Warlock: Master of the Arcane

[Dog Pants]

Paradox are making what is pretty much Master of Magic for the post-Civ V era. For those who never played MoM, and if the mention of Civ V didn't give it away, Warlock is a turn based 4X game very similar to Civilization, but rather than technology and historical units you have spells and fantasy armies. At a push you could say it's pretty much a Civ V mod, but that would be doing it a great injustice. MoM was, in many ways, more interesting than Civ because of the different races and the tactical opportunities offered by the spells and characteristics of the empire-wielding mages, as well as another sub-map in the form of a very tough underworld dimension. Warlock, then, recreates this almost exactly as far as I can remember, but with modern graphics and hexes. I played the demo tonight which was enough to get involved in some fairly serious border fighting with King Rrat, my Ratman neighbour, as well as founding a couple of cities of my own and conquering a nearby neutral goblin city. Which would have meant I could start building goblin and ratman units to bolster my ranks, although I got something of an impression I might have been able to do that anyway. On top of all this a so far benign island-empire dwelling Lich was hammering King Rrat from the seas and summoning spectral wyverns.

I've been watching this game for some time, as I enjoyed Civ V and loved Master of Magic. I was hoping that this would combine the best of the two, and aside from a minor reservation about race being dependent on buildings rather than population I have to admit the demo sold me. The mere fact that there is a demo is worthy of praise. I'm pre-ordering it on the strength of what I've played, and if you've enjoyed Civ and/or MoM then I'd suggest you download the demo and have a look for yourself.

[shot2bits]

ill have to give this a gander, i picked up MoM on GoG after they where giving MoO (so many acronyms ) away for free, ive been hoping for a modern homage as no other 4x games seem to come close to the sheer amount of stuff™ and depth as in the Masters Of games without being cumbersome and brokenly unbalanced so hopefully this does the job

[Dog Pants]

Comments on RPS made me realise something else; it's not as complicated as Civ V. This means that despite looking very much like it, it's actually only similar in the basic mechanics, gameplay wise. The difference means that waging war becomes a lot more viable as you're not gimping your economy or research as much. It makes it more of a grand wargame than the more civic Civ.

[FatherJack]

Sounds interesting, but I like everything about Civ except the basic mechanics. I don't dislike them, but it's very slow to get started.

[Dog Pants]

£10 on Zavvi

[Joose]

Won my first game the other day, which was nice. It does rather turn into a steamrolling act by the last dude though. He had a couple of high end spell casting types, but I was spitting out undead dragons and flying boats every single turn. I was only playing on normal though, so it might be more of a challenge on a higher level.

[Dog Pants]

I've pretty much beaten down every other empire in my world for threatening me. The priestess type is still kicking about in the south but since she hasn't threatened me I'm ignoring her. It would be interesting to see some diplomacy options in the future. What I am doing though, aside from mopping up the roaming monsters, is preparing to enter a portal. They've been steadily disgorging nasties like dragons for some time now, and the first expedition I sent in - an army which was previously ravaging empires, was expelled again in a rout. So I'm amassing many more troops, resurrecting the high level units I lost the first time round, and preparing to go in again. This time I'm dropping a tactical nuke in the form of an armageddon spell before I land.

[Dog Pants]

Finally finished my first game after something like 30 hours. I deliberately dragged it out so I could experience the end game stuff, otherwise I would have trampled my way to a military victory about 10 hours ago. In the end I accidentally won by capturing every holy ground, which gave me a surprise Archon victory - I was elevated to god status among my people. I could have also cast the 'win game' spell (the equivalent of a science victory in Civ). I need a few more games to work on my tactics, but I've made some observations:

Unit bonuses and experience are powerful. For most of the game I preferred to churn out units and ignore the upgrades, until I noticed that I had one flying galleon which I'd upgraded to the hilt then buffed with a spell, which was one-shotting dragons. The upgrades, spell buffs and experience perks give units a hefty bonus, so next time I'll be concentrating on keeping a smaller number of units as advanced as I can. Keeping them alive is also important - you can resurrect them with a later game spell at your capital, but they lose and experience perks. Since they retain their level it takes a lot longer for them to level again and recover them. If you can afford to replace the upgrades it's probably worth leaving them dead and replacing them with fresh units which will level much faster, painful as it may be.

Positioning isn't really important with cities. The strategic resources are key, but the terrain type is unimportant. Any building not specific to a strategic resource can be built on any normal hex, including lava fields. Ocean tiles are only useful for harbours and fishing villages though, and otherwise cramp your expansion space.

Other worlds seem to exist in difficulty tiers. One is hard, one is fucking hard, and one is nearly impossible. If you want to take one on find the weaker one and be prepared to lose a lot of experienced units. Making a beachhead on the other plane is the most difficult part, and it's akin to Omaha beach. You just have to keep piling in units and beat them back by attrition. Note that if the receiving end of the portal is blocked units will appear on a nearby free hex, but if the sending end is blocked you can't enter. A mistake I made a few times is retreating a damaged unit back through the portal and blocking the reinforcements entering at the other end. Better to clear a little space and rest - it restores a good amount of health instantly. A tactic I also used is to buff my mage with clear mind (increases casting speed) and spam the Armageddon spell - basically a magic nuke which can be dropped anywhere, regardless of plane or whether you've uncovered the tiles. Hammering the landing zone with one of those every other turn will kill a fair number of weaker units and cause the stronger ones to retreat. It can be worth invading, as some resources (like nests to build the awesome Golden Dragons) can only be found through portals, but at normal difficulty if you have the armies to invade another world you've probably already beaten your opponents.

If you're wooing gods be aware of which settlers you're sending to control the holy grounds. Each race can only build certain temples.

I really enjoyed the game and I'm looking forward to playing a game to win this time, rather than grinding it out to explore everything.

[shot2bits]

this appears to now have multiplayer, would anyone be interested in giving it a go?

[Dog Pants]

Absolutely. I think it could have a lot more longetivity in MP given its lack of depth compared to Civ (a little unfairly - it isn't meant to be Civ).

[Dog Pants]

Bits and I had a small multiplayer game of this last night and it all went pretty smoothly. For a start, unlike almost everything we tried to play on friday, it all worked flawlessly. We played a small map with us and an easy AI. Bits started on an island, I started on a small continent with the other Warlock and two indies. As Bits was starting to get off his island I was giving the AI a kicking (he declared war on me, as every AI will do). I took out one of the indies and was using my large army to grind down a fire elemental on my southern peninsula. I should have realised Bits had an ulterior motive to encouraging me to send my who army after it, but I didn't and he launched a sneak attack, landing an army of skeletons and flying galleons. I got the vanguard of my army back to the besieged city (the AI's old capital) just before it was captured and drove him off, crossing the sea soon afterwards to roll up his two cities. It all played fairly quickly and smoothly, but it's a shame they didn't use some form of simultaneous turn based system like Civ because I expect Bits was sat twiddling his thumbs quite a bit while I was manoeuvring my goblin hordes. Certainly worth playing again though.