Warlock Master of the Arcane - Fantasy Civ5 clone from Paradox

[Raapys]

AoW:Shadow Magic is still the best MoM clone. Seems no game really manages to take it all the way though. They've problems just trying to equal the amount of features in MoM it seems. Don't expect this will be any different.

 

[G.O.D]

AoW:Shadow Magic is still the best MoM clone. Seems no game really manages to take it all the way though. They've problems just trying to equal the amount of features in MoM it seems. Don't expect this will be any different.

Wrong. I would have agreed with AOW 1.. but SM is quite dumbed down opposed to the first part.
The first game has alot more depth to offer (look at the leveling of heroes for example).
I have nothing against your praise for AOW:SM though, it's a great game, love it and still play it.

 

[G.O.D]

I am trying hard to not get my hopes up. But well its paradox,they dedit damn good games, europa universalis, victoria...

 

[Raapys]

Is it really? It's been years since I played AoW1, granted, but I seem to remember it having a very simplistic town upgrade/building system, no creating artifacts, no shadowlands, no building new cities, fewer races, no skill picks, etc. It certainly had a more interesting hero creation and level-up system, but that's pretty much the only plus I can think of. Other than that, and making a small reservation for failing memory, SM appears to be much more feature-rich and quite the opposite of dumbed down.

 

[G.O.D]

Is it really? It's been years since I played AoW1, granted, but I seem to remember it having a very simplistic town upgrade/building system, no creating artifacts, no shadowlands, no building new cities, fewer races, no skill picks, etc. It certainly had a more interesting hero creation and level-up system, but that's pretty much the only plus I can think of. Other than that, and making a small reservation for failing memory, SM appears to be much more feature-rich and quite the opposite of dumbed down.

The town upgrade is about the same (if i remember THAT correct), only in one you had to unlock/install units.

No creating artifacts - granted.

No Shadowlands - yes, but they only added that feature in the expansion, it was still not present in 2.
And the MoM Shadow world is not quite like that of AoW.. since 2 races only really benifits from the SW in AOW.

Fewer races - No, they changed some races with AOW2, and SM indeed added some more.. but there never was a expantion for AOW1 so...

Skill picks - No, but you could invest points, or even save those points up for a more expensive skill, that you choose from a list opposed to AOW2's Def/Res/Dmg/Att or Def/Res/Dmg/Att or Skill pick.

Dumbed down was no good term.. make it user friendly.
SM indeed added some nice features from MoM, and some nice new ones.
All three games feel quite different for that matter, although AoW1 feels more like MoM.

But in the end it's still my humble opinion .
I have to find the disk and do a replay of AOW soon to refresh

 

[betamin]

lolsh

 

[Groof]

The town upgrade is about the same (if i remember THAT correct), only in one you had to unlock/install units.

Towns in the first AoW are simpler. You can upgrade a town a few times (how many depends on the size of the town) to unlock units and stuff and you can build walls. In addition you have to "install" units before you can produce them. In 2/SM you can build different buildings that unlock different units and give different bonuses (like making the town build things faster or making more gold per turn).

I really like the way the first AoW does it with town sizes and that. It's cool that you usually have to capture a large town in order to produce the better units, instead of just waiting until one town or another is large enough.

I'm not sure which game I like better. 2/SM added some cool stuff along with some pretty gay stuff. I like the races better in the first (in particular, the ones SM added are really meh). The shadowland stuff is very uncool and I'd gladly trade it for another layer of underground. Teleporting and magical item crafting and all the leaders being wizards and faff makes it a much less appealing setting for me. Still, SM plays pretty nice.


Anyway, this Warlock thing sounds way promising. If it's made by the guys that did Fantasy Wars and Elven Legacy then it might not be all dumb.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Age of Wonders were indeed a great series of games. It is nothing compared to Fall From Heaven 2, or rise from erebus though.

This game and the new elemental games are though interesting, move in the right direction.

 

[moraes]

So, the closed beta for this has just been announced. For anyone who's interested: www.paradoxplaza.com/press/2011/12/warl ... -announced

 

[Elwro]

I'm sticking with kyrub's patch for MoM. Amazing work.

 

[Mortmal]

+10 internets, for putting that to my attention, i completely forgot about it. Signed up, probably wont get it as usual...

 

[asper]

It just baffles the mind that MoM is still the best game in the genre it established, and that so few games like it have been made

 

[Mortmal]

yep and thats more than 10 years ago, its hard to find games with such sublte alchemy, i spent countless hours on it, i cant even explain why.
Maybe cause it calls my megalomaniac self, maybe , the graphic style , wich is still better than elemental, maybe the total freedom , many units and spells in gameplay .

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

yep and thats more than 10 years ago

Well, there are a lot of games that are still the best in their field, from more than 10 years ago...

 

[sser]

Looks great. I'm also looking forward to the Elemental sequel. I know that game is supposed to be total shit, but I'm really hoping they can get it together. Such a dearth of games like this.

 

[commie]

Fantasy Wars and Elven Legacy were great games, worthy of being regarded in the same breath as Fantasy General. If this is like that but with a more developed strategic element then it will be good. I don't expect MoM and I don't think this is the same kind of game exactly, but should be good nonetheless.

 

[Renegen]

I dont think Fantasy Wars and Elvan Legacy have anything to do with AoW or MoM, but they were great. A combination of wargames and RPG, turn based of course.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I think we need more types of Grand Strategy games period. Give me sci-fi 4x Grand Strategy, Fantasy Grand Strategy, Grand Strategy grand strategy...

 

[Shadenuat]

Ooh, hexes. I like hexes. There would be hexes, right?

Also, "Become a legendary Mage in the Majestic world of Ardania". Majestic!

 

[Malakal]

I think we need more types of Grand Strategy games period. Give me sci-fi 4x Grand Strategy, Fantasy Grand Strategy, Grand Strategy grand strategy...

This. Unfortunately currently only Paradox and affiliates make any of those so they all look same...

 

[catfood]

A ton of beta gameplay videos have been popping up on jewtube these past few weeks.



I watched through some of them and overall my impression of the game is:

- the game looks exactly like Civ 5; I'm not sure if that was a concious design decision or just a coincidence
- apparently it plays like Civ 5 too; I haven't played that game at all so I'm not sure how I feel about this; on one hand it's great that there are no more endless stacks of death like it could happen in some Civ games and their mods, but on the other hand I always liked having 'parties' of up to 8 units like MOM and AOW did; I dunno maybe it's just me but I liked having a good stack of units lead by a decent hero.. it just felt right; plus it was cool actually controlling them in battle yourself and AOW did a LOT to improve that aspect from MOM
- I think there won't be heroes or artifacts either, so there goes another degree of complexity from the game
- I like the constructing building outside of cities on tiles mechanic; you can also build defensive structures which can fire on units; cities now can do this as well by default so they won't easily fall prey to a lone unit with 0.1 defence if caught undefended;
- cities have 'hit points' so you can't just waltz into one; I guess it makes sense with the whole one unit on each tile thing
- researching spells looks boring; you only get to select what 'type of spell' you want to research; I want a full fucking list of possible spells like in MOM or Master of Mana dammit!
- also maybe it's just my limited knowledge based on the jewtube videos, but there won't be any terraforming type spells? that would really suck
- some balancing issues, for instance in that video that I posted the guy had a flying unit which had a ranged attack so it could attack enemy melee units with impunity; they didn't do a lot of damage but I assume that later on you could build more powerful flying ranged creatures which could imbalance the game
- I visited the official page and apparently there are only 3 races!!!!!???? WHAT THE FUCK IN MY TURN BASED 4X FANTASY GAMES I WANT A WHOLE BUTTLOAD OF RACES DAMMIT THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING APPEAL!!111
- none of the videos that I looked at got a good look at wizard creation but it didn't seem very indepth; guess we'll wait and see...
- apparently there are going to be several map layers!! (like Arcanus/Myrror in MOM); I'm curious what they'll be like

Overall the game looks kinda shallow and casual. I'm probably going to at least give it a try, but from what I've seen I don't know if it's a must play considering the fact that games like MOM, AOWSM and all of the FFH2 Civ4 mods out there exist. Not saying that there aren't any features in this one that distinguish it from the others, but it doesn't look like it offers the same depth as them.

 

[Gregz]

"Civ 5 fantasy version"

I think there won't be heroes or artifacts either

Yeah, if you're right I doubt I'll play this. Those RPG elements were a huge part of the appeal of Master of Magic.

 

[Yeesh]

I choose to remain cautiously optimistic. Some design decisions seem baffling, but maybe they're going for something which won't be clear until we can see the whole. I mean they've played MoM, and presumably they're not crazy.

Or it will just suck, but then officially speaking everything does anyway.

 

[kris]

Looks just like a Civ5 mod and as far as I can see is just that.

I feel I said this before. Did we have another thread like this or did the devil of Deja Vu posses me?

I guess I will try it out.

Overall the game looks kinda shallow and casual.

welcome to Civ5

 

[ran88dom99]

"Fall From Heaven 2" The horrible horrible tedious micromanagement.

Dominions 3 is the best MoM clone. Less balanced than MoM if thats any indication.
And the only units worth building in SM were the last ones and the worst part was they were all the same.

Warlock Master of Time and Space is a Civ 5 clone. Thank you Lua scripting language. I guess this pay for game means Civ 5 will never go Open Source. Thankfully this Civ 5 engine will only make the game badly tedious so i will be looking forward to it. Also hurrah there a Lua -ed tbs engine. Maybe it will be awesome like SpringRts but it has not become so atm so probably not. Oh wait a minute thats cause there's no multiplayer for modded games what bullshit.