Warlords Original Version 1989
Strategic Studies Group released Warlords for IBM PC MS-DOS 2.1 in December of 1989. An Amiga version of Warlords was released in 1990. Warlords was designed by Steve Fawkner and programmed by Steve Fawkner, Stephen Hart and Roger Keating.
As its name suggests, Warlords is a turn-based computer wargame. Set in the medieval Kingdom of Illuria, Warlords is notable for its scheming AI code, logical mechanics, clear presentation, 8-player mode, 8-way unit movement and 8-way screen-scrolling.
Warlords is easy to get into and fun to play; a good stepping stone to the likes of Warlords 2 of 1993 and Master of Magic of 1994.
Naturally, one must reinforce their fortresses and ensure army upkeep does not exceed their income. Warlords is about expansion, consolidation and annexation.
Hero units can find demon, dragon and ghost units in ruins, as well as gold, treasures and altars and temples that bestow stat-upgrades to Heroes and even the units under their command. Heroes are constituted by Battle, Command, Strength and Move stats. In addition, items held in Hero inventories confer modifiers (+x), and they can carry an unlimited number of items. Items can be transferred between Heroes via Take and Drop commands.
- Crown of Loriel: Command +1
- Orb of Loriel: Command +1
- Scepter of Loriel: Command +1
- Crimson Banner: Command +1
- Horn of Ages: Command +2
- Ring of Power: Command +2
- Staff of Ruling: Command +3
- Spear of Ank: Battle +1
- Firesword: Battle +1
- Darksword: Battle +2
- Lightsword: Battle +2
- Icesword: Battle +2
- Staff of Might: Battle +3
The effects of items stack; so, for example, one Hero carrying the four swords receives a 7-point Battle bonus.
Warlords is presented on a top-down tile-based field of play. The active drawspace is 360x320 px. Terrain tiles have movement modifiers. Per turn, it should come as no surprise that, as a rule, ground-based units can move across more road tiles than they can hill tiles. Some units can fly and sail.
Warlords command and control is menu- and icon-driven via mouse-cursor.
Impressively, Warlords displays in 16-color EGA or VGA 640x400.
Warlords kingdoms or empires are as follows:
- Elvallie (Green)
- Grey Dwarves (Brown)
- Horse Lords (Light Blue)
- Lord Bane (Black)
- Orcs of Kor (Red)
- Selentines (Dark Blue)
- Sirians (White)
- Storm Giants (Yellow)
Each kingdom has terrain considerations, proximity considerations and likely opponents. Combat employs to-hit rolls and modifiers. Some kingdoms feature unique units and specific units have combat modifiers based on terrain-tile occupied. Unit combat effectiveness is also modified by the presence of other units, items and towers/fortresses.
Naturally, the object of Warlords is to annihilate the opposing kingdom. Once that is achieved you have the option to accept an offer of peace or become a tyrant.
Warlords was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720kB DD diskette or 3x 5.25" 360kB DS DD diskettes and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via install c: or copy *.* c:\. The install size is 680 kbytes (32 files).
- Warlords Manual: 40 pages.
- Most Gold found in ruins: 2,680
- Most Gold looted in a siege: 902
- Maximum unit stack size: 8
- Maximum number of Heroes per faction: 6?
- Most Allies Brought by Hero: 4 (2x Devil, 2x Pegasi)
As for the Amiga version of Warlords (1990), it runs too slowly. Play the IBM PC MS-DOS version.
Overall, I give Warlords 9.3/10.
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