Why no love for Warlords 3 Darklords Rising?

[Makabb]

Homm here and there...... but the best is W3 ! (darklords rising is the standalone update to reign of heroes which contains the base game if someone doesn't know)

 

[thesheeep]

The thing is just barely known, as it came out at a pretty bad time for the genre, really.

I played Warlords 4 and due to its simplicity never had any interest in the other games of the series.
Of course, I didn't know then that Warlords 3 is so much better.

 

[Commissar Draco]

Ah the fond memories of Commissar first game bought in box come back; the campy as frack cut scenes movies with real actors and C-class vibe; the sexist art work addressed to fracking white male teens; the epic soundtrack:

(((They))) don't make such games anymore in 2017.

 

[thesheeep]

They surely don't.

...
http://gemsofwar.com/

 

[Ranarama]

Well sure, all that and the fact that it's no longer for sale outside of eBay, and source code for the full patched DR exe was lost.

Dunno, petition Steve Faulkner for a release I guess.

 

[thesheeep]

Well sure, all that and the fact that it's no longer for sale outside of eBay, and source code for the full patched DR exe was lost.

Dunno, petition Steve Faulkner for a release I guess.

Wouldn't even be that unlikely, he also released the sources for Warlords Battlecry 3 (under NDA). Which is how all the mods and fan patches were created.

 

[markec]

Great game, I do hope we will see it on GoG with the rest of the series.

Its about damn time we get some more good old strategy games on GoG.

 

[Makabb]

Having it with full music support and working on windows 7 from gog would be a dream come true.


This game is vastly underrated, and some elements are even more fun than Heroes of might and magic 3

 

[Makabb]

 

[Makabb]

They surely don't.

...
http://gemsofwar.com/

From Warlords series to making puzzle games

 

[Makabb]

I remember playing demo of original Warlords 3, came in a videogame mag. Cool game, took me a good while until I "got" it.

Downloaded it full once, but didn't play much.

Adding to my list.

Man you should totaly play Darklords Rising, everything is a lot better balanced and Darklords Rising provides campaign for the 'evil' side.

Base W3 is solid but the expansion makes it even better.

 

[thesheeep]

To be fair, the first two Puzzle Quest games were actually pretty good. Well done merging of two so far unrelated genres.
They just should've stopped after that and focused on something else instead of completely removing the RPG aspect and dumbing it down very much to appease the mobile crowd.

Then again, I guess they need to feed some mouths...

 

[Archibald]

Then again, I guess they need to feed some mouths...

I remember reading couple of interviews with Fawkner about his Puzzle Quest type games and it looked like he genuinely loves Bejeweled games. IIRC his main motivation for making Puzzle Quest was that he'd play Bejeweled every day and at one point said to himself "I gotta make my own Bejeweled". So sure, playing bills is a factor, but I think he genuinely enjoys working on Gems of War.

Edit: Also, if I'm not mistaken he is unable to re-release older Warlords games. I just don't remember exactly if its rights issue or the fact that source code was lost at some point.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Really enjoyed the Warlords series. Warlords 2 was the only one I owned - never was able to get my hands on a copy of W3, for some reason. But it's such an incredibly addicting game. Definitely on the simple end of the spectrum, but that's not a criticism - sometimes you want to boot up Dominions and go crazy with a million units and options, but sometimes you just want a more straightforward, board game-y experience, and Warlords is awesome for that. So much fun. Also I'm really impressed that it had a Domination victory (to use Civ language) way back in the early 90s - once you conquered enough of the map to have a basically insurmountable lead, the other factions would all surrender to you, which you could accept or decline. This needs to be in more games. By far the worst part of any 4X game is that final slog - when you've reached the point where your victory is a foregone conclusion, but you have to play out until it actually happens anyway. Warlords just cut that straight out, and said "Hey, if you enjoy the mop-up? Keep going! Otherwise, congratulations! You've won!"

It also gave birth to one of my other favourite franchises, Age of Wonders. People always think of Age of Wonders as being a spiritual successor to MoM, but AoW 1 was Warlords all the way.

 

[RuySan]

Yes, even the interface of AoW was similar to the one on the Warlords games. I've seen mostly reviewers comparing AoW not to MOM (which would have been stupid either way), but to HOMM. Who gives these clueless people jobs?

I played the first one on the amiga to death, and played the 2nd one a lot when I got my first PC, even though we were already well into CD ROM age. W2, unlike W1, wasn't restricted to a single map, and that was enough for me to make it one of the best games ever.

 

[Archibald]

I think that for a long time there was this idea that turn based games are either like Civ or like HoMM. And to be honest this perception probably still exists among mainstream gamers.

 

[thesheeep]

I think that for a long time there was this idea that turn based games are either like Civ or like HoMM. And to be honest this perception probably still exists among mainstream gamers.

Define mainstream gamers.

 

[Archibald]

Well, thats a hard one. Maybe better wording would be that people who are not very interested in turn based games tend to know only about Civ and HoMM? As such comparing AoW to HoMM starts making a bit more sense.

 

[RuySan]

HOMM was released only in '95, so if any "journalist" thinks that, he should kill himself.

The other day I was thinking that's a bit silly how many gaming journalists are so young. You can be young and be a good music critic, since it doesn't take that much time (in comparative terms) to listen to music and learn the history of it. But if you're writing about gaming, that's another different story.

 

[octavius]

The first two Warlords games reminded me of the old Empire game.
The problem with these games was that the combat is so simplistic, just one unit against another with no modifiers, which was just too boring for me.
Did later Warlord games make combat more interesting?

 

[markec]

The first two Warlords games reminded me of the old Empire game.
The problem with these games was that the combat is so simplistic, just one unit against another with no modifiers, which was just too boring for me.
Did later Warlord games make combat more interesting?

In Warlords 3 things like terrain or town fortifications influences unit stats also almost every unit has some special ability just like heroes who get those abilities while leveling up or equipping items. Those abilities range from bonuses on some type or terrain, skills that raise allied army stats, lower enemy stats, giving small chance of instant kill and many others. Some of those skills cancel out each other for example if you had Leadership (or is it Morale) skill that raise unit stats and counters Terror which lowers them, If I remember correctly each skill has 5 ranks and if you have level 3 Leadership and enemy level 5 Terror you will suffer level 2 Terror.

During main campaign you transfer your hero between missions and after each battle you get to upgrade one of your units.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

once you conquered enough of the map to have a basically insurmountable lead, the other factions would all surrender to you, which you could accept or decline. This needs to be in more games. By far the worst part of any 4X game is that final slog - when you've reached the point where your victory is a foregone conclusion, but you have to play out until it actually happens anyway. Warlords just cut that straight out, and said "Hey, if you enjoy the mop-up? Keep going! Otherwise, congratulations! You've won!"

Ha! I remember this blew my mind when I first saw it. Wait, the AI surrendered? This can happen? Why don't other games have this?

The first two Warlords games reminded me of the old Empire game.
The problem with these games was that the combat is so simplistic, just one unit against another with no modifiers, which was just too boring for me.
Did later Warlord games make combat more interesting?

It is very simplistic in the way that it's always 1 unit vs 1 unit until one side is dead, yes, but there's a lot of modifiers that different units give to your or opponent's army so you can't just take armies composed of the best unit you have (well, you can but it can get countered very hard with right debuffs, there are also units with banding that get better the more of them you have in one army), there are some units like dragons or elementals that can destroy multiple "mid-tier good stuff" armies because of their high attack but they in turn might get countered by assassination from cheap gnolls. Composition is important. Plus it makes the game a lot faster than something like HoMM. Warlords 4 had a branching leveling system for all units that was pretty nice even if the game itself wasn't as good as 3.

 

[MRY]

One of my first game jobs was writing publicity fiction for Warlords IV, but to tell the truth, I thought the series was at its best in WL1 and maybe WL2. The changed graphical style and increased complexity of the third lost some of the charm of the earlier ones. I played WL1 to death -- both vs. AI and vs. friends -- and its simplicity and imbalance was part of the charm. It had all these features that, even when I was a kid and especially once I became a designer myself, spoke to me of a new developer who didn't really think everything through. Like the whole mechanic of dwarves getting a bonus on hills proved to be totally meaningless because the hills were so slow to cross (even for dwarves) that there were almost never any fights on them.

Anyway, the short version is Storm Giants on sped-up mode were GOAT.

 

[RuySan]

One of my first game jobs was writing publicity fiction for Warlords IV, but to tell the truth, I thought the series was at its best in WL1 and maybe WL2. The changed graphical style and increased complexity of the third lost some of the charm of the earlier ones. I played WL1 to death -- both vs. AI and vs. friends -- and its simplicity and imbalance was part of the charm. It had all these features that, even when I was a kid and especially once I became a designer myself, spoke to me of a new developer who didn't really think everything through. Like the whole mechanic of dwarves getting a bonus on hills proved to be totally meaningless because the hills were so slow to cross (even for dwarves) that there were almost never any fights on them.

Anyway, the short version is Storm Giants on sped-up mode were GOAT.

When I was a kid I favoured Lord Bane because its castles looked badass, but they were obviously rubbish for being so isolated.

I revisited the game recently for my blog:

http://amigamemoirs.blogspot.pt/2016/08/chapter-xxxiv-warlords.html

 

[Cnaiur]

Lord Bane was awesome to expand with man, up there in the north. No resistance until you hit those red fuckers in the south and you could go west forever, especially if Horse Lords and those Orange dwarves would man the fuck up and offer resistance against the dark blue blob.