Warlock - Master of the Arcane Catch All

Michael wrote:
Crockpot wrote:

How the heck did I miss this game? It looks amazing. I'll have to download the demo today.

It was recently on sale for $10, too, so if you can wait until the Steam Summer Sale it should probably get that low again. Though $20 is still a darn good price.

Right now Skyrim has all my video game time then Civ V G&K is up next. So I'm in no rush in buying it, so I'll have to watch the summer sale. I'm guessing that's next week. Was it around the same time last year?

Yeah, around the week of the Fourth or so.

This game is super fun but not super well balanced, especially with only pretty brain dead (read non-aggro) AI.

I checked "Wamota" for a buddy. Amazon's page says it requires Steam for activation. Can't speak for the other titles.

Crockpot wrote:
Michael wrote:
Crockpot wrote:

How the heck did I miss this game? It looks amazing. I'll have to download the demo today.

It was recently on sale for $10, too, so if you can wait until the Steam Summer Sale it should probably get that low again. Though $20 is still a darn good price.

Right now Skyrim has all my video game time then Civ V G&K is up next. So I'm in no rush in buying it, so I'll have to watch the summer sale. I'm guessing that's next week. Was it around the same time last year?

You can get Warlock: Master of the Arcane in a bundle on Amazon right now for $7.49 and you also get Majesty Gold, Majesty 2 Collection, Crusader Kings II: Songs of the Holy Land DLC, Crusader Kings II: Songs of Faith DLC Crusader Kings II: Songs of Albion DLC Crusader Kings II: Ruler Designer DLC Crusader Kings II: Mongols DLC Pack Crusader Kings II: Dynasty Shields DLC Pack.

I've read that the codes are all steam friendly, but can't say from experience if that's true.

*edit*
Yep, steam friendly.

The Amazon bundle is US customers only! Are you freaking kidding me?!

Oh, and there are other bundles that include WAMOTA, just not for Tamren.

WA MO TA !!!

[size=8](I have nothing to contribute, I just wanted to say WAMOTA.)[/size]

Woot! clever id gave me the codes from the amazon bundle pack as a pre-sale present. Thanks a ton!

I regret buying this game. The braindead AI in this game makes Civ5's AI look like Sun Tzu or something. It's a shame, because otherwise I think there's some interesting stuff in it.

Wamota is currently a flash sale ($6.79) for a little over 5 hours more. Get it for yourself or hook up your friends.

Thought I'd put this here to enable those who want the game. Multiplayer will be added sometime this week

Here are the notes

Patch Notes 1.2 - Patch is waiting for multilingual translation and should be uploaded to Steam this week.

Multiplayer and Diplomacy
• Players can now play Multiplayer games! (Steam is required).
• New Diplomacy system in Multiplayer and Single play: Now when a player sends a proposal to rival Mage it will be delivered on the beginning of his/her turn. You will receive an answer on your subsequent turn. The Diplomacy Screen was modified accordingly. Also a player will never know for sure if his\her proposal would or would not be accepted - there will be seen only a prediction of it before the message is sent.

"Lords and Artifacts"
• Mighty Lords come to your service! They can learn faster than normal units and receive many powerful abilities as they progress through level-ups. You can hire these heroes as they come occasionally searching for job, find them in monster layers or even receive them as quest reward.
• Lords can use powerful Artifacts which could be found in monster dens, received as quests rewards, gained and lost during battles, bought from Trader of Artifacts or smelted to mana.

Bug Fixes and Improvements
• A player may turn on/off Victory Conditions on the Game Start.
• Mages, Veterans and Halberdies got new skills. Mages can learn to cast fireballs and Veterans now have ZoneOfControl perk.
• New actions for Galleons units of humans and mosters
• Implemented a News message when you successfully research a new spell.
• Implemented a News message when any of the Great Mages controls a certain percentage of Holy Grounds.
• The Unity Spell cannot be counterspelled anymore, but its casting time was made longer. Also starting to cast a Unity spell worsens relations with all Great Mages.
• A Message "A Great Mage is Defeated" now looks better.
• AI now uses Dispels smarter and more aggressively.
• Teleportation spells casting interface logic is more intuitive: now you can select a spell, then a target unit, and then a hex to move.
• Fixed an issue: an enchantment cast on a unit in transport ship is now shown properly on unit when it disembarks.
• Game loading has become faster.
• Great Mages now think 10-15% faster.
• Settlers do not receive experience points any more.
• Fixed an issue when a player could remove a "self-destruct" perk from units summoned by other units.
• Fixed a crash on clicking on a News message about a new unit if the city was destroyed.
• Fixed an issue with the unit's experience when a unit is upgraded twice the same turn.
• Fixed an issue with game camera position at the game start.
• Fixed an issue when unit movement points and "cooldown" timers could be higher than their current maximum.
• Fixed some issues with duplicating perks.
• Fixed a rare crash when a player disbands his unit.

Lords and artifacts look interesting. Probably worth firing another game up for.

Damn, I'll be able to start lording? Will warlock finally break the grip LoL holds on me?

Awesome changes. Anyword if multiplayer will be/support PBEM?

oMonarca wrote:

Awesome changes.

oMonarca wrote:

Anyword if multiplayer will be/support PBEM?

I sure hope so.

From what I've read, it's online (Steamworks) only.

New 300MB patch being downloaded today. What's the dealio?

Can someone fill me in, since I'm purposefully keeping away from sites with in-depth info about Warlock?

From steam:

Patch Notes 1.2

Multiplayer and Diplomacy
• Players can now play Multiplayer games! (Steam is required).
• New Diplomacy system in Multiplayer and Single play: Now when a player sends a proposal to rival Mage it will be delivered on the beginning of his/her turn. You will receive an answer on your subsequent turn. The Diplomacy Screen was modified accordingly. Also a player will never know for sure if his\her proposal would or would not be accepted - there will be seen only a prediction of it before the message is sent.
• Changed diplomacy effect of relations with gods
• Behavior of AI Mages improved with personalities and new factors

"Lords and Artifacts"
• Mighty Lords come to your service! They can learn faster than normal units and receive many powerful abilities as they progress through level-ups. You can hire these heroes as they come occasionally searching for job, find them in monster layers or even receive them as quest reward.
• Lords can use powerful Artifacts which could be found in monster dens, received as quests rewards, gained and lost during battles, bought from Trader of Artifacts or smelted to mana.

Bug Fixes and Improvements
• A player may turn on/off Victory Conditions on the Game Start.
• Player can now destroy his buildings from city interface
• Mages, Veterans and Halberdies got new skills. Mages can learn to cast fireballs and Veterans now have ZoneOfControl perk.
• New actions for Galleons units of humans and mosters
• Implemented a News message when you successfully research a new spell.
• Implemented a News message when any of the Great Mages controls a certain percentage of Holy Grounds.
• The Unity Spell cannot be counterspelled anymore, but its casting time was made longer. Also starting to cast a Unity spell worsens relations with all Great Mages.
• A Message "A Great Mage is Defeated" now looks better.
• AI now uses Dispels smarter and more aggressively.
• Teleportation spells casting interface logic is more intuitive:
now you can select a spell, then a target unit, and then a hex to move.
• Fixed an issue: an enchantment cast on a unit in transport ship is now shown properly on unit when it disembarks.
• Game loading has become faster.
• Great Mages now think 10-15% faster.
• Settlers do not receive experience points any more.
• Fixed an issue when a player could remove a "self-destruct" perk from units summoned by other units.
• Fixed a crash on clicking on a News message about a new unit if the city was destroyed.
• Fixed an issue with the unit's experience when a unit is upgraded twice the same turn.
• Fixed an issue with game camera position at the game start.
• Fixed an issue when unit movement points and "cooldown" timers could be higher than their current maximum.
• Fixed some issues with duplicating perks.
• Fixed a rare crash when a player disbands his unit.
• Fixed bug with flying units teleportation on water hexes

Known issues
• Sometimes you cannot enter text - fixes with restarting game from menu
• Disconnect not always works well

Oh, there they are. The Lords!

Thanks for the info. I thought the patch notes would show up on the game's detailed view, but I actually had to click "View News" to reach them.

Picked up the DLC for this and tried it out last night for the first time. Having played Civ and MoM in the past I understand the basics. But this new version is hard to get into.

- How should I be spacing my cities? My first instinct was to spread them out so that they don't overlap. But then I realized that even if a city has an influence radius of 2 at population 5. It would need to be population 18 to be able to fill that many tiles with buildings. So more dense urban planning is better because you get more citizens and therefore more buildings.

- Is there anything I can do with ocean tiles? I know coastline is useful, but are there any structures that can be placed by open water? It seems to me that putting a city on the coast is a bad idea.

- Generally dense urban planning is better, mainly due to movement costs across developed tiles. But generally plan your cities to maximize resource coverage; the resources are all useful and add a lot to what you can build/recruit/do.
- Oceans at this time are only there for the annoying sea monsters that show up. And to sail over, but mostly the damn sea monsters. God I hate those things.

Such is my devotion to Idle Thumbs I've received the chance to work with a Lord. None other than a Wizard. A mad, maybe even sh*tty wizard. Nonetheless, a motherf*cking wizard.

This game rocks.

Sometimes when a perk comes up it says "+unit power". What's unit power? Sometimes I get the choice between stuff like "+20% Unit Power" and "+20% Ranged Damage". I don't get the difference.

Also is there any way to get a unit to attack but NOT pursue the enemy when they retreat? When melee units defeat something or run them off they always move forward. Its extremely irritating when defending a city because the unit will leave the city and lose its defensive bonus.

Unit power affects all the unit's attack types. In the case of mages, some do part elemental, part death magic, for instance.

So, in certain cases you might want to boost that in order to get a more well rounded unit, other times maybe you'll want to boost a specific type of damage.

No way to not get your melee guys to not move forward on victory. It's a pretty key element of the defense vs offense dynamic.

As for power, as oMonarca said, Warlock uses a system where strength = power = attack. That said, a unit's overall attack can be divided up into things other than just basic physical. Ranged may be a bit different though. I haven't played in a little bit, but my guess is that +ranged wouldn't help when the unit is defending against a melee unit.

Gunner wrote:

No way to not get your melee guys to not move forward on victory. It's a pretty key element of the defense vs offense dynamic.

This is why I favor minotaurs for city defenders. Yes they move out of the city, but they still have movement points left after killing the target, so you can just move them right back in.

I started up a new game of this, it feels a lot more content heavy than before, which is good.

My last game I was on an island on my own, and the enemies were pretty heavily built up by the time I had found them, so it just turned into a massive free-for-all with my ridiculously powerful units that trained up on neutrals steamrolling through enemy territory. This time I'm up against some enemies on my continent right away, and the hero units are adding a little extra nuance to the combat and progression. Enjoying this so far!

Sea monsters are awesome, because you can pull them into the path of invading fleets... Mayhem ensues, and your enemies deplete the actual monsters while your bats or boats take the den goodies.

I just finished my first game, I could have opted for any ending but I went for the Unity spell. Couple impressions/tips.

- I really hate the city influence mechanic. When a city gets to size 5 and 10 its boundaries increase in size. But the problem with this is that it has no possible way of filling up all of the terrain it claims. A level 2 city can cover 18 tiles, but only be able to build on 10 of them. Unless you have a ridiculously long game no city will ever reach size 18. At the end of my game my capitol reached size 16 but it was actually having negative growth at that point. When a city claims terrain tiles, no other city can build on them. This leads to a LOT of wasted terrain.

- For the above reasons and the fact that developed tiles are essentially "roads" its to your benefit to pack your cities in like sardines. Spacing out your cities just wastes tiles. The more population and cities you have the more you can build. The game limits you to placing cities 3 away tiles from each other so plan accordingly. Always specialize a city depending on the terrain resources it claims. Pig and pumpkin patches produce far more food than simple farms. So if you hook them up to boosting buildings like the Mill and Granary you capitalize on that bonus.

- Stacking buffs are ridiculously powerful. Even without magic. I ended the game with hero units that had 90% resistance to everything.

- Other worlds only have the single entrance at the portal. So if you can claim one it basically becomes your unflankable private playground with craptons of bonus resources. Easier said than done however, each one is packed to the gills with boss tier monsters. Once you do pacify a world completely you still need to have garrison forces there because of the monster lair spawns.

- Diplomacy is rather limited unfortunately.

- Sea monsters are jerks! It doesn't help that all boats are somewhat underwhelming in firepower. I once sent three basic ships against a kraken and they couldn't beat its regeneration.

Tamren wrote:

- Sea monsters are jerks! It doesn't help that all boats are somewhat underwhelming in firepower. I once sent three basic ships against a kraken and they couldn't beat its regeneration.

Water walking + invisibility + ranged firepower, say off a vampire or mage or caster/archer hero, and the sea monsters are just bags of exp & loot.

Or flight, and ranged, and kraken & leviathans are toast. The flying ships of the undead are good for this. Keep in mind that you can boost their firepower with frost/fire/life weapon enchants.