Warlock: Master of the Arcane

[Renevent]

Game is coming out tomorrow, basically a Master of Magic inspired game. I played the demo a couple weeks ago and it's actually fairly good for the asking price of $20. Anybody else try the demo or is planning on picking it up?

[Greymous3]

Just saw your post and then the RPS preview. Sounds like the demo is a must-see before the day is over...

Had me at 'Master of Magic'... =]

[deathwings51]

TBH it looks like a Civ ripoff from the UI and game screens.

[Renevent]

Guess you never heard of Masters of Magic because that's what the game is mostly inspired from.

Originally Posted by Greymous3

Just saw your post and then the RPS preview. Sounds like the demo is a must-see before the day is over...

Had me at 'Master of Magic'... =]

Yeah exactly

I'm not sure based on the demo it's quite as good as MoM, but for a $20 I think it's very good so far. After being totally let down by Elemental: War of Magic I think this one captures the MoM a bit better, and it looks and runs much better too.

The only criticism I could make is the game *seems* a bit streamlined over MoM and more combat focused. Not necessarily a bad thing, and of course I only played the demo so far.

Anywas here's a nice write-up by Tom Chick (pretty well known dude):

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/201...he-art-of-war/

[Kardiophylax]

Still playing this Renevent, or does it grow tiresome quickly? I was thinking of picking it up, but forum comments over at Paradox seem to indicate it is rather one dimension with no diplomacy and somewhat weak AI, especially in the late game.

[Renevent]

It's definitely not as deep as Masters of Magic or other similar games. It's pretty good though. It's more strategy/combat orientated and focused on exploring the lands and controlling territory. I haven't gotten that far though my first game I actually lost about mid way through (so AI kicked my ass lol)...I'm not that great at these types of games so take that for whats it's worth.

It's $20 though, and for that price (1/3rd of other major games in the genre) I think it's a great value and it's fun. With that said, from what I understand the devs are planning on adding a bunch of mechanics folks on the forum are saying is 'missing' from the game...so it might be wise to wait it out.

[Renevent]

Just wanted to drop back in and give an update...I never got to play much initially since D3 released shortly after but ended up playing a full map last night (and I won!).

The game is really fun and is a good value at $20, good news is can now be had for $10

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-WLMA/wa...-of-the-arcane

Anyways while it's probably not as deep as other 4X games, it's not exactly shallow either. The game plays a lot like MoM/Civ and is a nice hybrid on it's own. You choose a wizard at the beginning and you can customize them too. There's various abilities that give you some interesting strengths and starting spells. The options for creating a game is really cool too, tons of options.

Once you are in game you start with a city and can build some starting units and buildings. There are tons of different types of buildings and many of them require specific land assets (gold mine on gold resource/silver for silver weapons/ect). There's a lot of really interesting ones too, so makes the expansion of your territory (through new cities) very important.

While there are no tech trees to research, as you build new buildings you can open up other kinds of advanced buildings. For instance, building a thieves guild will enable building tax offices or building certain armories will enable unit upgrades or recruitment options. There's a tons of stuff and each race has a nice amount of unique buildings too.

Units can be recruited various ways, obviously though normal means (correct building) but they can also be summoned and even rewarded for capturing or clearing certain map objectives. I only played a few games but there seems to be a ton of different units and some of the higher level ones even have special abilities. Mages can case ice bolts, some can fly, other like clerics can heal (as well as attack).

As mentioned above you can also improve your units in a few ways. Being in combat gains them XP, at at certain intervals they level up. You can then choose 1 out of 3 (different ones per level) bonuses to apply to the unit. Also, when you build certain building you can then (for a cost) apply new armor bonuses or things like silver weapons which increases their damage.

The main objective of the game is to defeat the other wizards (in MoM fashion), but there is also a lot more going on the map. There's neutral factions, monster spawns to be cleared, quests (like kill a certain monster and sack a town) to be completed, and portals to different worlds to explore.

The overall quality of the game IMO is REALLY good...the art is really nice and the amount of content you get for $20 (well...$10 now!) is outstanding.

So while it's not exactly as deep as MoM, I think the value is pretty high.

[Renevent]

Just released a nice update today...aside from adding multiplayer there's a nice amount of fixes/balances and even some new features (champions/relics).

Originally Posted by patch notes

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

Anyways been playing the game off and on, it's a really good deal IMO especially now you can get it on Steam for $12.

[silverhand]

I grabbed this on day 1 of the Steam Summer sale...no idea when I'll have time to play though

[Renevent]

I played last night and the new champion/relic system is pretty cool. Champions range from warriors and rangers to wizards. They are pretty powerful too and level up and seem to have some unique perks than standard units. I haven't found any relics yet (supposedly you can find them from clearing monster lairs) but I did buy some from traveling merchants. Statistically they are just ok (fairly simple) but they do have nice art.

Anyways the updates they have done to this game post release have really fleshed it out a lot. Very good game now IMO and for the price is a steal...tons of content here