Warlords

[catfood]

Does anyone else like this series? I don't see it getting mentioned too often.

I'm playing Warlords 3 Dark Lords Rising at the moment and I'm having a blast with it.

Combat mechanics are simple, you don't even get to control the units and instead you just get to watch them through a window. But since there's an 8 unit limit in every stack (army) it doesen't boil down to one final battle between the two most beefed up armies. There's also little no no castle management (only in the form of setting what troops to build and where to spawn them), but since we're talking about 40 or so castles on you average map I don't consider that to be a minus.

But even with these "flaws" it's still fun to play. The campaign is interesting. At the end of each mission you get to increase a stat of a troop that you can build so after a few missions even the lowliest light infantry can be a force to reckon with. The game also lets you customize its skirmish maps with various victory conditions and you can even edit the race you're playing with to give it the buildable units that you like! It's definetely one of the most customizable games out there.

I've never played the Battlecry games? Are these spin-offs or what? Are they any good?

 

[zeitgeist]

I only really played Warlords 2/Warlords 2 Deluxe, and thought they were extremely fun at the time, although the combat mechanics could have been a bit more complex. I guess I should try the more recent ones too. 4 seems to be pretty horrible though:

This title deviates from prior entries in the series by offering a more streamlined interface and approach to gameplay. Diplomacy plays virtually no role in the game, and micromanagement of units is scaled-down to a great extent. In addition, there are only two resources in the game; gold and mana, as opposed to the many varied resources found in most strategy games of this type, which is needed to produce certain units. Perhaps the most notable instance of streamlining is the combat system. Rather than having multiple units battling it out at once, combat is one-on-one, similar to a collectible card game.

I just looked up Steve Fawkner to see what he's been doing lately, and apparently he's the guy behind the Puzzle Quest series, Neopets Puzzle Adventure, and Puzzle Kingdoms.

 

[kris]

Battlecry games are okay, quite different though as they are realtime.

I also spent most time with the deluxe edition of the second.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Never played Darklords Rising, but I did play through the original Warlords III. Like the others, I spent the most time with Warlords II and the construction set. Played Warlords 1 quite a few times on the Amiga as well.

The battlecry games are RTS games, but are fairly good. You can build up your own retinue of creatures you bring with you, and they level up with successful battles. I think GoG has number 3 for a few quid so it is easy enough to give it a whirl. Easily worth that price.

 

[mondblut]

Warlords 2 were great for their time.

Warlords 3 sucked, fuck this "campaign" bullshit, only standalone grand maps are real.

 

[Sceptic]

Warlords 3 sucked, fucking this "campaign" bullshit, only standalone grand maps are real.

I just played the standalone maps with 3

But yeah 2 was the best.

 

[Malakal]

I played Battlecry LAN and really liked the hero aspect of the game. Classic Warlords never interested me that much.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Original Warlords and Warlords 2 were/are great for multiplayer as hot-seat games.

 

[Elwro]

Damn right. Warlords 2 = a hot-seat classic.

 

[Sceptic]

Indeed. Until HOMM2 came about it was THE hotseat game I used to play, with a group of friends. We were 4 to 5, gathered around the same computer, forming and breaking alliances, and playing until the wee hours of the morning. Great times. Though I don't think we ever finished most of our games, we still had tons of fun.

 

[Frau Bishop]

Warlords II. Yes, upvote and stuff, 2010 style.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

We were 4 to 5, gathered around the same computer, forming and breaking alliances, and playing until the wee hours of the morning. Great times. Though I don't think we ever finished most of our games, we still had tons of fun.

Exactly the same here. Alliance forming and breaking was the stuff of legends. And we never properly finished most of our games either. We usually ended on a mutual consensus when one player had become so overwhelmingly strong, that the butthurt other players prefered to mumble some "ok you win" rather than endure even more butthurt.

Also, Warlords II deluxe with customizable army sets and terrain ftw.

Farewell warlord, we shall meet again.

 

[Sceptic]

Exactly the same here. Alliance forming and breaking was the stuff of legends.

IIRC diplomacy was the greatest addition from Warlords 1. Well... that, and the random maps, and more options, and the music... god the music... Even on OPL synthesis it sounded gorgeous, alternating between epic and haunting. The "intro" (not menu, before that) was awesome, and I particularly remember one of the playing themes, the really slow-paced and quiet one.

We usually ended on a mutual consensus when one player had become so overwhelmingly stronger than the other butthurt players prefered to mumble some "ok you win" rather than endure even more butthurt.

I don't even remember if we got to that point. I don't think any of us played to win, it was just a good opportunity to get together and we just had too much fun in the initial stages.

Also, Warlords II deluxe with customizable army sets and terrain ftw.

I didn't play deluxe as much as regular version. The editor was fantastic (and IIRC just a modified, more friendly version of the in-house one SSG used to create all maps and units) though, you could modify almost all aspects in the game. Some of the premade maps that shipped with it were also quite good, though I'm partial to the original W2 ones just because we played them so much.

Farewell warlord, we shall meet again.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

and the random maps

The random map feature was very good. It's actually the best I've seen in this genre since the game is simple enough to authorize really playable and balanced random maps. We always played random maps and the ceremony of creating random map after random map, untill all of us finally agreed on one, was also something.

 

[catfood]

The whole diplomacy thing is what was really missing in the HOMM franchise. I don't understand why they refused to implement it when so many other TBS had it. It's a really big deal in multiplayer.

 

[chzr]

indeed

 

[Calem Ravenna]

Jadroad is a dangerous estate, which produces its demon trees.

 

[DwarvenFood]

Aaaah Warlords 2 Deluxe !!!

The good memories... Lord Bane !! Orks of Kor !!

It was a huge joy to play.. the random heroes, the funny easter eggs in the temples..

I have one question though, for the real die hards, browsing through the graphic files i came across one or two pic's that I have never seen in-game.

They are about some surrender scene of what not.. and there is a quote below.. the excellent
"PEACE IS NOT AN OPTION"

What to do in-game to trigger that event ? Or is it never used.. :mystery:

 

[kris]

Can you get it working with dosbox or something? I'd love to get my deluxe edition working again.

 

[catfood]

Warlords 2 works under dosbox. I'm not sure about the deluxe edition though.

 

[mondblut]

They are about some surrender scene of what not.. and there is a quote below.. the excellent
"PEACE IS NOT AN OPTION"

What to do in-game to trigger that event ? Or is it never used.. :mystery:

I vaguely remember the losing parties could offer their surrender, and you would either accept it and win, or refuse to keep fighting them into extermination, and that's when this comes up. I think. Or maybe I made it up on the fly

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

They are about some surrender scene of what not.. and there is a quote below.. the excellent
"PEACE IS NOT AN OPTION"

What to do in-game to trigger that event ? Or is it never used.. :mystery:

I vaguely remember the losing parties could offer their surrender, and you would either accept it and win, or refuse to keep fighting them into extermination, and that's when this comes up. I think. Or maybe I made it up on the fly

No, this is correct.

 

[zeitgeist]

Warlords 2 works under dosbox. I'm not sure about the deluxe edition though.

I'm playing it right now (2.2.4), seems to be working flawlessly so far. And it's just as addictive as I remember.

 

[SkeleTony]

Warlords 2 was great for it's time but Warlords 3: Darklords Rising was the best of the series by far IMO. If you are into customization in the form of creating new character classes, units, spells, sides etc. then download SSG's Warlords3 tools(and/or Mythlord's DLR tools editor. They both have some bugs that the other does not so most use Mythlords to do some things then open up their creations in the War3tools editor to finish up).

You can find those as well as damned near everythuing else ever created for Warlords 2, 3, 4 over at Wooger's site

Warlords 3/DLR's 'simple' combat is kind of misleading. Yes there is not much in the way of tactics but you need to pay close attention to the bonuses/abilities of your units and heroes vs. those of enemy stacks.
The graphics in W3/DLR are bad(even at the time of their release they were bad) but the gameplay makes DLR the equal of Heroes III for different reasons.

The "Battlecry" games are real-time w/pause but they are VERY well done and in some ways even better than the TB Warlords games(character development and tactical options for example).

Avoid Warlords 4 like the plague. Even with all the recent patches made by KGB(the sole fan with access to the source code as far as I know) it is a shitty game(and Steve Fawkner seems to agree. His design doc for Warlords 5 is largely an apology for Warlords 4).

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Warlords 5? I thought that old chestnut had been taken out of the fire long ago. Perhaps another contender for Grimoire?

I just remembered something about Warlords 3: Does anyone else remember the hammy video sequences after each mission? Lord Bane was hilarious, as were the devs pretending at acting.