OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

This is one of my all-time favorite games - its a fantasy RTS game but I play it basically like a TBS, pausing it all the time. Has tons of heroes, races, skills, spells and a cool campaign. Your hero advances to epic levels, takes his favorite generals with him, hires mercenaries, collects artifacts, and conquers the world. There isn't a ton of strategic depth, though there are some fun combos with all the variety. I just got into it again and thought i'd give it a plug here. Its too bad it never got much support- would be nice to have a WBC4. Its on GOG for $10

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

I'm not sure which game that was. Was it (probably) the one were I had vampire generals, but eventually could only buy one to take with because he was so high level? Or the one with the berserkers with the huge swords making the wooshey sounds?

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

Prob the first. You get a certain amount of points to allocate for troops / commanders to carry forward from battle to battle. You might have a commander that gets high enough level that he takes up too many points to keep - though I haven't come close to that. Had a demon lord with me that lasted about 20 battles and died when he got too close to an exploding portal and the game ended as I scrambled to re-load it (it deletes the save upon ending). It was a traumatic loss - not many games make you feel the pain like that. I've learned not to get to attached to my generals after that tearful goodbye. :(

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

If you carefully use a general to kill a bunch of stuff, it seems like you can get a high level general quickly. some problem seemed to arise in that I couldn't take stuff over as fast with just one... like you need to convert stuff in that game and one guy isn't fast enough.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

Oh man, the memories you just brought up. Spending hours and hours with this game, nurturing my heroes and getting them to ever higher levels.

I esp. liked the dark elves race. It was so cool.

I've followed every rumor and hint of WC4 for years but so far it doesn't seem likely to ever happen.

Do you still play WC3?

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

Interesting. Me and JK played a bit of Warlords Battlecry III this weekend after several years of not looking at the game.

Fun, but not too challenging =)
Good variety and special abilities among races.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

The important questions:
What races do you like?
oh, and who ended up the winner? ;)

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

We started to play a couple of team battles vs the AI to familarize us with the game. I got my hero killed more times than he, so I suppose he's your man.

I'm quite fond of Fey IIRC. Last game I tried undead. I had forgot that you turn skels into whights etc. I like that feature. I also got confused about unit lvls, until I realized that shadows drain xp. I could not fathom why I had a lvl 11 shadow running around. Turned out he ate pixies for breakfast (and a level each time). Then came the centaur Titan and destroyed my base :)

Dark dwarves should be fun, but are a bit boring, as they have less variance in their troops.

Elves and their whisps are also fun.

I also like leveling up my heroes, but they soon become a tiny bit too powerful :) Pity the game doesn't scale with hero level.

Cave worlds are more interesting strategically, with chokepoints etc.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

This was a favorite of mine for a very long time... IIRC, it had an ironman mode that permentantly deleted your hero upon death. I can't resist such options and nurtured a mage up to absurd levels (in the 40's I think) and he got one-shotted by an enemy hero. Never touched the game again. :(

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

That's why I never played ironman mode :)

BTW, are you also familiar with disciples and Kohan?- I moved from obsessing with WBC3 to obsessing with those two. Both excellent in their way.

What disciples had going (for me) was the excellent art work. Both the visuals and audio were breathtaking.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

I had really only played WBC2 - it was one of the few games that captivated me enough to finish. For some reason, I never got around to WBC 3. I had it but suffered from re-start syndrome: Fey Alchemist, wait no Dark Elf Assassin, no no, High Elf Runemaster, doh....

I would echo that WBC is a bit light on strategy and can be easy. In fairness though to the game, there are ways to make it harder: Ironman, don't hire mercs, don't spend $ to increase your retinue slots, don't use the 4 healing potions...

It can be pretty intense in the scenarios when the AI rushes you early on, but otherwise it does share some of the mindless joy of a game like Diablo where you are the all-mighty slayer of the masses.

The one thing I forgot to mention that I love about this game is I put it in the category of games like Dominions and MOOII that have "soul". The comments some of the units make are laugh out loud funny (I won't try to replicate them here, just listen to the masochistic Quasit or Arnold Schwarzenegger-like Reaver for examples) and at the same time has that heavy epic fantasy feel. The art is great. Admittedly the game is a conglomeration of time-tested fantasy archetypes, with a few fresher ideas like the Fey or Sratthi, but its packaged so nicely and has enough content to make for a fun if somewhat mindless romp.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

For long time fans of Warlord serie, WB3 is a must have ! I'm currently levelling again the good old Moooo.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

Want to chime in as a big Kohan fan, WraithLord. I played like 20+ hours a week for nearly a year. I Got Immortal Sovereigns a month or two after it came out and kept playing till near the bitter end, otherwise known as the release of Kohan II. Which I bought, but being laptop bound at the time never did play.

Such a brilliant game, some of those 4v4s were the most intense gaming I had ever participated in. Nothing like pushing through 3v2 on a flank and rolling all the way across the map. Or being the anchor and holding the opposite line 1v2.

Each game was so unique. Every faction was completely playable, everyone went random. The Random map gen was awesome. Early game you open an amulet or two and some of the Kohan were beasts. Fight a few lairs, cap an indy. Nationalist town on the frontline and you knew there'd be some [i]heavy[i/] fighting there. Hah.

Thanks for reminding me of that. I wonder if any games get together anymore? Surfing over to their forum, looks kinda active...

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

I actually tried Kohan II but it was so lame I couldn't even finish the tutorial. I wonder how the design team could take out so much of the great stuff of the predecessor to end up with such a poor release.
I mean, had they just updated the gfx and tweaked some minor stuff, added some content that would have been enough.

As for Kohan, I sometime lost myself in play losing precious sleep hours :)
I esp. liked how the armies seemed to have a life of their own. The mages would bombard and buff, the archers and cavs would do their thing. Was fun to just kick back and watch them huge battles :D

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

The original Warlords was great and so were the later iterations.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

WBC3 was pretty fun. It and dom3 are the two fantasy war games with the most variety of options available. Lots of different races and magics. And the voices in there were cool - if you've played the Lost Spires mod for Oblivion, the boss voices in there are all ripped from WBC3.

WBC3 tended to have terrible multiplayer balance, at least at higher hero levels.

In WBC3 1.03 (the last official version) the most powerful race was wood elves. In the unofficial patches (1.03.23 was the last in the sequence of unofficial patches aimed to improve multiplayer game balance among other things; there are also other unofficial patches aimed at other goals but they were less popular) which race was most powerful was a lot more ambiguous but I was best with fey on that version.

There is a fan-made alternate campaign available (different plot, campaign bonuses, missions, etc) by the name of Conquest Campaign if I recall correctly.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

I enjoyed both WC3 (and of course WL3:DLR) and Kohan. I also hated the direction they went with Kohan 2, trying to make it into a warcraft 3 style game. It ranks up there with TA being followed by TA:K as one the most disappointing game progressions I've seen.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

Unfortunately we won't see another iteration of either game anytime soon. Ever since Puzzle Quest came out they've spent all their time trying to capitalize on the Puzzle RPG craze.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

Go figure why developers who have amazing games on their hands choose to either abandon them, do totally different projects or do a lousy sequel.

I know that rationally there are many reasons: financial, boredom with original game, expectation to have great success in different gaming category etc.

But look at the list of great games that either don't have a sequel or have a bad one and OthO look at companies who stuck to their good games (Blizzard?, Stardock?).
So we have
- MOM
- AoW, so so sequel & later dev chose to make light RPG
- Kohan, bad sequel and that was the end of it AFAIK
- WbC3, no sequel
- WL3, no sequel
- Dominions III, no sequel planned

*sigh*

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

WBC3 is a sequel to WBC2. There was probably a WBC1 at one point too.

Same for Dominions 3.

And WL3 does have a sequel (with some hopes for an additional sequel), unless you are referring to a different game or implying a Sequel-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named situation.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

yeh but why stop at WBC3 or dom-3?

and yes, my bad re. WL4 - an iffy sequel. no wonder I forgot about it.

Re: OT: Warlords Battlecry 3
 

I stopped playing the Warlords series back at #2. I was aware of Battlecry but I prefer turn based games so I never played it. I never even knew about either of the Warlord 3 games or W4 until I did some searching after this thread came up. So far I'm pretty disappointed with Warlords 4, but there are a lot of warlord combinations to try so maybe I'll find something I like.

I can understand why Infinite Interactive dropped the turn based Warlords for Puzzle Quest, because to be honest it's a really hot title. Galactix and Puzzle Kingdoms not so much. I think Puzzle Quest 2 comes out fairly soon. Maybe they'll go back to a more winning formula.

I can't speak for the Battlecry series, but the turn based Warlords series has simply failed to innovate. I would much rather play AoW. The combat in Warlords was always the weak point, but in W4 they spent all this time on the 3d models and the animations but the combat is barely better than it was in W2. What a waste of resources and effort. :mad: