Sometimes it takes about 30 seconds or so for the main menu to appear. I'm not sure why it happens, but be assured you're not the only one seeing a black screen for an extended period of time.Originally Posted by Alan Friesen
Mine hangs on a black screen for a VERY long time (guess: 5 min.), but then eventually goes to the main menu, after which it runs fine. But the first time it happened it hung so long I was literally reaching to CTL-ALT-DEL when it finally loaded. Now I'm just used to it.
Anyone ever get a quest that involved another world? I haven't, but it is something that would be interesting if added.....
One thing the other worlds are useful for is they tend to be chock full of Holy Ground. I think it would be difficult to find enough Holy Ground topside to build enough temples to win the game on religious grounds, but maybe not (or it might depend on map-size).
I'm 99.9% sure there's no such quests in the game. Occasionally circumstances will conspire to make it impossible to achieve a "build a temple to [god]" without settling an otherworld, but that's rare and I'm fairly confident the optimal strategy will always be to ignore the quest in those circumstances.
Still... It's cool when it happens and you manage to pull it off.
Are the devs still actively balancing this game or are they "done" except for bug fixes / DLC? IE: Do you think they will address the issue of the other worlds not being worth the effort to colonize them?
I recall reading that they're working on adding multiplayer, which I assume would not be part of DLC.
Had the same problem and Ctr-Alt-Del several times and gave up on the demo. Then I came in here and someone told me about this issue. I had it with the full game, too, but oddly enough, after that first or second patch, mine cleared up and it starts normally now.
Try verifying the steam cache maybe? I've had games where reinstalling didn't help but verifying the cache did wonders.
Just finished my first game today, after obtaining Warlock on the Amazon sale. Took all the default options except the difficulty, turned it up a notch to Challenging. Despite that, it was a pretty easy win. All the AI players seemed interested only in attacking everything they could see, including me, each other, monsters, and for all I know rocks and trees. They would only consider peace when I had my entire army sitting around their capital, pounding the defenses. So I didn't get to explore much, never even saw the other planes, since all my time was spent fending off waves of zombies and ratmen, then taking away AI cities.
I found it a little difficult to determine the progression of units and buildings in the cities. Questions like "What exactly do you need to do in order to build Clerics?" weren't easily answered. In Civ I'd have pulled up the Civipedia, but here there doesn't seem to be a similar option. Of course I didn't read the manual, maybe that's my problem. I could have consulted the Internet, but it wasn't that important, because as I said, it was really pretty easy.
I like that the units are pretty important, not just cannon fodder. (Well, most of them.) The up-front gold cost is pretty heavy so you don't want to just churn out anything but the cheapest units, and keeping a unit alive is almost always well worth your time and effort, especially once they get a few levels. A couple of times I actually stopped an attack on a city and pulled back to heal, because I could see I was going to lose 2-3 units in the assault. Throw a cannon fodder unit in to keep the enemy from healing then come back in. I became very attached to my frost-weapon-enchanted squadrons of dwarves.
I think some of the fortifications are a bit overpowered. I build a *lot* of magic towers. With range 3 they're not only good defense but they have a lot of offensive potential. Take a city, build towers close to the next enemy city, use those to pound the defenses, repeat. Not sure I like this, but it certainly seems to be a very powerful strategy.
Going back to the thread title, while I think Warlock is finished and shipped in fine shape, it lacked a bit of the depth that I'm hoping to get from FE. I like Warlock very much, but I thought it would replace FE when all it really did was make me look forward to it more.
I think my biggest issue is the lack of tooltips and documentation. City and unit management is fairly simplistic as well, but it works fine for what it is.
IIRC you lose 1 population in that city if the tower/fort gets destroyed, since the number of buildings you can have is based on population and pop growth slows down with increasing city size it will also take much longer to get that 100% gold/mana/food bonus or tier 2/3 unit production building up in that city.
Pretty good descriptions: a simple, fun, yet poorly documented wargame in an enjoyable setting. Some enhancements and polishing could make this game excellent, but it is still quite good for what it is.
One tip for better games is to play on a map that doesn't have continents. The AI doesn't handle oceans well.
When you are in the city view you can click the little triangle under the list of buildings on the left side of the screen to "Show all buildings," then you can check the tooltips to figure out what you need to build to get to whatever building/unit you are aiming for down the line.
I played 2 games, neither of which I knew what I was doing really and won easily. The bad AI and the insane diplomacy AI really kills my interest in the game. I may play a 3rd game at some point, but right now it just isn't holding my interest. The wondering monsters are more of a threat then the actual AI players.
Are you playing on Insane difficulty?
Play on insane on a medium sized map without continents. It can be challenging. It's beatable, but it will press you a bit.
Thanks for the suggestions, folks, I may try a non-continent game next. For now, I started another defaults-plus-Challenging game with the intent of actually exploring some of the other planes. Already conquered most of my own plane, with the intent of keeping the last AI player around as a pet while I go exploring.
Has there been any further dev talk about adding more races or DLC?
We know the next DLC is called "Lords and Artifacts." AFAIK there hasn't been an actual description of it past the name.
Nice zombo! I hadn't seen that:
Thanks a lot for your thoughts! I think we now have our vision about Lords and Artifacts. We decided that we want it to be more MOM-style, so every hero will be separate unit with his own skills tree and artifact slots.
AWESOME!!
From the forums, Developer notes:
"Patch Notes 1.2
Patch Notes 1.2 - Patch is waiting for multilingual translation and should be uploaded to Steam this week.
Multiplayer and Diplomacy
• Players can now play Multiplayer games! (Steam is required).
• New Diplomacy system in Multiplayer and Single play: Now when a player sends a proposal to rival Mage it will be delivered on the beginning of his/her turn. You will receive an answer on your subsequent turn. The Diplomacy Screen was modified accordingly. Also a player will never know for sure if his\her proposal would or would not be accepted - there will be seen only a prediction of it before the message is sent.
"Lords and Artifacts"
• Mighty Lords come to your service! They can learn faster than normal units and receive many powerful abilities as they progress through level-ups. You can hire these heroes as they come occasionally searching for job, find them in monster layers or even receive them as quest reward.
• Lords can use powerful Artifacts which could be found in monster dens, received as quests rewards, gained and lost during battles, bought from Trader of Artifacts or smelted to mana.
Bug Fixes and Improvements
• A player may turn on/off Victory Conditions on the Game Start.
• Mages, Veterans and Halberdies got new skills. Mages can learn to cast fireballs and Veterans now have ZoneOfControl perk.
• Implemented a News message when you successfully research a new spell.
• Implemented a News message when any of the Great Mages controls a certain percentage of Holy Grounds.
• The Unity Spell cannot be counterspelled anymore, but its casting time was made longer. Also starting to cast a Unity spell worsens relations with all Great Mages.
• A Message "A Great Mage is Defeated" now looks better.
• AI now uses Dispels smarter and more aggressively.
• Teleportation spells casting interface logic is more intuitive: now you can select a spell, then a target unit, and then a hex to move.
• Fixed an issue: an enchantment cast on a unit in transport ship is now shown properly on unit when it disembarks.
• Game loading has become faster.
• Great Mages now think 10-15% faster.
• Settlers do not receive experience points any more.
• Fixed an issue when a player could remove a "self-destruct" perk from units summoned by other units.
• Fixed a crash on clicking on a News message about a new unit if the city was destroyed.
• Fixed an issue with the unit's experience when a unit is upgraded twice the same turn.
• Fixed an issue with game camera position at the game start.
• Fixed an issue when unit movement points and "cooldown" timers could be higher than their current maximum.
• Fixed some issues with duplicating perks.
• Fixed a rare crash when a player disbands his unit."
Thanks for the heads up.
Cool:
• Players can now play Multiplayer games! (Steam is required).
• Game loading has become faster.
And my favorite:
• Great Mages now think 10-15% faster.
Can it make me think faster?
They really need to add a notification which units are lost. It's worse when the enemy AOEs an area.
Also, I hope they fix the 'peace attack' where the AI offers peace and if you accept, they still get their attack in for that turn.
I hoped they fixed thier basic Diplomacy logic:
If Status == Peace then Demand money or war.
If Status == war and Losing war == true, then ask for peace (next turn demand money or war).
What would you do in this game if you weren't fighting someone?
Building beautiful cities. However while I might want to be attacking one AI, it doesn't mean I want to be at war with every AI player simultaneously or paying them off.
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