Warlock : Master of the Arcane (Demo Out, It's Awesome)

[R-F]

Demo on Steam
TotalBiscuit Talking About It In His Horribly Annoying Fake Voice

It's basically a Master of Magic mod for Civ5. It's very Eastern European (think Stalker, Witcher, Mount & Blade etc) in production quality (animations aren't the best, still smooth, just stuff like units will run back to their space before moving into another space if they win a fight), but it's probably the best budget (£15) game that I've seen in a long time, probably since Magicka.

The mechanics are close to spot on. You really have to specialise your cities in order to get the most out of them (as an example, you CAN buy any upgrade you have anywhere in your empire, but it'll cost you gold, if you produce a unit in the city making the upgrade, you automatically get all the upgrades), the magic seems very fun and the neutral monsters are constantly harrassing you. Not yet got to play around with the mage maker (which isn't in the demo, only in the full game :(), but it all seems solid.

About the only thing that worries me is magic research, which I think is completely randomised and thus a bit silly.

Anyone else played it? Impressions?

[jnx]

Played it this morning. It's not like I'd had any doubts about buying this game, but the demo certainly sold it well. I had thought about saving it to post-diablo3 era but I can't wait. Instabuy.

[b0rsuk]

Demo ? Sold ???

[R-F]

Demo ? Sold ???

wat

/10char

[NathanH]

Cool, I've been looking forward to giving this a go.

[pakoito]

I am not sure if NDA still applies, but ask me any doubt ;)

[R-F]

I am not sure if NDA still applies, but ask me any doubt ;)

Fairly certain it doesn't judging by the conversations going on in the game's main forum.

Does each of the five spell slots take a different path or is it COMPLETELY randomised?

[b0rsuk]

Nevermind, I misread and panicked.

It looks very promising, much better than expected. Nitpicks:
- the interface looks too modern for a medievalish game. Perfect, even, shining menus and buttons. It looks like a keyboard or something.
- I'm not a fan of excessive unit leveling

[pakoito]

Fairly certain it doesn't judging by the conversations going on in the game's main forum.

Does each of the five spell slots take a different path or is it COMPLETELY randomised?

I have not played the march-april builds because...life...so some info may not be up to date. AFAIK they revamped the spellcasting time system, before you had a bar and each spell took 75%-500% of the bar to charge but you were restricted to 1 spell per turn, I think they added casting speed perks that allow you to cast twice per turn if bar allows to, or slower spells to take less that 5 turns to charge.

Spell paths are completely randomized except a couple of updates like Lesser Fireball -> Fireball -> Firestorm, so you strat has to be modified according to your spellset. If you have undead and get Construct early it is an easy win. Some other combos are powerful too, like overbuffing one unit and so. A game is long enough for you to get most spells, tho.

[agentorange]

Thanks for the notice, been looking forward to this game since I saw a video for it. Always on the lookout for a game that can measure up to Master of Magic.

[trjp]

The fact the demo doesn't actually work for me (I get a black screen and nothing else in normal and safe modes) suggests this is definately a Paradox release.

You're faintly mad if you buy their shit at launch or anywhere near it anyway - it will be bug-ridden and nasty.

As someone on the Steam forums put it

"Hopefully it will be fixed by the time the Christmas Sale comes around"...

[R-F]

The fact the demo doesn't actually work for me (I get a black screen and nothing else in normal and safe modes) suggests this is definately a Paradox release.

You're faintly mad if you buy their shit at launch or anywhere near it anyway - it will be bug-ridden and nasty.

As someone on the Steam forums put it

"Hopefully it will be fixed by the time the Christmas Sale comes around"...

There don't seem to be any major bugs, in the demo at least.

And I've found Paradox's in-house games are, at least, getting better at not being broken. Crusader Kings 2 was basically perfect, as an example.

[NathanH]

I like it. It seems like there is always something to do every turn right from the start. I like that you can only build a building for each population point, that seems to make things interesting.

[Duckee]

I enjoyed the demo tremendously and had no bugs. I might be forced to buy it.

Also for the record Crusader Kings 2 had no game breaking bugs at launch. It is buggy now though :(

[pakoito]

Thanks for the notice, been looking forward to this game since I saw a video for it. Always on the lookout for a game that can measure up to Master of Magic.

Rise from Erebus, a modmod for Civ IV ;) Warlock is more simple and direct, RifE is MoM with some economy thrown in, Dominions 3 is a superset of MoM.

Disclaimer: I have never played MoM and it's on my weekend's checklist.

[icupnimpn2]

I like it. It seems like there is always something to do every turn right from the start. I like that you can only build a building for each population point, that seems to make things interesting.

Only messed with it for about an hour, but I didn't pick up on how population growth worked (keep in mind I'm not really a Civ player). I just know there were cool buildings I wanted to make but couldn't because my population wasn't large enough. I had no idea how to tell when to expect that it would be large enough, or what I could to to accelerate population growth.

Did like how you could come across resources like minotaur caves and that would give you the choice of a few different building types, like either build a labyrinth or recruit minotaurs.

Also really liked the spell I learned for persistent unit summoning. Helped to speed up conquest a bit.

Might like this better than regular Civ. Have Civ V in the back catalog from a sale and haven't run it yet...

[NathanH]

I haven't worked out how exactly city growth works either yet. Since most other things are like MoM I'd assume it's determined by the surrounding terrain and the city race. The city size indicator fills up with green as the city gets close to receiving another population point, so you can see how long it's going to take by how large a green wedge is added every turn.

[R-F]

Rise from Erebus, a modmod for Civ IV ;) Warlock is more simple and direct, RifE is MoM with some economy thrown in, Dominions 3 is a superset of MoM.

Disclaimer: I have never played MoM and it's on my weekend's checklist.

I'd hardly say it's more direct.

You have the shit like the Other Worlds and stuff, which allow you to explore entire other planes of existence.

Only messed with it for about an hour, but I didn't pick up on how population growth worked (keep in mind I'm not really a Civ player). I just know there were cool buildings I wanted to make but couldn't because my population wasn't large enough. I had no idea how to tell when to expect that it would be large enough, or what I could to to accelerate population growth.

Trust me, I'm as lost as you are on this, and I'm a long-time 4x player.

I think it MIGHT be your total food production divided by your amount of cities, but I don't know city levelling times or anything along those lines.

[b0rsuk]

Also, it's dishonest to say Dominions 3 is a superset of MoM. I can think of a few things more sophisticated in MoM:
- the other plane, Myrror
- Diplomacy. Spell trade, pacts.
- much more stuff to build
- much more relevant normal units
- terrain changing spells, more granularity to this. In Dom3 you can only really change population.
- special resources (Mithril, Adamantium) to mine.
- naval units (not that it matters much because AI can't use them)
- tactical combat (pros and cons - tactical combat greatly increases micromanagement and makes simulataneous turns impossible)
- exploration. Dominions 3 has site searching instead.

Dominions 3 is a wargame at its core. Takes inspiration from MoM, but still a a wargame. MoM has a much slower pace and it's more about building and exploration.

[Feldspar]

Played the demo and quite enjoyed it, although I never really got that far (too much trying to play it like Civ, I guess), at 15 squids on Steam I might actually purchase it pre-release. The way badly damage enemy units run off shows a bit of savvy thinking, but I know that's going to annoy me in the long run.