Warlords III

[Urban Ranger]

Have you played Warlords III: the Reign of Heroes or its sequel, Warlords III: Darklords Rising?

If so, how do you like it/them?

[Skanky Burns]

Nothing beats Warlords 1. I played that countless times.

[da_jaymz]

I've played Darklord Rising, but after playing Age of wonders there's no way in hell I could come back and play another game of it..

[August Borms]

Never heard of it....

[loinburger]

I played Reign of Heroes, but didn't bother getting Darklords Rising since Reign of Heroes kept crashing on the piece of crap computer I had at the time.

I preferred Reign of Heroes over Warlords II; being restricted to only eight unit types was a bit painful at first, but the extra terrain features as well as the improved heroes (not every hero was identical, unlike in Warlords II) more than made up for this restriction.

It's a bit of a toss-up for me as to whether I preferred Warlords III or HoMM3. Generally I preferred HoMM3 owing to the more interesting hero development process, the tactical combat, and the ability to improve your cities, but I considered it extremely unfortunate that you had to have a Hero in your army in HoMM3.

[Zkribbler]

I've played both and liked them, but I enjoy being a good guy much mor than a bad guy.

I remember I once had a fairly cool WWII game. I played one game as the Nazis, had a great time running across France, then crushed the RAF, the RN and invaded England. I came ashore just east of Plymouth, drove north to Bristol, cleared out the Cornwall penisula, built up my forces, marched east to London and then north to York, at which time the Allies surrendered. At first, I was elated with my stunning success but then got to thinking about the ramifcations of a Nazi victory in WWII. The concept so depressed me that I never played the game again.

[Grumbold]

Warlords 1 was the game that persuaded me to get my first PC because it wasn't available for the Atari ST

[Andemagne]

I have played DarkLords Rising and liked it.
its a good game, but same strategy goes for every map.
in the beginning you take few towns, build up your forces and then take the rest of the towns. not fun in the long run.

[ravagon]

I liked the editor aspect of Warlords2 Deluxe, although Warlords3 does grow on you after a while.
Darklords I only picked up a few weeks ago so I have yet to really try it out (*bleeping* Morrowind is hogging all my time ).

[SnowFire]

Well, based off the strength of your recommendation, I actually would have picked up W3 and played more of it than the demo... if I ever found it. Which I didn't.

The biggest strike against W3, in my mind, was the combat system. I hated the lack of strategy...

Zkribbler: Eh, my story is better. Ever play the game PTO2? Stands for Pacific Theatre of Operations (and it was a sequel), and it was done by Koei representing WW2 in the Pacific. This is back when my newest computer was still an old Amiga 500, so I was stuck with Koei's offerings for my strategy fix on the SNES. Anyway, if you've ever played a Koei game, they aren't well play balanced. At all. I started as the Japanese in November of 1941, and without any need for any silly Pearl Harbor, I conquered all of the Pacific, basically, by May of 1942 (this is at a turn a day, so that's still a lot of playing). Due to the lack of a good alliance system, I got to watch the allies all fall separately- declare war on teh USA December 3rd, take the Phillipines, declare war on Holland soon after and take Indonesia, then declare war on Britain and take Singapore & HK... you get the idea. I got to decide when every player entered the war, so Australia happily stood by neutral while their British allies got wailed on. And oh yes, pilots were apperantly the biggest bunch of wimps ever in WW2- they refuse to fly at all in rain or fog. And they all put their aircraft nicely at the one central, shoreside airstrip. Yup, the battleship is still the queen of the seas, because it simply sails into port whenever it's foggy and bombs the bejeezus out of the airfield, destroying it and all the planes there. Battleships could also destroy all the land forces guarding a coastal base (most of 'em) without retalitation (something the computer was slow on grasping). No, the troops cannot move a few miles inland to easily evade this. This might make sense on Iwo Jima or another Pacific Isle, but in New Guinea or Indonesia?! Anyway, I quickly ruled all of SE Asia, India was a breeze to take, and I eventually invaded the States, taking all of the West coast and I was about to collapse the East Coast when I got my win condition.

And oh yes, this wasn't strictly neccessary. The computer does not have a clue how to manage their economy. You do the budget each month, playing a card game with the other advisors to see whose proposal goes through, and let me assure you that everybody else's budget plan is stupid- they never allocate enough funds for "general purposes" which increases your GNP, i.e. more money next month! In other words, without a human player to bring some reason to the table, the computer will naturally ruin their economy and send their GNP to 0! (perhaps semi-realistic, but it's not hard to avoid in the game!) That was a win condition, by the way. So another way to win would simply be to wait and let your opponent spend himself to destruction.

Ah yes, the point of all this. Koei is a Japanese company. Even still, I expected the result of a Japanese victory to be some interesting post-apocalyptic style hell, say with Japan stabbing Germany in the back, brutal treatment of the conquered Americans, nukes going off all over in 1947, etc. Nope! Everything is hunky-dory! Apperantly a Japanese conquest means happy celebrations for the returning sailors now that the war is over and Asia is happily united under its Japanese masters! Maybe that'll fly in Japan, but I can't believe that the translators left it like that!

After that, I almost never played the game again.

[Urban Ranger]

There are some strategies to Warlords 3, mainly in how to arrange your stacks so maximum bonuses are achieved. There are also decisions to make, the big one being whether you should let your hero(es) charge out to search the ruins for artifacts or let them complete quests for experience points. Both experience and artifacts are important to build up your heroes, so that's usually quite tough.

Other decisions to make are how fast the expansion should be and whom should you attack first. Eventually all computer players end up hating you except for those whom are allied to you at the beginning of a scenario. So it is just a matter of time that you need to face a war on all fronts.


Zkribbler: Was that PG3D?

[loinburger]

There's also the strategic decision of whether you want to hold on to as many cities as you can (despite the high costs of defending so many cities), or whether you want to just burn your enemy's cities to the ground. Nothing hurts the enemy war effort more than a super-stack razing its way to to the capitol.

Strategy really comes into play when you make a custom race, also. (This isn't allowed in either HoMM3 or HoMM4, AFAIK).

[Rex Little]

I played and liked Reign of Heroes (not as well as Warlords II, but well enough). Never tried Darklords Rising; is it different enough from Reign to be worth buying if I already have RoH?

[St Leo]

The biggest strike against W3, in my mind, was the combat system. I hated the lack of strategy...

The biggest strike against HoMM3, in my mind, is the combat system. I hate the fact that both AutoCombat and QuickCombat gave worse results while the Tactical Combat against the AI wasn't all that challenging.

[Andemagne]

Originally posted by St Leo
The biggest strike against HoMM3, in my mind, is the combat system. I hate the fact that both AutoCombat and QuickCombat gave worse results while the Tactical Combat against the AI wasn't all that challenging.

jeeesh but sometimes autocombat could defeate AI with superior force, which would have been impossible to human player.

[St Leo]

jeeesh but sometimes autocombat could defeate AI with superior force, which would have been impossible to human player.

Lol. I assure you that it's very possible. BTW, I've just reinstalled Warlords III because the following c.s.i.p.g.s crash-fixing message:

Add -wincurs to the shortcut....The target should look something like this
(your path may vary):

"C:\Program Files\Warlords III - Darklords Rising\Darklord.exe" -wincurs

I've also turned off the music....I run the WL3 mp3s from Battlecry 2's site
using Windows Media Player....better quality and no lockups...I did leave
sounds on...

[SnowFire]

Perhaps the AI in Heroes combat games isn't entirely brillant. It's true, I've mastered how it works and thus know exactly how to exploit its weaknesses. That said, Heroes has a wonderful scenario editor... use it! Smart Heroes maps will have you fairly badly outnumbered, so it will take all those tactical smarts to win. There's a lot of honor in valiantly winning a battle against all odds through careful unit positioning & spell use.

I almost never use Autocombat in pretty much any game, anyway.

[loinburger]

Autocombat is awful in pretty much every game with tactical combat. In Lords of the Realm a hundred spearmen and a hundred bowmen will always decimate armies of hundreds of peasants (so long as the units are correctly placed, of course), so long as the player controls the units. If autocombat is used, then hordes of peasants will always win, even against knights. Utter crap, especially since you can't fight a tactical battle against a human opponent.

IIRC, MoO2 is the exact same way.

[SnowFire]

Yup. The difference is that the Heroes system is insanely fun to win with, while using archers & chokepoints to murder your enemies in LOTR2 can get old after awhile (and I only played the demo!).

Kinda realistic, though (just look at the battle of Crecy).

I will say that from what little I've seen, AOw2's autocombat isn't too bad. AOW's was okay too, if you don't mind perfect usage of archers (they always fire first) & your heroes enjoying spell use way too much (I autoed this battle because it was easy, my hero! No need to great hail the goblin dog!)

[loinburger]

My biggest beef with LOTR2 was that you couldn't starve somebody out of their castle, nor could you sit back pounding it with trebuchets for several seasons before finally storming it. Also, I'd have liked to be able to build my own castle, rather than being limited to the types they provided you with. (Does the Siege Pack provide more castles, and/or the ability to create your own castles? Anybody know?)

Any idea how the tactical system is supposed to work in Warlords IV? I read that they're changing that part of the game, but I don't recall if they're making it real-time or turn-based or whatever have you.

[Urban Ranger]

Rex,

Darklords Rising fixes some bugs, adds new hero classes, and fixes some imbalances. It has also added some new campaigns and there is an editor.


loin,

Yeah, in LotR 2, I can kill every enemy stacks with archers, except bigger stacks of archers. I am not aware that they have a Warlords IV, or is working on one. At least there's nothing on the SSG website.

[yaroslav]

I played Reign of Heroes and like it too much. I haven't played Warlords I, II, and Darklord Rising. In fact, I think that Darklod Rising has not been published in Spain

Warlords III run smoothly on my computer, what is more that I can say now about some games...

As a sad history, the room where I have my computer and my games get burn, and I loose my original copy of Warlords III

Since then, I haven't played, so I don't remember quite well

[Urban Ranger]

That's bad. Sorry to hear it.

[loinburger]

I've seen it in a few bargain bins. With a bit of hunting you ought to be able to turn up a copy.

[Urban Ranger]

Drat. Are you sure you weren't looking at Warlords Battlecry?

[loinburger]

I've seen far more copies of Battlecry, but I do remember seeing at least one copy of Darklords Rising.

[yaroslav]

Well, in Spain is more difficult to hunt for a game, but I will try. Thank you, people

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by loinburger
I've seen far more copies of Battlecry, but I do remember seeing at least one copy of Darklords Rising.

Darklords Rising isn't Warlords IV though, just a standalone addon to The Reign of Heroes.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Darklords Rising isn't Warlords IV though, just a standalone addon to The Reign of Heroes.

Ah, I thought you were referring to my seeing Warlords III in the bargain bin. The article I read was definitely in reference to Warlords IV, not Battlecry or Darklords Rising. (Can't remember the magazine, might have been PC Gamer?)

[loinburger]

Here ya go, a Warlords IV preview of your very own.