And there goes my resistance.
Warlock was the best civ game in recent memory. It held me for longer than the last couple of civilization iterations.
Oh thank you! I didnt know, I may give it another shot. Could be a taste thing, i dont like pressure in my 4x’s and both those elements added some (time and space) and for me a 4x is always about the growth and feeling one can grow more if that makes sense.
And my steam wishlist now has 42 games on.
This is pretty near the top though. Turn based RTS sounds like my jam. Got to play through DOS 2 first though.
I’m having a weirdly hard time understanding resource income playing an intro game with space marines. I think I get how cities produce blue things and red things and such, and stepping on a resource claims it and I get another +2 or whatever, but then I can also claim a resource tile with my city? And I can deploy fortresses to claim adjacent resources? Those parts I don’t get.
Very slick otherwise so far though. Feels very much like Pandora (same studio), which I am a huge cheerleader for. Looking forward to spending more time with it.
For the Space Marines: A resource tile will have bonus and a percentage for a resource. Like +2 and 20% energy. Ending a turn on the tile builds a outpost that gets you the +2. You don’t get the 20% boost. To get that 20%, your city has to expand on to it or you can call down a Fortress of Redemption next to it. The fortress also has a gun, so it’s really useful for defending important spots on the map.
Also there is a dedicated thread for Gladius, this thread is for Warlock 2.
Lol, what? I’m confused (or missed the joke).
Thanks Lee!
Now, are those 20% boosts for the city at large or just buildings on that tile? Must be the city at large, right? Otherwise Fortresses would do nothing.
Discussion of Warlock begins and ends with “tried and failed to be MoM + Civ V,” idk why we’d need a thread for it.
Was joking, because of all the talk of Warlock 2 in this thread.
@inactive_user I assume city as a whole, but I never actually did the math.
The % boosts are city wide. The Fortress of Redemption being able to gather those % boosts are due to the Space Marines only having one city. The other factions can found additional cities (near other resources to get their % boosts). It’s a really big deal to try to get as many of these boosts incorporated as possible to expand your economy.
If I may go off on this tangent one more time, Warlock 2 also introduced an unrest/happiness system. Some players used to the infinite city spam with no consequences found in Warlock 1 didn’t take a shine to this, and they in turn expressed their displeasure via Steam reviews. The base mechanism is as follows: no unrest for your first 5 cities. Once you grow beyond that, unrest keeps increasing until it triggers an event (riots, rebels, or a stern warning/lucky break called “intellectual foment”) which you then deal with and it resets to a lower level. Spells, tech, quests, and special loot can impact this. edit - there are also mods which adjust things a bit (or a lot)
Excellent, thanks.
TIL that attacking cities with Tactical Marines is not super effective.
Devastators and Tac Marines with Melta Bombs are my primary city killing troops early game (Hero/Terminator/Devastator late game).
Yeah, I am having difficulty getting started with the Marines. I tend to have all this research done for great buildings and units, but can’t build everything fast enough. Eventually I run into something big and the basic marines are completely inefeffective.
I think I need to slow down on exploring and concentrate on techs to improve my units. Next game I am going to really study the tech tree.
Thing about marines is that their vehicles are basically crap, or at least not worth getting over infantry and their techs. Devastaters are just too good. Them, the captain hero, and eventually terminators are all you need.
I highly recommend playing with wildlife turned to low. It gets ridiculous on medium and it can be GG if you get jumped by multiple enslavers or robots early. And for the love of god, whatever you do don’t use the Lord of Skulls DLC.
One thing they need to fix is the starting positions. They are wildly uneven and can spell doom for someone right away. Orks or Imperial Guard (enough of this Astra Militarium silliness) starting in a swath of desert is game over (as is having to spend 10 turns finding a better spot for your first city), while it’s an unfairly amazing early boost for Necrons. I’ve had Necron games where the nearest tomb was 18 spaces away, another gg.
I wasn’t a Warlock fan. It was a small, anemic fish in an empty pond though and I can understand why people who were craving some 4x got into it. Gladius is no Warlock. Ironically, Warlock shares more with Civ V and VI than Gladius. The difference between the Warlock and the royalty was that Warlock didn’t bother to pretend there were a ton of important gameplay decisions. It was too stripped down, but I almnost prefer that to the lies V and VI kept telling.
But I wasn’t a warlock fan. This game has a lot going for it that Warlock does not. Combined arms is important, and base building is light years ahead. And very different for each of the factions (SM, for example, will just build one ginorma-super city). Exploration is better here (although not MoM level; that’s another thing this game needs is more exploration spice).
I think this game is worth checking out.
You are building multiple production facilities of each type, right? SM have 5 prod queues (buildings, infantry, hero, armory, and flier). But each queue type has it’s own production pool based on the # of that type of facility you build. This is not obvious at first. You want to build, at minimum, e.g. 3 infantry buildings so you build infantry MUCH faster.
Whoever described this as a turn based RTS was spot on. I actually laughed when I saw the War3 hero upgrades. Not in a mean way, but in an “oh, gosh, that’s how it is then” kind of a way.
Also, man, these Proxy fellas still do love them some
SMAC.
Man, you all played a different version of Warlock 2. It was shallow, but I really enjoyed the game, especially the way special resources altered city building.
@peacedog, when you talk about combined arms, or lack there of in Warlock, could you go in to more detail? Remember needed a variety of units, since many had special abilities or spells that could be used at range.
I only played the first Warlock, for the record. had no reason to go on to the sequel.
I am not talking about Warlock 2, just Warlock. I have played exactly 7 minutes of Warlock 2 and cannot comment on it at all outside of “I had a unit level up” and that the game didn’t seem to take kindly to my having alt-tabbed. I played a decent amount of Warlock, of course ages ago (I never touched it again after I put it down).
Warlock wanted to be more combat focused I agree, but I don’t think it did a good job pulling that off. City building was lighter although I seem to recall some significant obnoxiousness around being able to build the big guns (in the guise of special structures tied to special resources or something). That said, I never felt compelled in warlock to field any sort of wide mix of units, nor to use them in any particular way beyond a very basic “don’t put ranged units in front if I can help it”.
It’s just not how Gladious works, and I can really only talk about Space Marines although I am sure each faction mixes things up in their own way. It very much is a 4x that wants you to focus more on the war than the other stuff (although the other stuff remains crucially important). Every SM unit felt like it had a place and a purpose. It’s not perfect nor the depth you would find in a proper war game (e.g. Panzer General or Fantasy General). The units you face, and this very much includes the neutrals, all have specific strengths and weakeness. Armored units will easily resist the bolter guns of a standard SM, but the anti-vehicular Lasguns of the Devastators are another matter (but you better keep those Devastators well protected). Assault Marines are great for executing decisive flanking attacks. The SM fliers can also be very good at this, although again you need to pick targets carefully (the land speeders are still more of an infantry harasser and won’t necessarily get good results against tanks). And then you have to prioritize tech based on circumstances. See lots of large armored worm thingies swarming along a border? Maybe you should go back and grab Krak grenades off the tree before be-lining for Melta bombs so your infantry can actually do something while you are getting Devastators or something else into position to help. You’ll form fronts, the fronts will change shape, and then something will eat your best apothecary and you will feel sad.
It’s far from perfect, of course. The tech tree feels mailed in, when some other alternate and non traditional design might have been better for the game (here you just pick techs from a tier and after X techs researched the next tier opens up so you have to decide whether to keep getting stuff from the current tier or move on, when to come back, etc). The abilities you can give units via research and some stuff in game are nice but could probably have been a little more interesting. I deeply missed that I couldn’t leverage a specific SM strength - turning a given unit into one with a different function by varying how I upgrade it specifically (e.g. changing the Predator tank or Dreadnaughts to be more focused on being anti vehicle or anti infantry by chosing how to upgrade it).
Quality 40K games are few and far between. I’m looking forward to trying this one out.
Correction:
“with more more of marginal relevance”