Aside from playing lots of Clash of Clans, the only other game I’m currently playing a good amount of is Eador: Masters of the Broken World. The more I play, the deeper that rabbit hole gets, and there is nothing I enjoy more than a TBS title that doesn’t plateau out or revert into abusing a gimmick over and over.

Side note first: I now have Eador on Steam, because when the recent DLC came out, the version on GoG broke. I couldn’t load a saved game, and the fix didn’t arrive for a week or so. That didn’t work for me, not to mention I just generally like having a game on Steam, so I re-bought it on that platform along with the DLC. The game is worth it anyway, especially at the $20 or so price.

Back to that rabbit hole, in my current game I have a large army lead by a commander that has racked up a ton of experience, resulting in high-level lower-tier units. One of those units is a slinger, the weakest archer in the game, who is now a beast at level 25.

At each level you pick one out of two upgrades, and usually these upgrades are a small stat boost (+1 atk, +1 hp, +1 ranged def, etc), but every five or so levels you get something more significant, like a range increase, shooting poison bullets, or gaining a new spell. That level 25 slinger now has great range, shoots armor-piercing rocks, has the double-shot ability, and has enough hit points to survive a single spell or arrow thrown at him, allowing healers to save him round-to-round.

He is just one example. My tier one pikeman is another; amazing counter-attack power, first-strike, and the ability to hit from two tiles away (no counter-attack vs that). My healers have gained spells to act as buff-bots, my halberdiers have holy smite to deal with physically-immune monsters, and my knights have enough speed and hitting power to cross the battlefield in one turn to charge down enemy spell casters or other high-value targets.

What’s really crazy here is those units are just a sample of one of the three major unit lines (good, neutral, evil) you can recruit in your castle. There are also a crazy amount of random units, units you can summon (demons), undead you can raise, and now, with the DLC, six different factions (elves, dwarves, goblins, ect) you can ally to gain access to their units. It’s borderline insane when you step back and think about all of the development and army composition options you have.

If you haven’t picked this game up and are a TBS fan, do so now. (Warning, learning curve can be EVE-like, but much like EVE, it’s oh-so-worthwhile)