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

[frightlever]

Any advice on vampires?

[b0rsuk]

That's pretty much it. Plane 1 is hellish, plane 2 is nature and so and so. Some units you may recognize from the factions, others not. Even though I could not venture much in the planes because they're hard as fuck (even to get in) what I saw was mostly high level creeps for leveling up and getting a couple of tile-perks.

So planes are always in the same order ? You could refer to them as plane0, plane1, plane2 with no confusion ?
plane0->plane1->plane2...

Or is the normal plane more like a hub, with entrances to different planes ?

[Vexing Vision]

Any advice on vampires?

Outdamage them. Their ranged attack seems death-based, so level 3 units with the resistance perk work extremely well. Two archers and a troupe of level 3 warriors (which you need to clear that corner anyway) and you're set.

[Feldspar]

The random spell choice was a bit disconcerting, it would have been nice to have some sort of leaning towards a certain 'school' or area, and there seeming to be no progression in terms of small X spell -> medium X spell -> big X spell -> game winning X spell, but with full game promising gods I'll wait and see.

Bought it anyway.

[b0rsuk]

How is the spell variety ? MoM in particular had lots of creative, or even visionary spells. You could permanently turn a unit into werewolves, stop time, make your city a flying fortress*, cast Zombie Mastery to cause slain enemies to raise as zombies, cause meteors storms outside your cities, change terrain, transmute one special resource tile into another, build permanent walls with a spell, warp to another plane, enchant your city with Wall of Darkness or Wall of Fire, call the void to destroy thousands of population and multiple buildings...

* this one never actually worked and got removed in a patch

All spells I observed in Warlock gameplay videos were either summons, or direct damage, or simple stat bonuses.

Does terrain affect anything besides movement and bonus from "cover specialist" ? Are there abilities like mountainwalk ?

[pakoito]

Any advice on vampires?

Pick Undead next time :D

So planes are always in the same order ? You could refer to them as plane0, plane1, plane2 with no confusion ?
plane0->plane1->plane2...

Or is the normal plane more like a hub, with entrances to different planes ?

IIRC yes.

How is the spell variety ?

Very poor, don't expect anything special. They do have waterwalking though, which is supercool :D

[b0rsuk]

Very poor, don't expect anything special. They do have waterwalking though, which is supercool :D

Warlock: Mashter of the Mundane

[pakoito]

Warlock: Mashter of the Mundane

Warlock: Masters of the more or less balanced fighting spell roster.

[trjp]

I desperately wanted to like this but several issues spoiled the demo.

1 - I thought it wasn't working at all, but it actually takes about 2 mins from launch to the Paradox logo on my PC (it's Paradox - not a surprise that!!)

2 - once playing it makes almost zero effort to tell me 'what the hell to do'.

I've never clicked with a Civ/MoM style game before because I've never really understood how to approach them. I realise there's a lot to grasp but SOME clues would be nice.

I realise Paradox basically leech other genres for free custom without needing to be creative or innovative or even finish a game before releasing it - but cmon fellas, a demo needs to do more than just say "here - toys - play and shut up".

[pakoito]

This is a city. Cities grow with food or mana. Your cities get 1 building per growth level. Different buildings give different benefits, so mix and max them. Try to keep your food/money/mana economy stable while producing as many units as possible. Move units to enemy tiles to attack them. Play strategically and win. Magic: select one research, wait for it to finish and use. Select you spell, wait for it to be charged and select a target.

Then there are numbers and calculations on attacks and perks and whatnot but you don't need to understand much than the higher the better. For realsies.

[b0rsuk]

It looks like a flying unit and a land unit can't coexist on the same hex. What a shame. Fantasy General managed that without trouble, and it was a 2D game. I foresee MoM-like tactics where you block a bottleneck with a flying unit and melee units can neither walk through nor attack.

[apricotsoup]

Very much enjoyed the demo, I think I'd prefer it if captured cities had to be converted to your own race to continue production to keep races a little more varied. Don't know if there's an option for that but I doubt it somehow.

I'm also quite unsure on the random spell research, definitely more of a fan of being able to plan spells out a little more.

But it seems like good fun and I hope for a few extra dlc races to bolster the few that are in.

Also donkeys are the best resource ever.

[Vexing Vision]

2 - once playing it makes almost zero effort to tell me 'what the hell to do'.

Okay, this I just have to disagree with. Wow does Warlock go out of its way to tell you what to do. Forgot to move a unit all the way to the max of it's movement value? It'll tell you to and zooms in. Forgot that there's an enemy in range of your defenses? Yep, an icon and a pop-up. Oh, you met someone knew? Click here to declare war or Non-Aggression pronto.

The interface is amazingly streamlined. Just three things I'd love to add, UI-wise:

1) Rightclick should get me out of information and city view. Hitting Esc or hunting for that little "close city view" button is counter-intuitive.
2) I'd love to left-click to select, right-click to execute an order, not left-click to select and execute. This confused me.
3) More tooltips for resources!

Pre-ordered. No doubt.

[pakoito]

2) I'd love to left-click to select, right-click to execute an order, not left-click to select and execute. This confused me.

This was given a lot of talk during development. I don't know the final state but it was definitely improved since first version.