I spent the last year+ trying every fantasy 4x. The best fantasy 4x I found is: Warlock 2 with the Renaissance Mod. Its got distinct factions, the right number of units (not too many, not too few), I really like single-tile per hex for fantasy and more important of all - the AI is very good and can provide a configurable challenge.
Its on sale now for a few more days. You need to buy all of the DLC to use the mod, so the single “Complete Edition” is the right package. Steam has it for $20 USD on sale, thats as low as it goes.
DasTactics likes the mod. eXplorminate likes the mod (“this may be the best mod of any fantasy strategy game, ever”). Its got 9,800 subscribers on Steam, and 550+ people rated it 5 stars. (Ignore the 68% “mixed” rating for the main game on Steam, people play it for the mod.)
Its simple to learn, but very deep to play to play well. It looks like a fantasy Civ because of hexes and units-per-tile, but its not.
Here are my recommended settings for a first play-through:
Normal difficulty
Monster lair spawn: Normal
Sandbox mode
Victory type: Defeat the Great Mages, Capture Holy Ground
(Turn off Defeat and Avatar, Cast Unity Spell victory types)
World Type: Super Continent
World Size: Small
Map Type: Flat World
Additional Worlds: 2
Rival Great Mages: 1
Choose Default Wizard: Miralbus the Hat
With default race: Planestriders
Nice. The comments in Das’ play through complained of the mod’s instability. That was three years ago so is it safe to assume that those concerns have been addressed and the modded version did not crash for you?
One other game breaking thing Das raised in that older video was the occasional spawning of uber units that could end a game. Does the mod allow those to be turned off or toned down?
I don’t recall seeing any super units. I play in sandbox mode, and this avoids some of the “plot” big monsters. Yes there are religion monster opponents that spawn if / when you get favor with a god. These were tougher but not game changing.
Let me know where in the video Das mentions then and I can provide more context.
I really enjoyed the base game of Warlock 2. I have fond memories of loving curating an uber-stack, which I think involved some Dragons, and rampaging thoroughly across the maps.
In contrast, the recent Warhammer Gladius game, which on the surface has very similar gameplay, felt flat and laborious to me.
Also, colour me ignorant that this got so much DLC! Looks like a great option to dive back into this game for a whirl or too.
Thanks for the link. We all run the same base game version as him (I checked my game vs his video) but the mod has been updated since then (I think a few times). I did not run into any game ending “independent” monsters. He did not appear to either in that series of videos, it ran for almost 12 hours and he was not crushed my some big surprise monster. :-)
You can tell Das likes the game when he records 3 or 4 full sessions (10+ hours each) - all with this mod.
Thanks for pointing this out - probably not something I would have found otherwise.
@Alstein - “Major AI improvements” is one of the listed features of the mod, but someone in the comments did lament that Impossible was still easy for them and wished for compatibility with the Legendary AI mod.
Oh heck no. I’m someone that wouldn’t know Civ VI or Ascendancy AI is bad without being told so. I’m much more of a “look at all the new mages” type person. I can’t strategy myself out of a wet bag.
I thought the AI was quite good. I payed attention to it closely. I was not happy with the AI in Fallen Enchantress, for example, and it turned me off from that game. With this mod the AI was aggressive, would declare war opportunistically, use a good mix of troops, and try to hold important objectives.
It was the best AI of all of the fantasy 4X games I played.
