Warlords

Warlords description

A long time ago, shortly after the Land Ice age - not to be confused with the cartoon of the same, was widely popular strategy Board game in which players ran the soldiers (or military units) on a paper map. Each soldier had a certain combat power, and other properties, but the outcome of the battle was decided by the tossing of one or more six-sided dice. It's simple: the infantryman has the power one rider – two, knight is three, therefore, to defeat rider, the player controlling a foot soldier, must throw the dice at least three, and to defeat the knight four. It is clear that the outcome of the war was influenced by many factors (especially skill players), but in all battles the final word was for the cube, so to speak. With the advent of computers, Board games were transferred to them, and the main (and often only) change was the map display is not on paper but on the display, and changing the cube to a random number generator. Was not one year before computer games were fundamentally different and were created by different methods of processing the results of battles.

Warlords is one of those games. Of course, it would not be a classic of the genre, if it was just an electronic copy of the Board game. Compared to the original it has a lot of new features and improvements, but the General gist is the same: to win, you have to fight, and the outcome of battles is determined is still random. However, consider it a flaw of the game is probably not worth it - rather it is a feature that played a role in the fact that Warlords was a huge hit. Because in the end the element of chance in battles is within certain limits: not any army can succeed, and there are situations where victory is simply IMPOSSIBLE. Here is the skill of the player: it is necessary to increase the strength of your characters, find important artifacts to form armies and maneuver them so that they were at the right time in the right place to strike at the enemy. It is here that you will need strategic thinking and thinking through their actions, "several moves ahead", as they say chess players, and we must remember that in Warlords, like in many games of the era, the computer opponents have a great advantage (read: crooked) which is greater, the higher the level of difficulty. But they can win always in the end, after all, is crucial, because in my mind, cunning and resourcefulness it is constantly superior to AI. I just didn't scientists created artificial intelligence equal to human, and especially a superior, and it is unlikely will ever...

The game has one, alas, the only map at the time, the fans remembered it by heart, - where is the opposition to the eight generals, each of which can be controlled by a computer (in this case, you can choose the level of his skill). The goal is simple – to destroy all enemies. As such, Nations or races, no: troops of different types are not United among themselves. First, each side has only one city and one hero, but then the first grows as a result of conquest (it's simple: more cities – more income), the number of second – at the expense of your money that you pay for their rent, and it becomes possible when you have the appropriate amount; furthermore, in cities you can train troops, the maintenance of which in the future will need money. In essence, the hero is a common soldier, in contrast to, for example, from the series Heroes of Might and Magic, however, unlike other soldiers, he can improve their data use items that increase his strength, and (or) its army, as well as exploring the ruins in which it is possible with the same probability to die or to find someone or something useful – when examining the ruins are resolved randomly. But in the battles of randomness is less important (see below). Each army can be from one to eight fighters, but here the term "army" in principle, conditional and refers to soldiers moving and fighting together, they can unite and secede at any time. In the garrison of the city can be up to thirty-two soldiers, so his assault will be a difficult task, and besides - the city still provide extra protection for their troops.

In the collision of two armies, or the storming of the city the outcome of the battle is solved as follows: first, extreme (in the literal sense of the word – those that are at the end of a list of each army; that done, the extreme always hurts), the soldiers of both groups battle one on one is the equivalent of throwing dice in Board games, then winning fights with the next warrior of the enemy, and so on, until the complete destruction of one of the parties. In addition to the randomness in the course of battle is influenced by the strength of every creature, certain items of the hero, lead troops, strengthening and, finally, a kind of fatigue – for example, the giant collision with the eight light infantry will almost certainly kill two or three of them, but to destroy the fourth it will be much harder to defeat all is almost impossible. So, as mentioned above, the share of randomness in the game is limited, basically, everything will be determined by your skill level, experience and knowledge. The graphics for its time, quite beautiful, but one of the drawbacks is the lack of images of artifacts (each of them represented by only name) is, however, nothing more than annoying little thing.

Warlords can be recommended to fans of turn-based strategy, and at least familiar with this game should do everything. Those who like it, you should pay attention to Warlords II, where everything is made even better and more diverse, with a lot of wonderful innovations.

Do you want to relive your memories and play Warlords online in your browser? Play it now for free.

Source: Archive.org, Mobygames.com