as an established campaign to beat, if you are able.

At one point about 6 hours in on Balanced difficulty I found myself low on resources, low on units, and surrounded by enemies that were at a “cold war” with me and would attack my workers or units if I got too close to them. I finally gave up and bailed into a new game, playing one difficulty lower which is what I’m doing now, and while the quests and story events are different this time, many aspects to the map (like the location of the neutral cities) is the same, which isn’t a big deal but between that and the AI wizards seemingly the same both games (in the same locations) I’m not quite as in love with this as I was earlier.

Thankfully there is a lot to love and dig into - like, it doesn’t matter to me yet the campaign map is static, because I’ve only seen maybe 20% of the spells/units in the game. The one hero I found was freaking cool as hell, unlocking her own unique page in my grimoire that was explored via her personal quest I was working towards. But it doesn’t play very much like MoM or AoW except mechanically speaking.

It’s really pretty, it seems rock solid and stable as the day is long, and given the 5 start locations I think it’s fair to say this campaign will probably be a good amount of gameplay for at least until DLC drops - and I can easily see these guys putting out a big expansion that adds a random map generator and maybe even starting race/factions to give it a MoM-like sandbox mode down the road.

First review I have read says it’s a (very fine) 30 hour campaign with not much replayability. So it is a lot like Fantasy General II in this regard.

That makes sense - I have a feeling by the time you’ve beaten the campaign you’ve seen all the areas on the map and encountered/overcome all the AI wizards (thave have unique art/personalities and both that I’ve seen so far are very cool but I doubt they are randomizd much between games, if at all) and have probably seen or even had access to most of the game’s units and spells by then. But, especially for $30 it is - I stand by this - a strategy experience well worth having.

I’d buy it today if I could :-)

btw. Thank you for your video!