Warlock: MotA - Comments

larienna

Join Date 10/2009

+20

Warlock: MotA - Comments

It's not really a good thing to promote competition, here is some comments I found on another site:

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.

I had a chance to try the demo and I was very impressed. The game is not too complex and it's easy to learn. The city development does not demand too much work, which give you the time to enjoy the other parts of the game. ( One of the problem in CIV, MOM and MOO is that 80% of the player's time is placed on city/colony construction).

Besides a few bugs, the first drawback is that magic seems pretty weak. I have have not check the whole spell book, but I am starting to get used to it. Everybody seems to be scared that wizards are too powerful, so they always dwarf them. The second drawback: it's not moddable . Well if you want to mod the game, people will have to hack it like in the good old times. That's a shame because it would have made a wonderful master magic mod.

Considering that the game is pretty cheap (20$), it might still worth the buy.

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Well this is why I said it was a good engine, but lot of adjustments are required to make the playability perfect.

My biggest complains so far is that you are always short in resources and all buildings are almost essential. For example, I would have like the possibility to have various city configurations according to the player's objective and be able to change your city config according to new needs. But since there is so many pre-requisite and since some buildings like farms are essential to have food for the city to survive, there is not much flexibility in the city development. In the game I started, I got stuck with a lot of water which limited the nb of buildings I could make. There is also these buildings with a check mark that seem to influence your who kingdoms but that in the end it does not do it all the time. For example, I would have liked to be able to build warrior guild in 1 city and have all my cities be able to build warriors. It seem to work this way for unit upgrade buildings like the foundry.

"They will either summon minions every single turn behind your defenses to insta gib your ranged units,"

Well this is why in master of magic, there was a summonning circle, that could potentially solve the problem.

"or they will simply use AOE damage spells, that will insta kill your weak ranged units even if you put the elemental resist spell on them."

The problem is that elemental resistance spells are not powerful enough. MOst unit enchantement are pretty weak to pay 1 mana per turn to maintain it. I though that win walking allows unit to move on any terrain even water, but it only remove terrain movement penalty. I rahter pay 2 maintenance to have a unit of imp on the board than having 2 units get +25% elemental resistance.

"I also don't like the fact that the best strategy is to simply spam cities like crazy."

Most 4x games seems to work like that. Still, they sometimes add a corruption or unrest element to the game so that the player has other things to manage. Unrest could possibly be a good idea. In MOM, there was unrest, but it was city related. I like a game where smaller kingdoms till have a chance to win due to strong magical power or political power. But I don't think it will happen for now in warlock.

"Building settlers is cheap as hell, and there really isn't a drawback for building a ton of cities. I can beat the game at higher levels by abusing this, but it seems silly."

Is there a range limit between cities like "cities cannot be closer than 3 hex from each other". If not they should add one. ELse it would reminds me CIV 1 where the AI built city so close that it was impossible to maintain them due to lack of food and unrest.

To close my comments, I think this game will get wings once modding is enabled. Sure a lot of crappy mod will be made. But a few serious mods could emerge and that could make it a better game.

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

I caved and bought it yesterday. Mostly cause there is no new patch for FE lately. I am positively surprised for now.

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Is the consensus that the AI is very poor in the current build?

Is the consensus that the AI will probably not get seriously improved in future patches?

Really would like to know this, since SP AI is everything for me. Thanks much

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

I play singleplayer only, and the AI is working. Its not perfect and can be beaten. There are also lots of neutrals that gives you grief, so for now I am quite happy with it. Watch the lets play series from Das123 on youtube.

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

I won on normal (first try), then on the level above on my first try. Now only impossible is left. The game really needs a better AI, but its still fun.

I would like to have a survival mode where the goal was to conquer the wild With no other AI players than the monsters.

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A bit like the civilization board game where you must survive all the bad events thrown at you.

I am close to finish my first game. I played at easy, so I did not have a chance to test much the AI. But I like being able to outsmart or find flaws in an AI.

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joasoze

Join Date 02/2006

+39

As I play this game more, I have realized that you only play against the environment (monsters, neutral AIs) and AI that are waiting for you to come to them. The AI will never come with any kind of problematic attack, and if you are patient you will ALWAYS win, even on impossible. Its rather disappointing and ruins the game for me. When I play FE, CIV IV, Kings Bounty and such, I set the difficulty high so that winning is an achievement (in other words, I get wasted by the AI most of the time). In Warlock this is not possible due to lackluster AI.

The reviewers are right, the game isnt that good...

The developers should focus on AI and forget about other DLC stuff for now, cause there really is no point.... There is a great game in there, but all strategy games need a certain level of AI competence.

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I like Warlock because it's more of what I want in a TBS game with city conquering without all the micro-managing.

I like TBS games. I love the feel of conquering enemy territory.

Compared to games like Final Fantasy Tactics and other smaller-scale Strategy games, outside of the main story narrative, there isn't a lot to make me feel like I'm really conquering.

When I have cities on a map, and I can look and be like, "I conquered that city, that battle was a headache and a half and I lost so many archers." That's a good feeling.

I just don't want to delegate taxes and research and all that jazz afterwards

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I finally mane my review about warlock on the paradox interactive forum. The review can be found here.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?618067-My-very-long-review-and-comments-for-Warlock&p=14047339#post14047339

As people suggested, the AI seem pretty weak, I'll see with multiple games if it really bothers me. Considering that I am always playing defensively, I like it when my opponent will not attack me all the time. I'll see.

As for DLC, unless you add new features, I think it's just a bad way to milk the cow.

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