I was recently introduced to a new turn based 4X game from Paradox Interactive called Warlock 2: The Exiled. If you'e ever played Warlock: Master of the Arcane (I haven't) you'll know what I'm talking about. This is the sequel to that and it came out in April this year.

As I said, it's a 4X game in the same vein as Civilisation V, including the hex grid for city/unit placement, which seems to be becoming the standard for grand strategy games. It's a bit different from the Civ series though, because it incorporates elements of the RPG genre, with experience/perks for individual units, Lord characters and both scripted and random events that pop up occasionally.

You play as a Great Mage; one of a the preset dozen or so, or a customised one where you get to pick from various perks that will apply to your units/empire/resources in game. The Archmage, for example, has a casting time 20% less than the other Great Mages, so he can cast more spells in one turn than they can (very, very useful). Another Great Mage could take the Elven Followers perk and gain a unique building that lets them hire the expensive, but tough Elven Archers. Others give you more money, more food production, a starting spell, and so on.

Overall it's pretty addictive and has a couple of unique features that make it stand out from most 4X games. The first is the major feature of the story mode, where you play as a hero character trying to reach the world of Ardania by building up an empire on various 'Shard Worlds'. Each Shard is about 20x20 hexes and is linked to one or more other Shards through portals.

Shards also have a specific biome associated with them, each with its own bonus and brand of hostile monsters. Desert shards give a bonus to mana production, ice shards to money, dead shards to mana but with more hazardous terrain. Neutral monsters also follow the biome and the further away from a given spawn shard (i.e. where you and the other characters start) the tougher the monsters get. Exploration carries a lot of risks in this game.

On the empire building side there is a pretty hard limit on how many cities you can build. More specifically you can only build 5-10 (depending on perks/tech) regular cities, with any more you build contributing to Unrest. You can get around that problem, however, by building Specialist Cities like Fortresses (which are harder to capture), Temple Cities (which get you on the good side of one of the Gods) or Free Cities. These don't count towards the optimal city limit and you get some nifty bonuses from them, but you can't use them to build anything either.

Another great feature are the Lords and Ladies, who you can hire for a large amount of gold (and cost resources per turn to keep) that will bring any number of powerful abilities to your army. Some are specialised for sieging, others for ranged combat, others for casting magic. All are powerful and very, very useful.

The tech tree is decent, if quick to get through. On larger maps you'll pretty easily finish researching everything before finishing, especially if you've got a city focused entirely on research and mana production (as you should; this game emphasises the 'tall' city building strategy where each city is min-maxed to produce food/mana/money/etc.). It's also how you gain new spells to cast, most of which are very useful, though I find it more effective to use unit buffs and healing rather than direct damage dealing spells (though sometimes you've just gotta blow shit up).

The real appeal of the game, however, is in the humour. This is a game that doesn't take itself seriously, with Artefacts named the Fullplate of Munch Kin, quests referencing the Lord of the Rings and what I assume are in-jokes about the original Warlock game.

All in all it's a good new game with the developers working very quickly to incorporate new features/bug fix/balance. Just a few days ago they introduced the shard worlds as a sandbox game mode, rather than as a story mode only game type. It's made the multiplayer very interesting, especially since these games don't take anywhere near as long as most grand strategy games.

So, anyone fancy a game?

 

It's the same universe as Majesty and the sequels and expansions, which is where a lot of the references (and reused resources, for that matter) come from.

The backstory is surprisingly well done - the first game was basically Civ in that it had no 'story' mode, but it has a canonical ending of Miralbus beating the Dremers, but then the Grand Librarian reaches the 'science' victory of casting the Unity spell. All of the Great Mages were either playable in the first game or were introduced by the events of the story in-between.