ENHANCED WARLORDS   by Daniel Rutter  (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) "Warlords" is a war game by the Australian company, Strategic Studies Group. This is a company which IBM owners treat with great respect, after mighty epics like "Panzer Battles", "Rommel" and no fewer than three volumes of "Decisive Battles of the American Civil War". These mothers have manuals that make War And Peace look like The Wit And Wisdom of Dan Quayle, calculation speeds that make continental drift look like Speedy Gonzales on amphetamines, and a general level of gameplay involvement that means anyone spending fewer than 40 hours a week playing forgets where they are. SSG's Amiga ventures, however, have been less stodgy - the classic, and now a tad elderly, galactic conquest epic "Reach For The Stars", and the more recent "Halls Of Montezuma" and "Gold Of The Americas". "Warlords" is a continuation of these, less enormous, war games, and in this, the latest, version SSG have really, really got it right. "Warlords" is a quite major departure from SSG's usual offerings - all their other wargames, save "Reach For The Stars" have been firmly rooted in historical fact. "Warlords" tosses that out of the window, taking place in the ancient land of Illuria, a nd featuring eight combatants, each of which can be human or computer controlled, with the computer capable of displaying remarkable intelligence or quite risible thickness, depending upon the degree of challenge desired by the human player/s. An all-computer game is also possible.  The Setup The eight empires belong to the puritan Sirian knights, the twelve foot Storm Giants, the earthy Grey Dwarves, the repulsive Orcs of Kor, the elusive Elvallie, the seafaring Selentines, the equestrian Horse Lords and the malevolent Lord Bane. Each empire starts with only one of the 80 Illurian cities - they have been restricted to these capitals by a mighty mage whose sudden demise has taken with it all semblance of peaceful coexistence. All the other cities are inhabited by hapless neutral armies, who have all the military competence of the Keystone Kops. Each empire also starts with one Hero. These are a brilliant idea. Heroes are the Conans, Robin Hoods and Supermen of Illuria, and are essential for victory, as they can be used to head armies (one Hero, all by him or herself, has the thumping power of a full army of regular cavalry), and can also Search special locations like ruins, tombs and so forth, to find magical items and special allies. Ordinary armies can only Search at temples, which add 1 to their combat strength, although strengths of more than 9, though possible, are not allowed for in the combat system. The first Hero is free - subsequent ones offer themselves for hire at exorbitant prices later in the game.  Diversity "Warlords" offers lots of diversity - 80 towns (although in practice you'll not conquer them all - after a while - provided you're winning - all the computer opponents will band together against you in desperation, then they'll surrender. You can, however, refuse to accept their offer of peace if you really want to stomp them into the ground, and this can give rise to some interesting guerilla strategies...), 8 players (each of whom has particular preferences for terrain on which to fight), 14 special items, 16 sorts of army (whose individual statistics can vary depending on which town they came from, and also have different movement points and combat bonuses for different terrains), 10 sorts of terrain and a very fair and effective combat system. All this, you might think, would make for a game less than effortless to get into, but SSG have managed to keep the manual down to 40 well-organised pages, which the average player won't have to refer to much in order to get going; you also get a pretty hand-drawn map (not actually much use, but nice anyway) and a card detailing the Amiga-specific modifications. There's also a small text file on disk concerning a couple of minor cosmetic changes.  Past problems Earlier versions of "Warlords" had not inconsiderable problems, as detailed in the August 1991 Amsmag edition by John Mellby in a piece taken from UseNet - Heroes tended to get their vital organs sprayed all over the scenery rather more often than was comfortable when Searching locations; in the Enhanced version, I've never lost one Hero that way. Also added is a brilliant Production screen, which allows easy control of armies produced by your cities and their transfer to where they're needed. Sound, however, is still pretty crummy, so I just leave the stereo on.  Other Whinges Other minor whinges include the merely adequate graphics - SSG always produce slightly lumpen IBM versions first, then direct port the graphics to the Amiga (the IBM screenshots on the back of the box can only be told from the Amiga ones by the design of the mouse cursor). There's nothing wrong with the display, but it's not a work of art. The only other complaint I can think of is that the list of cities and their production in the back of the manual isn't in alphabetical order - but since you can easily find out the exact statistics of any city's production after conquering it, this is also such a minor complaint as to merely emphasise the general perfection of the game.  Artificially intelligent Something worthy of note is the intelligence displayed by the computer opponents - it is phenomenally hard to get a computer opponent to think rationally in a game like this, without resorting to hour-long turns. The "Warlords" opponents use very effective tactics, and while they do tend to become predictable, a game against seven computer "Warlords" (as opposed to the lower ranks, Lords, Barons and Knights, in order of stupidity - Knights will deliberately march armies the wrong way and squander money pointlessly) will always be a damned good challenge. Of course, the computer does have some weaknesses, which I'll deal with later, but some measure of SSG's success in the production of a truly smart opponent is given by the fact that, according to the manual, the computer plays to EXACTLY the same rules as the human players - many other war games have approximations and cheats to make inadequately programmed enemies more competitive. Other mild niggles stem from oddities of the game mechanics - when an army is produced somewhere, it can be "vectored" to another location in a couple of turns - thus your central cities can pump reinforcements rapidly to the front. This is fine, but the army in transit is invisible - it doesn't appear to use roads, it just sort of diffuses in the direction of its destination. The sending city can be totally surrounded by enemy armies, or can even be completely isolated on the Wizard's Isle to the north-west of the map, and the armies will still get through perfectly. Also, when you order an army to go somewhere far away, or even pretty close in odd terrain, it can behave very strangely - ignore perfectly good roads and waste movement points thrashing through forest, stop dead after trying to march straight through another large army (only eight units of any sort can occupy one square), or just sit there in confusion for ages while it tries to work out the best route, finally giving up and going nowhere. Thus, in such odd circumstances, it's best to move armies in small hops. Another slight gripe is the fact that the map is oblong, and won't wrap around - you can't even move navies off it for a second to make it simpler for them to pass each other - there's a point, just north-west of Minbourne, where the channel is only one square wide, and navies have to scrape the coast, wasting movement points, in order to pass one another. Again, this isn't a major hassle, but I've got to find something bad about the game.  A few tactics Send a hero to the Seer of the River and the Grand Oracle early - it's a pain getting there, but the first hero to make it gets more than 2000 gold, and if you score both you've got a very comfortable reserve with which to hire more heroes and maintain your empire (since each army costs half of its creation gold each turn in maintenance). On the subject of maintaining your empire, you'll soon have problems with what I call terminator armies - enemy heroes toting dragons, demons et al around with 'em and smashing your cities. When the computer opponents get really desperate, they'll start razing the cities after conquering them. The only defense against this tactic is to build vast defensive garrisons, typically of heavy infantry. The problem with this is that by the time you start using this technique, you'll have about 30 cities or more; maintaining, say, 20 heavy infantry (enough to stop all but the most determined assault) in each will set you back 1200 gold a turn, just for defense, and since your income won't top 600 from that little lot, you'll be in trouble. The way to beat this is to make your own terminators, and use them not specifically to get enemy cities (regular troops are fine for that), but to crush enemy heroes, without whom it's hard to make terminator armies (though possible, if you've a few spare dragons...). The computer opponents have a habit of leaving heroes with, say one dragon or unit of griffins, so he can flap about the scenery fast (heroes only have to use the movement point costs of the units they're with, although they don't get to use any extra movement points, if the unit they're with is faster) and get to interesting locations quickly. However, the computer doesn't have the nous to avoid lots of regular troops whilst doing this, and so such lightly defended heroes are sitting ducks. Go get 'em !  The Temple Shuffle Do the temple shuffle - a tactic particularly effective for the Selentines, but not out of the question for other empires (Lord Bane and the Horse Lords can make a reasonable fist of it, too). For the Selentines, all you have to do is build a few navies (expensive, but useful), and load 'em up with heavy infantry from various locations, and the all-conquering Carmel light infantry (as fast as other lights, but as tough as heavies...!). The best jumping-off point is Carmel itself, so the units can shuffle up to the Temple of Iris before embarking. Take 'em south and then east along the river, and drop 'em off around Galin. The troops now go south to the Temple of Miridine, while the navy swings 'round the bend in the river to pick 'em up after three or four turns. Now east again, and south down the broad (i.e. 1 movement point per square all the way) central river to the Temple of Lurinth. And then north, all the way to the Temple of Emrik. You now have a boatload of 7 units, all of which have combat strength 9. This is the maximum. Cap 'em off with a hero, or, even better, a dragon, and nothing short of a tactical nuke'll stop them. Actually, since this process takes so long, you'll probably have only three or so such collections in service, and a few more in the pipeline, when the bad guys surrender! Mind you, it's not easy if the territory you have to march through is owned by people who hate you; this, again, is good for the Selentines, who traditionally slug it out with the Grey Dwarves, Horse Lords and Lord Bane; all these together have difficulty surrounding one temple in most games!  Conclusion Overall, "Warlords" is one of the best wargames I've seen. It's not mercurially quick, true, and its graphics and sound aren't overly exciting, but it has one of the best "one more turn..." hooks I've ever encountered - it's definitely one of those games that keeps you up 'till 3 AM. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone looking for a wargame for the rest of us - with loads of gameplay and vast strategic potential, but without 900 pages of tables and charts essential for successful play. "Warlords" is supplied on two disks. Neither is copy protected, so hard disk installation is not hard. The making of a backup copy is encouraged. It will run on an Amiga 500, 1000, 2000 or 3000 (Workbench 1.2, 1.3 or 2.0) with at least 1 megabyte of RAM and at least one floppy drive. Review copy kindly provided by Strategic Studies Group; about $50 in the stores, and worth every penny.  (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 )) (( 27 ))