For those thinking of getting Warlords

[mkorin]

I'll summerize first, I contend that Warlords is not worth the money. I expected gameplay improvements and got nothing more than bells and whistles and not really good ones at that. I probably would have bought it anyway, because I'm addicted, but this was a patch at best and Firaxis should be ashamed to charge for it.

Pros:
Graphics are actually better. (So what)

I like the UB concept.

The UU for Korea and Zula is great. I wonder if they were that good historically

Great Wall is very usefull on large and bigger maps.

University at Shankar is too powerfull if you own a state religion and spread it around. Which I always try to do.

More Scenerio (which are for hippies)

More resources. It seems to me that I have more resources than before. Could just be really good luck.

Capitulation (Speeds the end game) This is easily the best part of the game. If you generally play to Dom. wins and get tired of the mop up, this alone is worth the money

Cons:
UU for Vikings and Chartage is pitiful. A beserker should have a higher strength than it's counterpart, not just the lame ability to attack from the water. This is only useful if you are playing on islands.

Scenerios are for hippies. Why pay $25.00 for scenerios when you can make them or download them from others.

New leaders for some nations: Big deal, you have a new face to look at in diplomacy.

Water traffic/battles is still horrible. they had it right in SMAC, why did they go backwards.

The AI may actually be stupider (based on the four games I played). Why someone would go to war with a civilization that it can't reach puzzles me everytime. Plus scorced earth may be a good way to wear down or piss off an advisary, but not a way to win wars. While you burn my crops, I'll destroy your cities and ambush your crop burners

No real change to how the game is played. Conquest changed CivIII to the point where you almost had to relearn how to play. Warlords has almost no rule or gameplay changes.

Artemis Temple is not a Wonder in with a captial W
Great Wall does not move with the borders, despite that the effects do.

Great Generals are just not great. I was hoping for a superunit like the armies from before, but just got a lame unit with a few more promotions. Also, they appear way to slowly. I just played a 3 AI game and was at war almost 100% of the time and only got 2 before I won a domination game. Other great people are born much faster.

I would invite any comments or discussion on these points. My goal is too give others something to use when deciding whether they should spend the money.
Mike

[rah]

The AI/barbs actually appear smarter in Warlords. They now bybass that unit fortified on the hill/forest that they used to all kill themselves against. It seems they've highered the threashold of odds to win before they'll actually attack in the open field. (unless objectives override it, if you're sitting on their iron, ) Now you have to think more when defending in the open field when you have limited resources. It sure surprised me the first time those barbs just bypassed that first unit.

[Proteus_MST]

I disagree, especialy with the great Generals.

IMHO they´re very useful, either giving your unit 20 XP at once (or all of the units at the same tile an equal fraction thereof), which means that a GG, if you give them to just one unit (and choose the correct one) gives you instant access to heroic epic and westpoint (as long as you have the necessary technologies) as you are able to promote a unit to the levels needed for this.
And you can (instead of adding him to a unit) choose to make him a great specialist, either giving every unit built there 2 XP more or, or lowering ther building times by 25%.

This makes the GG IMHO much more powerful and more versatilen than the army from Civ III.

As for the speed of GG generation: Probably you played your game at epic or marathon speed.
I agree (with many other players here) that it isn´t suitable to double/triple the XP needed for GGs at epic/marathon.
But this is something which can be solved by altering a single line within an XML-File, so I don´t see a problem there (for example I have modded it in a way that in marathon mode you just need 1.5 times the XP you would need for a GG on normal speed, instead of 3 times.


I agree that they could have introduced more changes into the addon, but with the 3 new traits, the UBs, the new wonders (especially the great wall) and the great generals and the 2 new units (especially the Trebuchet, a real powerful siege weapon) you have a lot of material which can make it worthwile to change your strategies.

So generally I disagree that the addon isn´t worth the money. I for my part can say that I´m glad that I have bought it.

[rah]

And I usually am a warmonger, so I really think warlords was worth the money. I did get 10 warlords the first game and 6 the second. Both time Imper. But I lost the first game and easily won the second game (emp).
The vassal is fun. In my second game the chinese had a vassal. I kept looking at the stats and beat the chinese down so their vassal would break free. The turn after they could free themselves I asked and they became my vassal. The next turn the Chinese capitulated so game over. It was just starting to get tedious, so it was perfect timing.

I've already gotten what I percieved my money's worth out of this. But in all fairness, I haven't been a poor college student in 30 years so the cost was considered minimal.

[mkorin]

Bypassing armies in the field to destroy crops etc makes sense for barbarians. However, barbs should be different than a civilzation that onces to take you over. If you ignore my troops and cities to randomly destroy improvements. You've left yourself wide open to counter attack, lost cities, and no supply lines. A basic rule of combat is leave no enemies in your rear.

Mike

[Stuie]

Originally posted by rah
It was just starting to get tedious, so it was perfect timing.

That's what I love about vassals - I hardly EVER finished Domination games before because it just got tedious mopping up the already screwed AI Civs. With Warlords, my first victory was Domination thanks to one permanent ally and five of the six other civs vassalized. The game was actually fun right up through my victory.

Originally posted by mkorin
Great Wall does not move with the borders, despite that the effects do.

This is a "con"? Most walls don't move after you build them. Or are you suggesting the effects should only apply inside the wall as opposed to the cultural border?

I also disagree with your "this is a patch" statement. Patches are meant to fix bugs, not to add new content/concepts/art work/etc.

[rah]

I'll agree with the leave no enemies behind but when those solo and pairs of ai units come in now, you can't count on them attacking at crappy odds to solve your problem. Now you're forced to attack (as it should be)
You will lose more units than in the old version.

[mkorin]

Great wall not moving is a con in that the effects of the great wall does move with the borders. Just an inconsistancy that bothers me. They have that really cool graphic and don't get the best out of it.


As to the cost and it being an upgrade rather than expansion pack. I agree $25 is not a lot of money, and a patch should be for fixes etc. However, I maintain that three new wonders, leaders, more scenarios that I don't play, and most of the rest of the 'new' features are not new extentions of the game. Just a new paint job onto basically the same game.

It is possible I am not playing the GG correctly. Obviously, I am not going to give up on Warlords so I'll keep trying different things.

Capitulation is the only truely new thing and I love that. I almost always win on Dom as I get too bored to do it any other way and speeding up the tedius endgame alone was worth the money (to me).

I expected more from Firaxis and maybe my disappointment is more from that than anything else.

[Blake]

It's hard to disagree. THe warlords AI is pretty dumb. You just need a few more spearmen and horse archers, to properly counter the AI's new love of mounted and siege units.

And if you're ever in trouble, just let the AI take a city and then city raider them into submission, the AI loves nothing more than throwing no-defense units into a city being hammered by city raiders.

The AI simply can't use Great Generals (as per my Great Comedians thread, were the AI does pretty much EVERYTHING wrong with one), it can't generate a third as many as the player. Great Generals provide much more benefit to humans.


By the way at the moment there's a flaw where Great Generals generate slower on Marathon speed - basically you get about half as many as you should in a given game. For best results just play Warlords on normal speed.


As for Vassal States... they are a nice force of chaos and are entertaining, but don't really introduce much new strategy. They also work differently for the AI and Human:
AI accepts a vassal at war with the Human - Human is forced into war with the AI.
Human accepts a vassal at war with the AI - AI is forced into peace with the Human.

I mean erm, shouldn't it be consistent?

Meh.

[mkorin]

I'll agree with the leave no enemies behind but when those solo and pairs of ai units come in now, you can't count on them attacking at crappy odds to solve your problem. Now you're forced to attack (as it should be)
You will lose more units than in the old version. -RAH



This has not been my experience yet. Granted 4 games is not everything, but I'm seeing AIs bypass poorly defended cities to destroy a road behind it.

[mkorin]

Can someone tell me how you cut and paste a quote so it gets the blue box etc.

[Proteus_MST]

Either use the "quote"-Button

or put [ quote] at the beginning (without the space between [ and q)
and [/ quote] at the end (without the space between / and q) of the text.

[Nikolai]

Either use the "reply with quote" tag(easiest) or copy/paste inside [quote] ["/quote] without the " before the /.

[MightyTiny]

Never mind... I see I just replied to a question that was already answered to twise!

[rah]

Originally posted by mkorin

This has not been my experience yet. Granted 4 games is not everything, but I'm seeing AIs bypass poorly defended cities to destroy a road behind it.

Not experienced that yet. But I'm usualy on the offensive.
I'll destroy/block roads by AI cities to prevent reinforcements quite often. So maybe that was added and the AI is just executing it poorly like it does everything else.

I guess my point is that they changed the programming for the AI and in certain circumstances it looks smarter. But, remember the base line we're comparing it to.

I'm just playing SP to experience the new units and leaders before I start playing MP, where I'm not concerned about what the AI can do, since we don't add any AIs when we play.