Introduction:
Warlords III is the latest in the Warlords series of strategy and conquest games.
While this third version of Warlords has some differences from the previous two editions,
the overall premise is the same. Take over cities, which produce military units, assemble
the produced units to capture or destroy your opponents cities, and when you capture all
other players cities, you win.What it is about:
 While the idea is simple, the many factors that come into playing a
game of Warlords III make it complex to master. While a player can win by simply capturing
cities and building masses of armies, there are a number of additional factors into making
"the perfect army" to conquer the world. No single faction has a distinct
advantage, and winning is tough without a good strategy and a little luck.
One of the first things I want to explain about
Warlords III is the general game idea. The goal is to conquer the world. To conquer the
world you need to own many powerful armies, to get powerful armies you need cities to
produce them, to get cities you need armies to take them over, and I think you get the
idea. Each player controls a single faction in each Warlords III scenario. Each faction
has it's own distinct troop types. For example, a player controlling the Dwarves would be
able to create dwarven infantry and dwarven crossbowmen that take a number of hits, but
aren't the best fighters around. The Horse Lords on the other hand have incredible
cavalry, but their units excel in speed, not fighting ability. Each faction has it's own
strengths and weaknessess, and overall, the game seems to balance the different factions
pretty well.
The first step in Warlords III is to conquer cities
to produce your armies. There are a number of differing strategies to use to conquer a
number of cities. From my experience the best strategy is the "perfect army"
approach. This strategy means creating the best army possible that can't possibly lose.
Then march this army around and take over everything in sight. Because the "perfect
army" embodies a number of new features in Warlords III, I'll take some time to
describe how to create this army. One major feature of a perfect army is its heroes. These
Heroes can increase the power of any armies that are grouped with it. Heroes also gain
experience for things like completing quests and winning battles. Given enough experience,
a hero can raise a level and when he does you can assign him bonuses, abilities and
spells. Heroes can also search ruins that are scattered about the map. These ruins can
provide a player with gold, magical items, or powerful allies. This might make ruins sound
pretty good, but there is one down side. Ruins may contain powerful monsters that your
hero will have to face alone. Your hero may not die often to these dragons and ghosts, but
when he does, you'll kick yourself for having risked your hero one to many times. With all
these abilities a hero is one of the most versatile of units around.
Other factors to consider when creating a perfect army are the
combat strengths of your units as well as their special abilities. Each unit in the game
has it's own combat strength, a measure of the unit's effectiveness in battle. While units
with higher combat strengths are more likely to win fights, there are other factors to
consider when deciding what units to use. There are abilities such as leadership or
morale, which provide a bonus to the combat values of all units in a stack. Usually heroes
provide these kinds of bonuses, but some powerful creatures also give bonuses to creatures
stacked with them. There are also abilities that subtract from the combat bonus of your
opponents. Abilities such as chaos, fear, and siege reduce bonuses that opposing armies
get, as well as reduce their overall combat strength. Finding a group with the maximum
bonus is the real key to creating a winning army. There are a few other new abilities
given to units. Units may now have a "missile" attack, which allows free shots
before combat begins, or an "assassin" ability, which functions like the
"missile" attack. The major difference with the "assassin" ability is
that the assassin has the same percentage chance to kill its opponent, no matter what the
power of the opponent. All these abilities provide a number of differing units, each with
their own specialities.
Unfortunately a single player doesn't get the
opportunity to make all these units. A player is restricted to producing units that their
group can produce. For example, if I was playing Warlords III with the "Horse
Lords" faction, I couldn't produce dwarven infantry or goblins, just because the
Horse Lords specialize in horses and human troops. In the previous versions of Warlords, a
player could make whatever units a city could produce, independent of which faction they
were playing. Although this made some strange combinations, like Dwarven factions making
skeletons, it was nonetheless fun. It seems that limiting the units a player can produce
is the only major step backward from previous Warlords versions.
One new thing that is included in Warlords III is
the single player campaign game. In this campaign, the player controls the Sirian Knights
in a number of linked scenarios against the evil Lord Bane. Throughout the scenarios you
are constantly rallying your knights and pegasi against the undead armies of Bane, taking
the fight to different parts of the world, both above ground and below ground. One of the
nicest features of the campaign game is the ability to keep your experienced heroes
between scenarios. By the end of the campaign game I ended up with a hero that almost
couldn't die. Taking heroes from one scenario to the next also gives the separate levels
some sense of cohesion. The levels feel like they are linked in some way because the same
characters are appearing over and over.
The campaign game is very well made and challenging,
although the only complaint I have is the way that the latter levels use vast amounts of
troops to compensate for a weak AI. While this it is common to substitute troops for an
intelligent computer player, its still a let down to know you lost simply because you
started with many fewer troops.
Overall Warlords III is a step in the right direction. It's fun game
play, simplicity, improved graphics, interesting sounds and excellent units make it a
great game. I know I've played it for hours and hours simply to see what all the new units
do. Warlords III is fun because of its simplicity, easy interface, and interesting idea.
While Warlords III is a step in the right direction,
I would still compare it to taking two steps forward and one step back. Warlords III did
remove one of the more fun features of the game when they limited what troop types each
player could build. While this is more realistic, I have to say it's a negative aspect of
the game.
Warlords III is a fun game, and if you've never
tried any kind of strategy, this is a good one to start with. I have enjoyed playing
Warlords III immensely, and I recommend it to all game players.
--David Korus |
