Eador: Masters of the Broken World

Eador: Masters of the Broken World is set in an universe which consists of fragmented shards which all represent a world of its own. Various gods, called the Masters, want to unite those worlds under their banner - of course at the expense of the other Masters. The player takes control over one of them.

This game is a turn-based strategy game in the vein of the Heroes of Might & Magic series. The player moves the units over the game world and explores new provinces, finds treasure and expands settlements. Of course there are various options how to use a province and its capital, e.g. constructing buildings to recruit more troops. The most important units are heroes (either sorcerer, fighter, scout or commander) who level up, gain special abilities and spells and can be further specialized. Each faction also has a home province which offers even more options.

Combat is fought on special hex-based maps (8x8) and the single units are moved in a turn-based fashion. Here is is important to take the terrain (it influences things like cover, range and speed) and the advantages of each unit (there are multiple classes and races) into account. Important for the performance is endurance which is used up with every action. Like the heroes, units gain experience. There is also the option to let the computer calculate the results of battles.

During the campaign, the player changes the shard in each mission - this means everything except a few things like karma and research is set to zero. Another important aspect are random events: Here the player has to make decisions, e.g. how to deal with natural disasters, which may have significant influence on the rest of the mission. Besides the campaign, the game can also create random shards with certain parameters.