Warlock - Master of the Arcane Catch All

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Couldn't find a thread for this game, and a demo for it just came out. So let's make one

IMAGE(http://www.gamershell.com/static/streaming/41242/41242_medium.jpg)
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/warlock-master-of-the-arcane

About the Game
The latest game in the popular Majesty series, Warlock: Master of the Arcane introduces turned-based strategy and global conquest to the fantastic world of Ardania. In a time of chaotic upheaval, the player takes the role of a great mage, a warlord vying for ultimate power. Your mission is to build an empire, expand your borders, research new spells and conquer your enemies. Become the ultimate Warlock and rule over all of Ardania!

I just played the demo and was really surprised by it. Anyone disappointed by elemental war of magic should be pretty happy with this one. Basically if you like civ or better master of magic, you're probable gonna like this. The demo was a lot of fun but their is a turn limit, so your not gonna play a full game. I really recommend trying the demo, I've really heard nothing about this before so it's a real pleasant surprise.

*First catch all sort of thread for me, tell me if I should change anything or if I'm not supposed to do this yet.

Good idea, I was just going to do this myself.
Grabbing the demo now from Steam.

Can't wait to give this a shot.

Tried the demo, I really like it. It's quite polished, with lots of spells and a lot of the bestiary and tech from Majesty. The AI seemed reasonably intelligent too, for what limited paces I put it through. It knew when to retreat, and how to use combined forces and spells effectively.

I'm definitely getting the full game.

Yeah the ai was better then I thought, they would seek out my archers if I didn't protect them. Although I wish units had a zone of control or something. It seemed to easy for them to run around my troops and hit my archers. Also they have the same announcer as the majesty series and he's starting to annoy me. Really good otherwise. Just read that multi-player will be added in but after it's released.

This is less relevant now that the demo is out, but Total Biscuit did a nice WTF for W:MotA (wamota?).

Yeah the ai was better then I thought, they would seek out my archers if I didn't protect them. Although I wish units had a zone of control or something.

Yes, a pity there is no ZOC, like in Wesnoth for example. Also the game is a bit more simple in the strategic part and magic, comparing it to the closest matches, Civ and Mom, still seems to be fun and hopefully modable

Hot damn! I am so very, very sold!

Downloaded the demo and had just enough time to load it up, gaze lovingly at the map, and listen to the first Sean Conneryesque tip voiceover before I had to shut down and head to work. I'm intrigued though, especially considering the $20 pricepoint.

I played through the demo twice this morning, then pre-ordered it. Man, I hope the release code is in as good a shape as the demo.

Civ 5 + MoM - yeah it is pretty much that, which is totally awesome. Except the AI *seems* to be pretty darn good: units retreat when needed, are good about trying to get to your ranged units, *seem* to protect their own ranged unit, and in my last game, I had one of the AI opponents stab me in the back at the worst possible time.

I really cannot wait for May 8 to get here! If you like Civ and/or MoM, you really should try the demo. The looks to be exactly what I was hoping for Elemental to have been.

Pleasantly surprised by the quality here, and especially the price point. The demo has me sold, but considering it's Paradox (not always bad, I know), I might wait a couple days after release to hear about its initial polish.

Oh, and demos should have saves, dammit. :\ Hate leaving games running in the background.

cyrax wrote:

Oh, and demos should have saves, dammit. : Hate leaving games running in the background.

Agreed. I lost out on at least an hour of demo time by leaving the game idling (didn't know the demo was timed when I did it).

That's a minor complaint though. I was very impressed by the game, and for just $20 I'm quite likely to buy it. Now I'm really glad I didn't buy Civ5.

This Ardania setting is really taking off. It started with Majesty, then a tower defence and now this. Did I miss one?

Tamren wrote:

This Ardania setting is really taking off. It started with Majesty, then a tower defence and now this. Did I miss one?

That explains the Sean Connery impersonating voice actor. When I heard him my first thought was "Did they hire the guy from Majesty to do the same voice?"

Looked it up and yes, totally the same guy.

I like it! That said, I think I'll wait for release to see what kind of shape it's in. Balance is big potential issue IMO so it will be interesting to see how it all comes out. Also, it seemed a bit shallow to me for a "grand" strategy game; the only strategy that I see in the demo is ICS followed by a war of attrition. The spells seemed kind of lackluster. The pre-order bonus of "uber" units makes me wonder a bit if the game is going to be DLC'd to death.

But, the AI seemed pretty good and I had fun for the couple hours I played. The big question in my mind is, will it have any staying power?

Vsync would also be very nice.

syndicatedragon wrote:

I like it! That said, I think I'll wait for release to see what kind of shape it's in. Balance is big potential issue IMO so it will be interesting to see how it all comes out. Also, it seemed a bit shallow to me for a "grand" strategy game; the only strategy that I see in the demo is ICS followed by a war of attrition. The spells seemed kind of lackluster. The pre-order bonus of "uber" units makes me wonder a bit if the game is going to be DLC'd to death.

But, the AI seemed pretty good and I had fun for the couple hours I played. The big question in my mind is, will it have any staying power?

Vsync would also be very nice. :)

The demo seems really limited in what you can do. I think there will be more strategies than just a war of attrition in the final game.

Warlock Website wrote:

Victory Conditions

There are several ways to gain victory:

Defeat all the other Great mages.
Seize all the Holy Grounds – your mage will become the only priest of the Conclave.
Cast the great “Unity” spell – the highest spell in the game, and very difficult to research. By doing this, your mage commands all of the magical powers in the world of Ardania.
Defeat a god’s avatar. An avatar will appear in the world to attack any Great Mage who reaches a “hated” reputation status with any god.

I have not seen anything about how they might control building tons and tons of cities.

What was lackluster about the spells? Their originality? Or their effects?

As long as they follow the Paradox model of adding new features to the game via patches (not certain, Paradox is not the dev on this), they can DLC all they want to for all I care.

syndicatedragon wrote:

Also, it seemed a bit shallow to me for a "grand" strategy game

I don't exactly know what you mean by "grand," but for a demo of a $20 game, what I saw and played seemed promising.

Civ isn't a grand strategy game and I don't think this aspires to be one either. Looks vey much like a Civ V - inspired 4X game.

This is looking great, I've preordered it. It almost looks a little too like Civ V, it almost looks like a mod. But then if they're going to imitate a game, then they picked the right one!

Redwing wrote:

This is looking great, I've preordered it. It almost looks a little too like Civ V, it almost looks like a mod. But then if they're going to imitate a game, then they picked the right one!

The overall look is similar, but I really like their art style - particularly the donkeys. It feels quite different, too.

I actually prefer its pacing to that of Civ V. In general, units seem to move farther and heal faster, speeding up the feel of the game IMO.

I wish I knew what difficulty level the demo is though. The earth elementals and vampires seem to wholly outclass my units. I told a friend they seem like later-game units that I'm fighting with starting units.

D-Man777 wrote:

I wish I knew what difficulty level the demo is though. The earth elementals and vampires seem to wholly outclass my units. I told a friend they seem like later-game units that I'm fighting with starting units.

Odd, one or two warriors with a little healing support rip up the strength 14 elementals, and can stand toe to toe with the 18s, on this side of the portal. Pushing through a portal definitely hurt, a lot. Vampires just required a bit of zerg, hitting them with 2 warriors and 2 hunters and some spell damage & healing, preferably near a city or mage tower for firesupport, they went down fast.

Look into unit upgrades. Smithy or forge, to buy some armor, silversmith to get some weapons. Using stock units, well, then you are fighting with starting units.

Had a slightly surreal conversation with Civ V lead Jon Shafer last night on the show about this game. That'll go up on Wednesday.

I dig the game, though. It's clean, easy to understand and interesting.

Those unit formations looks like Kohan (the good 1st one not the generic rts sequel)

tboon wrote:

The demo seems really limited in what you can do. I think there will be more strategies than just a war of attrition in the final game.

Warlock Website wrote:

Victory Conditions

There are several ways to gain victory:

Defeat all the other Great mages.
Seize all the Holy Grounds – your mage will become the only priest of the Conclave.
Cast the great “Unity” spell – the highest spell in the game, and very difficult to research. By doing this, your mage commands all of the magical powers in the world of Ardania.
Defeat a god’s avatar. An avatar will appear in the world to attack any Great Mage who reaches a “hated” reputation status with any god.

I have not seen anything about how they might control building tons and tons of cities.

That's a big part of my concern about it being "shallow". In other 4x type games, there is a generally some kind of checks/balances on expansion. With the demo, there's no reason not to keep building cities until you run out of space.

What was lackluster about the spells? Their originality? Or their effects?

The spells I saw were things like "light heal", "heal", "small fireball", "big fireball" - I didn't see anything that made me go "Wow, I gotta try that!". There were a few summons that were a little more interesting, but they seemed pretty expensive compared to just building units. Most of MoM's spells seemed to be more interesting than that. Also, there was MoM's book/spell specialization aspect; it didn't seem like this game had anything like that?

It didn't seem like units had any really interesting special abilities beyond flying and extra damage types. Perhaps the full game will reveal more.

As long as they follow the Paradox model of adding new features to the game via patches (not certain, Paradox is not the dev on this), they can DLC all they want to for all I care. :)

Since the developer doesn't seem to have a track record good or bad, I'm just hoping they support it period. All in all, it may be worth a look at $20, but I'd still like to know more about how the "real" game plays out.

I downloaded the demo today and gave it a go.

I had issues starting the demo (black screen) but a verify cache follwed by a reboot sorted out whatever was causing the problem.

I certainly enjoyed the demo enough for a pre-order.

Just a few comments:

- no tactical combat. It really is like Civ 5 in that respect, though putting units behind ranged behind melee seems to work well.
- buildings are OK, but there's little guidance
o what population limit determines when you can build? City size?
o what determines population growth?
o some buildings don't seem to work - I built a forge but none of my units gained the perk that came with the building
- not sure what determines region growth or how you can influence which hexes are chosen
- like the unit experience mechanic
- no way of directing spell research other than picking one of 5. It does seem that each of the five spells delve deeper into to tree, but at one point I had two similar heal spells available to research.
- I like the one building/hex mechanic. Stops city spamming as you need the real estate for your buildings. Also allows for strategic positioning of towers, which become pretty powerful.

Looking forward to seeing the full game, as well as the mod options. Some cool map scripts would be a good start....

Moggy wrote:

- buildings are OK, but there's little guidance
o what population limit determines when you can build? City size?

Not sure, I hope this is documented in the manual. I couldn't find anything on the Paradox forums about this.

Moggy wrote:

o what determines population growth?

Excess food. More food seems to mean faster growth, less food slower growth, negative food means population decline.

Moggy wrote:

o some buildings don't seem to work - I built a forge but none of my units gained the perk that came with the building

New units should gain the perk; existing units have to be upgraded which costs money (depends on the upgrade).

Moggy wrote:

- not sure what determines region growth or how you can influence which hexes are chosen

It's just a circle around the city, you cannot influence which hexes you get, you get'em all. But I don't know what the tiers are that determine when a city grows.

Moggy wrote:

- no way of directing spell research other than picking one of 5. It does seem that each of the five spells delve deeper into to tree, but at one point I had two similar heal spells available to research.

I think the spells are randomly determined but no one who wasn't in the beta knows how this works, and they ain't talking.

Moggy wrote:

- I like the one building/hex mechanic. Stops city spamming as you need the real estate for your buildings. Also allows for strategic positioning of towers, which become pretty powerful.

Yeah towers are pretty cool.

cyrax wrote:

Those two are delightfully geeky. Quite enjoyed their commentary.

As a palate cleanser from that last post:

Ten hours to release...

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