Warlock- Master of the Arcane
Warlock- master of the arcane is a turn- based strategy game which has you (as one of pre- made wizards or a custom made one) trying to gain domination over the world introduced in the Majesty series. You do so by building and upgrading cities, building and upgrading units and casting spells to help your cities, your units, or harm your opponents.
Although this is a game about destroying your opponents there is some light diplomacy. In my first game the first two wizards I met were at war with each other so I signed a non- aggression pact with the one (the cyan coloured empire in picture) which later became an alliance (of course I later double crossed him when it looked like he might become too strong) so we could fight together against the third wizard (the green one).
As you can see in the top left there are 4 resources. From left to right they are gold, food, mana and research. Gold is used to train units and their upkeep, food for citizens in your cities and many units upkeep, mana for spells and undead and magical creatures upkeep and research determines how long it takes for you to research new spells.
You are only to able to build one building for each size of the city (which = 1000 inhabitants) so you have to think carefully about which to go with where. Buildings don't cost any gold to build but some have upkeep costs. The units that you can train range from very cheap ones (like bats) to very expensive ones (like the undead dragon) - both in training cost and upkeep. I like that if you capture their cities you can train units of other races e.g. undead if you are humans. If you build your cities next to special resources you can also train units otherwise unavailable like elves, dwarves and minotaurs. Special resources can also lead to armor perks, improve training or increase income for the city.
When units gain experience through fighting or through other means you choose traits for your units like improved damage, better defense, sight or movement or even regeneration. In the picture below you can see how much more difficult to kill, at least by non- magic users, veteran veterans are from their level 1 counterparts.
Whereas better units generally come from moving along the building tree, the spells you choose between to research are random which gives variety to each game you play.
Even though you end up with quite a lot of spells to choose between it easy to find the one you are looking for as there are seperate tabs for, for example, healing/bless spells, summon spells, and bane spells
As well as enemy cities and units there are also neutral cities and monsters to fight- some weak but others powerful -especially around valuable areas such as holy ground- which is the only place you can build temples. There are also portals to other worlds, which contain powerful creatures to fight but extra areas to expand to and are the only places you'll find dragon eggs- which allow you to train dragons if you build cities near them.
Many complained that although the game is fun, the ai is not smart or aggressive enough. A patch has made the ai more aggressive and hopefully it will be more of a challenge in the future. A free multi- player download is planned so this should give the game even more replay value. I find the game very fun. I enjoy that you going to find yourself using most units- as you can't really afford an army of all high cost ones. I also like that there is something happening every turn, whether it's fighting in a war, preparing for a war or casting spells. You don't just click next turn repeatedly until the research is done for that improved building, unit or whatever you're waiting for like in civilisation. I also enjoy an ally actually being useful in a fight vs an enemy, not just a meaningless alliance where your ally doesn't bother doing any attacking and more often than not declaring peace before helping you at all. One thing I didn't like is that there are few areas which are not good for cities (there's no difference between building a farm on a plain or on lava) so things feel a bit claustrophobic and in the latter part of the game you always going to be fighting near cities...there's no armies meeting on the border between territories. There's also no downside of having many cities so buiding as many as possible seems the way to go. A slight decrease in population growth per city you have might improve this although I must say it is nice to be able to build a city late in the game and have it be useful- in this game my last one ended up being the one producing the most gold.. In civilisation building any towards the end of the game is generally a waste of time and it's not like you find much open space left in that after the mid point of the game anyway- especially with the addition of City- states in Civ V.
P.S Avoid playing on normal or lower setting as opponents then ignore your units if there are any other opponents or neutral units to attack instead. They also sometimes attack your most heavily armored units instead of weakened ones.
My rating 8.5/10
Value @ $20 9/10
Although this is a game about destroying your opponents there is some light diplomacy. In my first game the first two wizards I met were at war with each other so I signed a non- aggression pact with the one (the cyan coloured empire in picture) which later became an alliance (of course I later double crossed him when it looked like he might become too strong) so we could fight together against the third wizard (the green one).
As you can see in the top left there are 4 resources. From left to right they are gold, food, mana and research. Gold is used to train units and their upkeep, food for citizens in your cities and many units upkeep, mana for spells and undead and magical creatures upkeep and research determines how long it takes for you to research new spells.
You are only to able to build one building for each size of the city (which = 1000 inhabitants) so you have to think carefully about which to go with where. Buildings don't cost any gold to build but some have upkeep costs. The units that you can train range from very cheap ones (like bats) to very expensive ones (like the undead dragon) - both in training cost and upkeep. I like that if you capture their cities you can train units of other races e.g. undead if you are humans. If you build your cities next to special resources you can also train units otherwise unavailable like elves, dwarves and minotaurs. Special resources can also lead to armor perks, improve training or increase income for the city.
When units gain experience through fighting or through other means you choose traits for your units like improved damage, better defense, sight or movement or even regeneration. In the picture below you can see how much more difficult to kill, at least by non- magic users, veteran veterans are from their level 1 counterparts.
Whereas better units generally come from moving along the building tree, the spells you choose between to research are random which gives variety to each game you play.
Even though you end up with quite a lot of spells to choose between it easy to find the one you are looking for as there are seperate tabs for, for example, healing/bless spells, summon spells, and bane spells
As well as enemy cities and units there are also neutral cities and monsters to fight- some weak but others powerful -especially around valuable areas such as holy ground- which is the only place you can build temples. There are also portals to other worlds, which contain powerful creatures to fight but extra areas to expand to and are the only places you'll find dragon eggs- which allow you to train dragons if you build cities near them.
Many complained that although the game is fun, the ai is not smart or aggressive enough. A patch has made the ai more aggressive and hopefully it will be more of a challenge in the future. A free multi- player download is planned so this should give the game even more replay value. I find the game very fun. I enjoy that you going to find yourself using most units- as you can't really afford an army of all high cost ones. I also like that there is something happening every turn, whether it's fighting in a war, preparing for a war or casting spells. You don't just click next turn repeatedly until the research is done for that improved building, unit or whatever you're waiting for like in civilisation. I also enjoy an ally actually being useful in a fight vs an enemy, not just a meaningless alliance where your ally doesn't bother doing any attacking and more often than not declaring peace before helping you at all. One thing I didn't like is that there are few areas which are not good for cities (there's no difference between building a farm on a plain or on lava) so things feel a bit claustrophobic and in the latter part of the game you always going to be fighting near cities...there's no armies meeting on the border between territories. There's also no downside of having many cities so buiding as many as possible seems the way to go. A slight decrease in population growth per city you have might improve this although I must say it is nice to be able to build a city late in the game and have it be useful- in this game my last one ended up being the one producing the most gold.. In civilisation building any towards the end of the game is generally a waste of time and it's not like you find much open space left in that after the mid point of the game anyway- especially with the addition of City- states in Civ V.
P.S Avoid playing on normal or lower setting as opponents then ignore your units if there are any other opponents or neutral units to attack instead. They also sometimes attack your most heavily armored units instead of weakened ones.
My rating 8.5/10
Value @ $20 9/10
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