SpellForce: Conquest of Eo is the fourth installment in the SpellForce series; it is a 4X/RPG hybrid based on Master of Magic rather than a RTS/RPG hybrid like the earlier games in the series. It was developed by Austrian studio Owned by Gravity, published by THQ Nordic, and released on February 3, 2023. Chronologically, it is set between SpellForce III and the original SpellForce, though since it emphasizes its 4X aspects more than its story, knowledge of earlier games isn't required to play.
SpellForce: Conquest of Eo provides examples of the following tropes:
- 4X: The basic gameplay, as a game inspired by Master of Magic, involves exploring the magical realm, expanding by capturing nodes of magic or building structures that spread your influence, exploiting the resources you find by crafting and expanding your tower and by spreading your influence over captured resources, and exterminating the rival circle mages (or seeking one of the alternative victory conditions.)
- Action Bomb: Some enemies, like plaguebeetles, will explode when they die, delivering damage or nasty status ailments to any nearby enemies.
- Addictive Magic: Allfire is this; by the time the game occurs, it has started to become increasingly obvious, making the Circle behave erratically. The player character, naturally, shows signs of this as they interact with it as well.
- Alchemy Is Magic: The Alchemy crafting specialization focuses on creating magical concoctions for your troops to use in battle.
- Animate Dead: Possible in combat in several ways, such as the "Dark Feast" scroll. However, the core mechanic of the player Necromancer class is instead based around creating Artificial Zombies out of parts in their lab, rather than animating them on the battlefield.
- The Archmage: In-game, this is used as the title for the second-highest level of advancement. More broadly, your goal is to become this trope by reaching the apex of magical power.
- Artificial Zombie: The core mechanic of the Necromancer crafting class is assembling zombies out of parts in your lab.
- Auto-Revive: Several monsters, like vampires, have this ability innately, returning to life a few turns after they die; and alchemists can grant it to their servants for a battle by having them use Allfire Essence.
- Black Magic: Death magic, and the Necromancer crafting specialty; the source of power for these sorts of magics is death, and they inflict suffering and death on others, with spells that do things like seize souls from towns for you to use for your magic. Additionally, Death is a crafting element, representing objects empowered by death, suffering, and elemental shadow, and cancels out with Life.
- Canon Character All Along: In the game's ending, the main character is heavily implied to be Piper, who was one of the most mysterious members of the Circle by the time of the original Spellcraft.
- Character Customization: More limited than in Master of Magic, but present. You must select one crafting specialty (Alchemy, Necromancy, or Artificing), one primary spell school, and one secondary spell school (which can be the same as the primary one if you want to double-down.)
- Colour Coded Elements: To make crafting simpler, each element is represented by a colored dot, which is also reflected in the associated school of magic (if any); materials tend to have the colors they're worth when crafting. Death is purple, Elemental is orange, Life is green, and Arcane is blue.
- Combat Medic: Several units and apprentices qualify, especially any with the Healer perk, which allows them to use their magic to heal those around them while still being highly capable of fighting.
- Commonplace Rare: One of the highest-tier alchemy recipes - the most difficult workings an alchemist can undertake, and the most rare to find in the wild - is for... a hardened rock.
- Cool Airship: Airships exist in the game, but the player can also use their wizard tower itself this way, flying it into the air to transport troops and deliver their domain directly to their enemy's doorsteps; with enough upgrades, it can outspeed anything in the game.
- Elite Tweak: Anyone can customize their characters using enchantments or whatever runes and artifacts they find or buy, but creating characters that are much more powerful than just simple, straightforward applications of raw bonuses is the particular specialty of the Artificer, which can produce runes and artifacts at-will and combine them in ways that are stronger than they would be individually.
- Foregone Conclusion: Those who played the original SpellForce know the broad strokes of what happens in this one; none of the Circle members die, and the Circle as a whole survives, but becomes steadily more corrupted by Allfire addiction.
- Gaia's Vengeance: Nature elementals are this embodied. They even have an ability that makes them more dangerous for the rest of the battle every time they see a beast die. More generally, primordial forests will sometimes be enemy spawners and produce stacks that reflect this trope, including the aforementioned nature elementals.
- Geo Effects: Locations often have special effects that they apply to the battlefield, which can benefit one side or the other. And in a few cases entire regions have such effects, such as the constant rain of lava in the Lethal Lava Land making up the south of the map.
- Green Hill Zone: The easiest starting location (and the one recommended to new players) is a lush grassland with easy enemies compared to the rest of the world.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Using a Ration heals 15 health in combat, immediately.
- Item Crafting: Two kinds of crafting focus on this; alchemists largely create consumables, while artificers largely create equipment and runes for more permanent benefits (plus the occasional golem.) The third kind of crafting, Necromancy, mostly creates Artificial Zombie units rather than items.
- Kryptonite Factor: Undead tends to be lethally vulnerable to white damage.
- Life Drain: Some units, like vampires, have the ability to heal themselves by damaging other units in melee; this ability can also be applied to any unit with the right rune or potion.
- Morale Mechanic: Units have Willpower as almost a second kind of health. It can be reduced by events in combat (such as taking too much damage or allies dying) or by certain attacks and status effects (such as by being on fire.) As it drops, a unit deals less damage, and when it hits zero they panic and rout for a turn. It's also used for resistance to Death and White damage and to affect whether someone is susceptible to certain effects, like mind control or enslaving effects.
- Moving Buildings: A major mechanic is that the player can use magic to lift their tower up into the air and fly it around, and can even transport troops on it, effectively using it as a Cool Airship.
- Mutually Exclusive Magic: In crafting, life and death cancel out, so it's impossible to make anything that combines the two. This doesn't affect your spell selection; Death magic can be combined with Guardian or Nature magic just fine.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Since the Circle Mages are not physically present and their power is projected from infrastructure elsewhere, and since they already have parts of the knowledge the player is researching (and can never access the rest), the AI doesn't play by the same rules or advancement mechanics as the player at all. They make some effort to take and hold territory and can consume gathering points, but otherwise their forces advance at a set rate decided by the difficulty rather than by stuff they do.
- Necromancer: Several units and two of your rivals are the masters of the art of death, including Raith, and Hokan, who use dark magic to field armies of undead; and, of course, you can play one if you choose the Necromancy specialization or to a lesser extent the Death school, either of which make you a master of the art of death.
- Place of Power: The Allfire nodes, which come in small and large varieties; claiming them so you can use their power is one of the main goals of the game.
- Player-Exclusive Mechanic: Much of the magic in the game is exclusive to the player; in particular, only they can use consumable items, only they get a flying tower, and so on.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: Due to this being a sequel to SpellForce III focusing on the way the Circle was corrupted by Allfire and changed between that game and the original SpellForce, many playable characters from the third installment return as your rival Circle wizards.
- Spell Book: You recover your masters' spell book at the start of the game, but most of the pages are missing and you can't read most of what you have. Recovering lost pages (or finding new ones) and researching them to uncover spells and power is a major focus of the game.
