It's baaaack.

The wars of Illuria couldn't be contained.

I've jumped platforms to experience Warlords III, released five or six weeks ago for Windows 95.

First impressions of the game are great. The graphics have been significantly upgraded, now each nation controls its own unique (or customized!) army sets, and heroes can cast spells. There's even a campaign of sorts... which is actually nothing more than a series of Warlords games strung together with an arbitrary story line.

After playing the game for some time, however, it loses a bit of its luster. I'd call it Warlords II & 1/2 rather than a full III. Other than the graphics and the added twist of heroes being able to cast spells, the game is basically identical in game-play terms to its predecessor. There have been some improvements: armies can vector from one castle to another, embarking and disembarking from boats doesn't end a stack's movement, and the variety of army types (with the inclusion of missiles and assassins) makes for good replay value. Custom army sets are a real boon. But overall this isn't the leap that Warlords I to Warlords II represented.

Don't get me wrong, I love Warlords. Why else would I have written now three articles about the game? Warlords III offers the same great turn based strategy of its predecessors, but I admit to wanting just a bit more.

Like a map editor. There was a shareware editor for Warlords II floating around and a ton of maps showed up. Seems like a perfect opportunity to have made a professional level map editor.

And here's a request for a real change in game play: I'd like to see clusters of castles on larger maps. Leave the number of castles as is, but increase the map size and group castles so that a player can secure a group and move on. Right now, each castle is weighted about equally. Movement values are such that castles are strategically equal. An army can cross the entire map in around five or so turns. It usually takes only one or two turns to make it to the edge of an enemy's territory. If the maps were bigger and castles were grouped (so that they weren't equally spaced on a large map) the strategies for taking territory would differ radically. No longer could you send out a hero stack, take a single castle, and move troops from neighboring castles immediately. You'd have to cross oceans or navigate true mountain passes. You'd have to move groups of stacks. You'd have to plan ahead. The game would be far more interesting.

Another change in game play would be far more programming intensive, but I'd argue would add more depth to the game. I'd like to see walls in the game. Allow players to build walls for defense. Make it so that no army could pass unless it attacked the wall for a few turns... or perhaps build a specific army unit (battering ram?). In Warlords, focused defense is largely impossible. One wins the game by being more aggressive than one's enemies. If some part of the game hindered movement on an enemy's front lines, then strategy would become even more compelling. The problem with Warlords is that a front line is identical to a rear area in that both are almost equally accessible to an enemy. This boils down to players needing to equally defend all their castles or risk leaving a seriously vulnerable hole in their nation. If players were able to establish "Maginot" lines of defense, planning offensives would be far more challenging.

Overall Warlords III is a welcome upgrade. There are enough new features to justify the fifty bucks and the up-to-date graphics are a welcome sight. Bottomline is that I'd like to see some more attention paid to game play -- with a few changes the strategy of Warlords could be significantly improved -- but in whole the game is a welcome addition to my addictions.

-- Scott
October 31, 1997.

"Scott's Addictions" are postings about the games I play as I play them. When a game captures my interest and becomes a front-burner favorite, I'll post a tidbit or two here for you fellow gamers to enjoy. I'll only post the best games of my crop. No ratings, just ravings. And I'm semi-agnostic: I love the Mac, tolerate my PC, and split time on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

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