From: agapow@latcs1.lat.oz.au (paul-michael agapow)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games
Subject: Review : WARLORDS
Date: 7 Apr 92 07:37:00 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia

Review : WARLORDS, computer game
Released : 1991 (1992 Mac) by Strategic Studies Group
Cost : Aus$60
Playing time : 60 - 70 turns or about 7 hours
Reviewed on the Macintosh, works in B&W and colour on  all Macs 
Also available on Amiga and PC

Summary : a fantasy military conquest game for up to 8 computer or human 
players. Has a passing similarity to Strategic Conquest and xconq, but has 
a few nice touches that cause it to stand out. Quite pleasing play and 
interface, with a few minor bugs. Experienced wargamers may not find the 
computer opponents challenging enough. 

Firstly i have to apologise here - i picked up my copy of WL in January 
posted a tantalising note to the net, promising to do a review and then 
failed to do so. But having played it for a while, hopefully i can give 
a better review.

The premise / plot : In the way of almost all military-economic simulations, 
all the individual nations in the land have decided to beat up on each other. 
Our contenders (including  orcs, elves, horsemen and Lord Bane himself) will 
throw large amounts of troops at each other until one party possesses half the 
known land.

Our map depicts a fairly varied landscape of mountains, sea, forests, swamp 
etc. with our nations and their towns scattered about. Disappointingly this 
set-up and map is fixed, although this may have been due to a conscious 
decision to have a balanced set-up every time. The colour and graphics are 
pleasing and clear. (WL comes with both B&W and colour versions on disc.) 
Terrain affects movement and combat in specific ways for different troops. 
Our cities are drawn in characteristic icons for the different players and 
when captured change icon. (For example, Lord Bane resides in a skull-shaped 
cave ...) Numerous waytowers dot the landscape and also change colour to 
indicate possession. Other building like libraries, temples and ruins can 
also be found (more of this later).

Every game turn, troops materialise in  towns. Each town produces a different 
selection of troops. A quite nice aspect is that  troops are of differing 
qualities depending on where they are produced (i.e. here produces the 
fastest ships, there produces very weak archers etc.) and that  units have 
characteristic names (e.g. "The 5th Alvarian Knights"). The troops produced 
by a town may be set to appear at a different location. Also heroes 
occasionally pop up and offer to work for you (for a consideration, natch). 
These heroes give troops they lead a combat bonus and may spend time exploring 
for artifacts. Income flows in from towns and territory and flows out on 
building and maintaining troops, upgrading towns and building towers and 
retaining heroes. This is clearly displayed at the top of the map box.

Movement is mouse or keyboard guided. Movement beyond a unit or stacks 
allowance is illustrated on the screen and remembered from turn to turn 
(i.e.. you can trace a path to a destination that will take several turns 
to complete, and the unit will complete it in its own time). Armies may be 
readily stacked or split up. Combat is an extension of movement - if you have 
the movement to sweep across 5 towns and armies in turn, as some units like 
dragons and wizards do, then you can attack all of them. Combat is a simple 
matching of weakest unit in opposing stacks vs. each other until one side 
is destroyed. The algorithm is given in the back of the manual, and include 
modifiers for particular troop types in particular terrains, heroes, 
artifacts, being stacked with certain units and special attacks. 

One of the nicest aspects of the game is the use of heroes. When stacked 
with units like dragons etc. they may move in an identical fashion (i.e. 
fly over mountains). Also our heroes may explore ruins where artifacts 
may be found, libraries where the location of artifacts may be learned and 
temples where troops may be blessed. Allies may also be acquired at these 
locations.

The interface for the game is very easy to use and very nice. So nice, that 
if i didn't know better i'd swear that this game was designed for the 
Mac. (Interestingly the manual supplied with the game is specifically for 
the Mac which is nice for a change.) Players may call up reports of the 
current rankings of troops, territory, money etc. and the "hate list" which 
shows the animosity between nations. An overall map of the land is 
also available.

There appear to be a few minor bugs in the game, which caused the machine 
to thrash. i encountered these about every 20 turns. (Be warned however that 
i got a copy hot off the disc duplicator and direct from the SSG boys - 
there may have been bug fixes since.) These appear to be in the grouping 
and enemy AI routine. Personally, i found saving and restarting the game 
in these situations an adequate solution.

Speaking of the enemy AI, it appears to have not a bad amount of cunning 
and will put up a decent fight. Enemy heroes do not appear to search 
for artifacts however. Several levels of skill can be set for each opponent 
and a combat option can be used that emphasises troop number over quality. 
Experienced gamers may find the enemies too easy after a while, but i 
feel jacking up the difficulty and choosing one of the more difficult 
nations should counteract this.

A flaw with the game is the lack of limited intelligence. At all times you 
may see the position and number (but not type) of enemy troops. Whilst in 
some games the blind groping in the dark and hordes of troops appearing from 
nowhere can be frustrating (SSGs own "Reach For The Stars" for example), the 
intelligence in WL serves to weaken the enemy game play. This is a problem 
i hope will be fixed in WL2 (apparently to be released late 92). 

One point that scores well with me is the lack of "counter clutter". In 
many similar games the number of units to be controlled and ordered becomes 
unmanageable and turns stretch out into long sessions of scrolling around the 
map, issuing hundreds of orders ("Strategic Conquest" comes to mind here, at 
least to my taste). WL having easy stacking and unstacking, change and 
routing of production and a generally low counter number avoids this quite 
adeptly. Indeed the economics of the game encourage the disbanding of surplus 
units, especially those far away from the front line. Even in the end game, 
command and control is manageable and turns average  about 5 to 10 minutes.

All in all : i'd recommend it. The price is cheap (at least here in the 
Antipodes), the game is pretty, easy to play and nicely challenging. A few 
deft touches serve to make this game stand out from the crowd of "beat up 
the <fill in name>". A nice chilled chablis on the Sid & Nancy scale.

p-m

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au) Machine Intelligence Lab, LaTrobe Uni

   Little known facts : the Earth was contacted 70 times by aliens 
   in the 1950s, but this fact has gone unrecorded due to Tokyo being 
   destroyed by mutant monsters 35 times during the same period.
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games