Warlock: The MAster of the Arcane

[Voigtkampf]

In case you haven't checked it out, here's a review of the new Warlock: Master of the Arcane turn-based strategy from Paradox. Some easy-going, fun stuff in style of Civ 5 and older phantasy titles like Age of Wonders.

[rickinator9]

This game looks really nice. I see me buying it when I get a new PC.

[frogbeastegg]

No one else playing?

I've only completed a single game so far, all on default settings using a customised human warlock. The game has some rough edges and problems, however I found it to be very enjoyable. The AI wasn't that good, but nor was it bad. I intend to try a higher difficulty for my next game. I do like the way each of the three races has a marked strength which encourages you to play them differently. Food for monsters, gold for humans, and mana for the undead.

Anyone found a decent way to deal with the random sea monster spawns? The worm-like monsters and the krakens vastly out-power my puny level 2 human ships.

[Kekvit Irae]

Love the game. It's Master of Magic meets Civilization V. I don't really like how there are only three races, but the variety you can customize your ruler more than makes up for it.

Plonking down buildings is much more a strategic decision than in Civilization games (and, by extent, Master of Magic). If you wish to build something, you need to increase the city's population by one, and have one free space on the map in the city's "culture" radius. This means you cant just plonk down buildings every turn (unless you conquer an already populated city), and will screw you up if you settle near impassible mountains.

Different worlds are back from Master of Magic and Civilization II: Test of Time, only this time you can set how many worlds you want, depending on map size. These different worlds have REALLY big monsters that will wreck a weak army, but the advantages of settling there far outweigh the threat of constant invasion. I plonked down a Red Dragon Nest on some eggs and could build Red Dragons. Beware, however, portals (randomly placed on the map) are two-way openings. Monsters can, and will, eventually trickle in to the normal world.

Anyone found a decent way to deal with the random sea monster spawns? The worm-like monsters and the krakens vastly out-power my puny level 2 human ships.

Two words: Air units. Undead shipyards have ghost ships, if you are into conquering.
Barring that, you can have one ship act as bait while the other loots the monster lair. Generally I leave sea monsters alone since they are easily bypassed, at least, until I have flying units or units with enough DPS to take it down.

[frogbeastegg]

I've seen a few suggestions that there may be an aquatic race DLC in the future. That would round out the collection very nicely. Perhaps something like the pirate faction from Alpha Centauri's expansion pack? Or a bubble dome spell so that everyone can build underwater cities?

Two words: Air units. Undead shipyards have ghost ships, if you are into conquering.
Barring that, you can have one ship act as bait while the other loots the monster lair. Generally I leave sea monsters alone since they are easily bypassed, at least, until I have flying units or units with enough DPS to take it down.

Hmm, I'll have to try them out. I played as the humans, and by the time I captured some undead cities and built them up to produce units I'd virtually won. My undead game is still in the opening phases. Ah, skeletons. Very Jason and the Argonauts.

I did have one face-palming brainwave: water walking. Cast it on a couple of my super-buff melee units, walk on out, punch serpents in the face. Why didn't I think of that during the game? I do love the way magic shakes up the usual strategic rules. I haven't needed to consider factors like this since Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic!

My main problem with sea serpents is that they have a very slow attack animation. There was a long stretch of my game where I had to sit through 2-3 minutes of sea serpents burping water at my cities, followed by 2-3 minutes of my cities shooting back. Doesn't sound like much, but it added up and became a real irritant. As fast as I killed them, more appeared. My ships had a high attrition rate and I couldn't manage to punch on through to destroy the lairs. I ignored the seas for too long, let the monsters build up a strong presence.

[Kekvit Irae]

I lucked out my first game and started next to an undead civilization who turned hostile on me in a few turns. I conquered one of their towns and started building up the harbor tech tree, which gave me ghost ships.

Honestly, I find humans a little underwhelming. Undead get vampires and zombies, beasts get minotaurs and werewolves, and humans get... donkey knights.

[frogbeastegg]

Flying werewolves wearing top hats fighting donkey-knights by a cave made out of cheese. That just happened.

The new patch has beefed up towers and cities. In the early game they are now quite painful. By the late game they are still little better than gnats biting at my uber units, but I definitely had to be more cautious in the first 100 turns. That's a welcome tweak.

I've now won on the second highest difficulty. The AI had a lot more units and was a bit smarter in how it used them. Once again, a small collection of heavily upgraded and buffed units proved the key. The AI does not dispel my buffs, and it doesn't upgrade its own units to the same degree. By the time I have a bunch of magic weapons, armour and health regen on mid-tier units like minotaurs there's nothing which can challenge me. Still, half the fun is getting to that point. The other half is stomping the computer with flying top-hatted werewolves.

[Kekvit Irae]

Flying werewolves wearing top hats fighting donkey-knights by a cave made out of cheese. That just happened.

Don't be dissing the cheese caves! They give magic AND food. :D

[frogbeastegg]

Don't be dissing the cheese caves! They give magic AND food. :D

Nothing can steal the pumpkin shrine's place in my heart. Hall o'Win buff, plus elemental regen spell, plus regen level perk equals unstoppable units. Sometimes I throw in vampiric weapons for regen overkill.

[Kekvit Irae]

Nothing can steal the pumpkin shrine's place in my heart. Hall o'Win buff, plus elemental regen spell, plus regen level perk equals unstoppable units. Sometimes I throw in vampiric weapons for regen overkill.

Pfft. Red Dragons are all I need. Half the fun is trying to get them.

[Beskar]

This is on steam sale at the moment, is it worth the price?

[frogbeastegg]

This is on steam sale at the moment, is it worth the price?

If you are remotely interested in what it does, yes!

If you want to know what the game does and doesn't do, I tried to cover that in a review. That's based on the release version. The AI has improved a bit in the current version, and there have been misc. other tweaks to balance. The 'Power of the Serpent' DLC adds some interesting units. I wouldn't bother with the other DLC as I do not feel it adds anything worth having.

Or try the demo. It's pretty comprehensive.

[Kekvit Irae]

This is on steam sale at the moment, is it worth the price?

TB has a really good first impressions video of it. Better than having to wait for a demo to download. Though, the video is from the beta, so don't let that discourage you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ydHz7X4GF8