So, how does Warlock: Master of the Arcane hold up to FfH?

[isitanos]

I've been playing Warlock: Master of the Arcane (developed by Ino Co of Fantasy Wars/Elven Legacy fame, and published by Paradox) quite a bit these days. It has quite a few similarities to FfH and is clearly inspired by it in places, so I thought I'd ask you guys how you think it holds up to it.

Some quick thoughts:

- Both games have multiplayer (recently added to Warlock, in beta), random maps, cities, barbarian mobs to kill, lairs to conquer for goodies, heroes, artifacts, unit level-ups and upgrades.

- Warlock has hex based combat with 1 unit per tile, and it actually works well, unlike another game .

- Warlock's magic system and unit upgrades feel better integrated to the world... to me magic always felt slapped on the Civ IV engine in FfH. You can learn magic spells to upgrade units, throw fireballs at them, bless/curse units, cities and opponents, summon creatures... no tech tree though, you pick from a semi-randomized pool every time.

- Warlock's religion system is simplistic but rewarding. Basically you build temples to various gods and get rewarded by access to their unique spells; if your alignment toward a god is strong enough the opposite deity sends its avatar to destroy you and you can win the game by killing it.

- FfH background universe is much, much more interesting. Warlock races are interesting in terms of the variety of units (and you can access units from other races by conquering their cities), but lack the flavor, character and unique mechanics of the FfH ones.

- Warlock's city-building is very streamlined and mainly centered around gaining control of sites that unlock special buildings/units, I actually like this gameplay-wise as I prefer the fighting/spellcasting part of FfH to its empire management side. But it also means that there's less cool stuff to discover than FfH.

- Warlock's dev support is pretty incredible, they've added multiplayer, heroes, artifacts and extra terrain effects on units and economy post-release and released a new race as DLC, and so far all changes have only improved the game IMO. So I think that any areas that are currently shallow (like the alternate planes that are not so interesting as yet) have a high chance of being fleshed out in the future.

So again, if anybody has played both Warlock: Master of the Arcane and FfH (or Orbis, or Wildmana, or Master of Mana, or...), I'd be curious to hear how you think they size up to each other, and what your hopes are for the future of Warlock. Let's all wildly speculate .

 

[Folket]

I think FFH is better then Warlock.

Warlock feels like an endless brawl. Perhaps that is because I play it on most difficult level, but then I still win so I can't go down.

 

[tesb]

i don't think they are comparable. warlock is a tactical combat game with 4x just painted over it, FFH is the opposite. personally i enjoy both very much. if only they would enable modding for warlock *sigh*

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

warlock is cool but the empire building side of the game is way too shallow to compare to FFH or even Civ5

 

[isitanos]

I agree they are rather different games, but at the root they're both inspired by Master of Magic... my comparison is kind of based on that.

And yeah, I hope Warlock opens up to modding as well. I think they went for ease of development rather than modability, but here's hoping they open up after a while. More companies need to follow the example of Firaxis and give us a gameplay .dll

 

[Sephi]

I think I played a total of like 5 hours warlock or so

There are some good ideas in the game, but a lot feels pretty underwhelming. Spellresearch seems completly random, so you can end up researching one of the most powerful spell first and everything you get after that doesn't really matter much.

Same thing for units. You just need a resource like donkeys (which isn't really rare) and a level 2 city close to it and you can build some really strong units. Then just spam cities and units and easy win. And if you go for role playing / sandbox mode the game is so streamlined that for me it feels really boring to me. But then I have been spoiled by Master of Magic and Civilization

If they fix the balance (so it doesn't feel like you have won by turn 50) and make tactical warfare more interesting by adding mechanics like flanking or defensive fire the game could actually become quite good.

 

[Acrux]

I'd never heard of the game until this thread, but I love the lore in the Majesty series (M1+expansion still being the best). I'll definitely check this out now.

 

[esvath]

Warlock is too simple to be compared with FfH. Its focus is on combat, with minimal empire management. I like pkaying Warlocks for some skirmish games, and quit (or restart) after I have dominant force.

The Lords and Artifacts introduce a rpg-ish experience and make the game more interesting. Too bad the Elves is too imba, imho.