Warlock Master of the Arcane - Fantasy Civ5 clone from Paradox

[Marsal]

 

[JarlFrank]

While the Stardock games (Elemental and GalCiv) which are trying to be super balanced lack soul and just aren't much fun to play.

Oh look, another person taking a dump on GalCiv, how difficult. Maybe you already knew there is only 1 race to choose in Galciv? Kinda hard to say imbalance is fun when you only play as 1 race. You play as humans and that's what the game is, it's not attempting to be MOO4 or make you feel like a kid in a candy shop, it's GalCiv. Oh and the enemy races actually do act very differently, each has a very different personality and once they become a blob all pose challenges in different ways. GalCiv1 is one of the best 4x I ever played, you just have to accept it for what it is.

Well, I tried to like it, multiple times. I played the original. I played the second game. I played the second game with the first expansion. I played with both expansions after the second one came out. I never really had much fun with it because it always felt lacking, in all aspects. Planet management is very limited, research is quite uninspired, there are only few planet types that can be colonized, the combat is boring too (send a fleet against an enemy fleet, watch them fight). There just wasn't anything about it that engaged me much because I felt there wasn't anything to do but click "next turn" most of the time.

 

[Renegen]

2nd one had something missing, the first is better because of its simplicity.

 

[Marobug]

By releasing a debug build you are releasing something that contains code from another party (Microsoft if you use visual c++, etc), specifically the debug module.

All Visual Studio projects require ultra-privatized Microsoft intellectual property, whether they use formal debugging or not... but that's why they've always bundled it into those neat little redistributables and encouraged you to include them with your installer. MS's developer policies and licensing have always been loose as beer-shits.

I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing. When you compile a release build, you are compiling your own code. When you compile a debug build you are compiling your code + microsoft's vs debug code. The debug code is protected by ownership laws so you can't release it publicly, as in with your game.

 

[circ]

Just... chipping in with some gif magic.

 

[Berekän]

Out of the blue, I went to check the Paradox forums to see if there were any patches released for Warlock and lo and behold, this was just posted today:

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.
• 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.

There are some nice changes, will have to check out the game again. I still think it might need more tweaking though.

 

[Transgressive Grenadier]

Seems like an ideal game for multiplayer.

But what do i know.

 

[Kane]

finally!

 

[Malakal]

At last some potential challenge since playing it in sp makes for no challenge at all.

 

[Muty]

Fuck yeah I was waiting for mp support bore picking it up.

 

[DakaSha]

I got this in the paradox bundle on steam (yes I bought the paradox bundle on steam) and as far as genres go this is right up my ally but I heard the AI was horrendous. Now with the patch Im reading sporadic reports of much more aggressive and (although cheating) at least challenging AI. can anybody confirm this? I hate starting a TBS just to realize 4 hours in that its pointless because playing the AI is easier then playing a downs patient

 

[Misconnected]

I got this in the paradox bundle on steam (yes I bought the paradox bundle on steam) and as far as genres go this is right up my ally but I heard the AI was horrendous. Now with the patch Im reading sporadic reports of much more aggressive and (although cheating) at least challenging AI. can anybody confirm this? I hate starting a TBS just to realize 4 hours in that its pointless because playing the AI is easier then playing a downs patient

The problem is that it is very quick and painless to become a reasonably competent Warlock player. The AI, at least after the first patch, is easily one of the best 4X and hex-based wargame AIs around. But being vastly better than the best 4X AI I have ever played doesn't make it remotely as competent as a human being that understands the game well enough to create effective strategies. If you want an AI that can play that well, I'm not sure you have any choices beyond chess. You certainly don't have any choices in the wargame & 4X genres.

Warlock easily has the best hex-based wargame AI, ever. By very, very far. Its explore, expand AI isn't the same kind of "shockingly great compared to anything", but it is about as good as it gets.

But for better and worse, Warlock isn't a very complicated or unintuitive game, it doesn't require you to keep track of anything much, and it doesn't require you juggle a lot of comparisons in your mind. It's probably about a hundred times faster to learn to understand how to use Warlock's playing pieces than it is to learn how to use GalCiv2's, and once you have there's probably a hundred times less room for human error. So... If you have the potential to beat the hardest AI, you'll be able to do it consistently in vastly less time than if you were playing, for example, Civilization.
Similarly, because it is set up as a randomly generating 4X'y wargame, there's basically never (and when there is, it's purely accidental) any of the puzzle elements that normally makes up the bulk of the challenge in hex-based wargames.

Finally, don't mistake Warlock for a Civ-like. Warlock is a hex-based wargame where the puzzle elements have been replaced with a simplified take on Master of Magic. The cosmetic similarities to Civ5 probably has more to do with Civ5 being heavily inspired by Warlock's developer's previous two games than anything else. And the similarities really are mostly cosmetic. Warlock is basically the hex-based version of a large scale RTS like Supreme Commander: you build bases and cap resources in order to fling armies at each other. Flinging armies at each other is the entire point of the game. The rest is just window dressing.

 

[Malakal]

AI was somewhat competent at warfare but horrible at expansion. It was common for me to have 8 cities when they had 3. Or even 2. It was like they didnt even build settlers. Also didnt dispell buffs from your units so you could end up with immortal champions. Not it was supposedly changed.

Anyway I could see the potential in there since AI was already way better at combat that civ V AI.

 

[DakaSha]

I have actually heard that the AI is very good at actual combat (retreats its damaged units and heals them etc) but if it cant expand that wont help it much. I did read some reports about it expanding a bit better though since patch

 

[DakaSha]

Well i can def confirm that the shitheads expand now.. im playing on challenging and the enemy warlocks seem to be just dandy at covering the map in thier color. I actually think im going to start over and try to expand more myself

 

[sser]

Anyone tried multiplayet yet? If two players fight, who goes first? Or is it an RTS race/click fest?

 

[DakaSha]

Anyone tried multiplayet yet? If two players fight, who goes first? Or is it an RTS race/click fest?

 

[sser]

Honest question. Not all turn-based games handle player-warfare the same.

 

[RK47]

Fun, extended diversions, but I never have the will to finish maps beyond Normal size. Cause unit movement is a serious bitch. I can feel my brains screaming in frustration telling me I already won and I should stop playing immediately cause moving 2 dozen units across hexes per turn isn't really that much fun. It's a goddamn chore.

 

[kris]

Honest question. Not all turn-based games handle player-warfare the same.

It is handled in... turns

 

[DakaSha]

Fun, extended diversions, but I never have the will to finish maps beyond Normal size. Cause unit movement is a serious bitch. I can feel my brains screaming in frustration telling me I already won and I should stop playing immediately cause moving 2 dozen units across hexes per turn isn't really that much fun. It's a goddamn chore.

Not having a fortify command is also prob the most braindead thing i can imagine.
Funny because other then that the interface is extremely good and streamlined

 

[sser]

Honest question. Not all turn-based games handle player-warfare the same.

It is handled in... turns

Yes, how witty. There are simultaneous turns, sequential turns, and even we-go turns -- does anyone here know the difference? Yeesh. I'm just trying to find out which one Warlock is played with before I can get my hands on it again.

 

[kris]

Honest question. Not all turn-based games handle player-warfare the same.

It is handled in... turns

Yes, how witty. There are simultaneous turns, sequential turns, and even we-go turns -- does anyone here know the difference? Yeesh. I'm just trying to find out which one Warlock is played with before I can get my hands on it again.

It would probably been said then. Otherwise it is pretty safe to assume it plays like MOM, MOO, CIV I-V, Colonization, GalCiv and pretty much every other game like it that has ever been produced.

I guess you could be confused if you played Endless space recently since it has a wierd "simultaneous turns" which basically means all AI fleets move at the same time you move the first of your fleets. But that is just a bad system outside multiplayer and I can't come up with any other 4X I played like that.

 

[DakaSha]

Actually listing Moo with the other game sis pretty ironic and you are proving his point ^^

 

[DakaSha]

So I had a bunch of units ready to attack an enemy and he used a spell that just literally obliterated the whole army.. It wasnt even a very high level spell I think (lightning storm or some shit)
I'm not complaining.. It was a great use of a spell by the ai and it impressed the shit out of me