Legends of Eisenwald Interview
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The editors over at Gaming Nexus recently had the opportunity to chat with Aterdux's Alexander Dergay about their forthcoming crowd-funded strategy/RPG title, Legends of Eisenwald. Topics include how the game's design has evolved during its creation, why they had chosen to do a Kickstarter campaign, what to expect from the game's role-playing mechanics, and more. An excerpt:
How much of the game is strategic conquest and how much is turn based combat?
Many players tell us our game has a strategic feel to it. I would describe it as a tactical RPG - while there are a few strategic aspects like castles that control a certain territory and income and support slots for the army they provide, the game is still more of an RPG where you as a hero try to figure out things and where you have to resort to combat. So, a player would spend a little on strategic conquest and the larger portion of the game dedicated to following the story and playing through the turn based combat.
Could you talk us through how the two different game modes work together?
In a world map you travel to different locations, interact with NPCs, visit castles, villages, markets, churches, taverns, guard towers, towns, ruins etc. Sometimes you are provided quest information by someone you meet, in another case you have to listen to rumors, yet in another case you have to visit a few other locations to figure out what to do. All of your progress is stored in a quest journal so even if you missed a few lines while talking to an NPC, the journal will provide the necessary information. The quest journal is combined with a mini-map where many quests - but not all - are marked. This mini-map has also additional information regarding the different locations on the map, armies nearby and where you hero is in relation to all of that. Another window that you can open while on global map is the army window and inventory. In this window you can equip your troops and upgrade them when they have gained a level, or dismiss them when you don't need their services anymore (for example, mercenaries).
When you travel, you will often meet hostile armies. Then your encounter would lead to combat that will open a combat mode where your units will be on a hexagonal field a few hexes away from the enemy. Or sometimes in a conversation you can make a certain choice and might end up engaging in a battle. Attacking castles or other fortifications will also lead to combat but in this case you will receive additional damage (this is how AI estimates damages for the first stage of a siege - this is the replacement for the two-stage sieges that I earlier mentioned).
After combat you would often get some loot, and it's usually wise to travel to a church, town or another location where you can heal your army and maybe sell some of the loot you got and buy new better equipment for your army.
