Some more information I found on forums: City radius increases at pop 5, 10 and 15 to a max of 3.
There's something else I wonder: for human and monster cities negative food decreases growth, but undead cities use mana. So will they grow slower with negative mana instead?
You can destroy a city from the city screen (except your capital). Looting is automatic when you capture a city.Originally Posted by jnx
not bad if its really what you say it is.
It requires less learning investment than the big dogs of the genre, so it's accessible and easy to digest for most people. Thats a good in my book.
I finally managed to get the demo working properly (rather than just offering me a black screen for minutes at startup) and the game itself seems OK with a few provisos. If you're similarly stuck, delete it, redownload it, start it in Safe Mode, put it into 'Windowed' mode but full desktop size and bob is your mothers brother (it just doesn't like fullscreen on some PCs)
I've never really clicked with MoM/Civ games because they often require you to make good use of long periods of time where NOTHING is happening - this just cuts that out and throws you into the thick of the action from the start and it's almost too-far the other way (unless that's just the demo??)
I was attacked on Turn 2 in my last game - TURN TWO - I'm being tutorialled about how to create buildings and units and laid siege at the same time (often resulting in multiple dialogues and 2 lots of the commentator talking AT THE SAME TIME!!)
Ah yes, the commentator - whoever thought a dodgy Sean Connery impersonator (who occasionally lapses into a Russian account in exactly the same way that Sean Connery did't when PLAYING a Russian) was a good idea - is a berk - it's awful far beyond the MoW stuff (which was, at least, funny).
I had no technical issues with the demo or the released game.
You got it pretty much right trjp. The game is very action heavy, a wargame, and the demo is representative of the full product.
The narrator is a Majesty "thing" and since this game uses the Majesty series' lore... Well. I just turned it off.
I'd say whilst it is action heavy, it's a little unlucky to be attacked on turn 2 unless it's by something weak enough that you don't need to worry about it.
I play these games muted so beyond the first time I've not needed to worry about connery, especially as he pops up speaking whenever you research a spell.
Whilst I very much like the game I do have a few complaints and wishlist features.
- I'd very much like an extra page of advanced options when creating a game for things like automatic/manual captured city conversion and various civ like modes.
- The AI is pretty poor.
- A more deliberate spell research order would be nice.
- More races and leader portraits would improve things a lot but I think they may have shot themselves in the foot with various races as things like elves and dwarfs appear to have special resources to build their units.
So far I've been having a lot of fun with this. But I was incredibly frustrated by some of the lack of diplomacy options, I was fighting a war on 5 fronts the other night and gave up in frustration when I had an enemy mage down to his last three cities but he still had enough mana and money to decimate my armies when by that point I couldn't raise enough money for a single unit.
There needs to be an option to close borders to people and to pay them off to fight each other. As it is I don't see how a human can compete. It's telling though that I'm eager to jump back in and prove myself wrong.
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So you basically want another game. Well, stay away from this one then as it's not what you like.
Yes a few more options to choose would make it another game wat.
What's the point of all the extra food bonuses Monster race gets ? Warlock is a buff stacking contest. You can buy perks with gold. You can spend mana on buff enchantments. You can't do the same with food. You can't summon monsters for food either. Do Monster units consume much more food than humans ?
Don't say "excess food goes into gold". It's not as efficient as getting more gold directly. Humans have the best gold income buildings.
It would appear that the food bonuses encourage using hordes of weak units when playing the Monster race. However, vanilla units are pathetic. The more units you feed, the more gold&mana you need to spend to get them to a decent level.
I won't be surprised if multiplayer reveals Monsters as the weakest race. Humans = extra gold, undead = extra mana, monsters = extra food, and food is the least valuable resource.
I'm pretty sure monster units cost more food and less mana/gold. Means you can save your gold for upgrading instead of upkeep.
I felt like the AI was pretty darn decent, considering how hard AI would be to write for this type of a game. It certainly beat Civ V's AI, if I do say so.The AI is pretty poor.
That said... there are definitely things that I didn't like about this game, but I've only played the preview build so far. I'm hoping to get a chance to play the actual released build a bit more so that I can write a good review of it. However, I will say that the Torchlight 2 beta is currently sucking most of my gaming time away, so I'm not sure how this will go. ;P
I like Warlock though... I think that they did pretty darn well with it... and I enjoy the Ardania universe...
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I found the ai's tactical element good. It would frequently skip round my meatgrinder unit to attack the settlers behind. But the strategic element was a bit lacking. For example I'm pounding on the AI's capital but he's sending troops from his other city to go and attack another mage.
They're a horde race. Cheap units, cheap upkeep and the fastest movement in the game. Also surplus food increases the speed your cities grow IIRC.
So don't bother. The lowest damage you can deal in an attack is 1 point (unless the target is immune to what you're hitting them with). Combat abilities drop with damage taken. The surplus food lets them field more units than anyone else. Classic attrition would work well (particularly against the undead)It would appear that the food bonuses encourage using hordes of weak units when playing the Monster race. However, vanilla units are pathetic. The more units you feed, the more gold&mana you need to spend to get them to a decent level.
I just found out, while reading a thread on another board, that there are spell combos - like Ice Trap followed by Fist of Krom for greatly increased damage. I'm looking forward to see what they do with Warlock with expansions and DLC. Little gem of a game.
The game reportedly has very funny bugs:
1. You can dispel enchantments on your own unit by clicking on enchantment's icon (working as intended).
2. This includes hostile enchantments, like Rooted caused by fighting Demon Wood. (!)
3. You can dispel "Summoned" status effect which summoned units have. Normally, they would disappear after a few turns (typically 3). Once dispelled, the unit becomes permanent (!!). There are units which have timed summons, you can get Great Bears and Skeletons this way.
4. Presumably, you can do #3 by just clicking on "summoned" (!!!)
2 patches have been released so far:
1.1.3.26
* Fixed Unity spell
* Fixed the crash when removing unit's enchant
* Fixed the pathfinder on the cylindrical map
* Fixed the disabling of buildings on city screen
* Fixed the loading of old game saves (for beta-testers only)
* Fixed the appearing of news buttons
* Max number of faction cities was increasedThese guys really have a problem with english and it's not funny. Patch notes come days after a patch release, are skimpy and quite cryptic.1.1.3.27
Updates to Warlock - Master of the Arcane have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:
- Fixed the bug with enchantments staying on an enemy Great Mage upon his/her defeat.
- Dragon Farm now has the correct model.
- The attack of capital cities was improved - damage was increased, attack now have elemental magic damage, and becomes aoe from certain level of a city.
- The attack strength of defence towers was improved.
- The resistances of several units were slightly decreased.
- Appeared the option to switch off the intro movies.
I don't see any vital changes. Capital attack strength is merely a workaround for AI's difficulty in protecting it.
EDIT:
The pattern seems to be "a patch every Friday".
Last edited by b0rsuk; 19-05-2012 at 08:49 AM.
I'm enjoying this much more than I enjoyed Civ 5. I wouldn't argue that it's a better game than Civ 5, but personally, the fantasy setting makes it much more interesting, especially discovering new units and spells. They do need to revamp the whole spell research system which currently makes no sense. The diplomacy options are also very poor. Why is it that if you refuse a demand for gold from the AI, it automatically results in war? And why can't you make counter-offers to proposals from the AI instead of just accepting or refusing?
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