War has erupted upon the once peaceful realm of Etheria. A massive assault of Orcs marches upon the land led by evil magics as Etheria faces the danger of being plunged into darkness as it was 3,000 years ago. Mighty heroes are called forth to prevent this from happening all over again and save Etheria from destruction. This describes the setting of Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria, the continuation of the famed Warlords series of fantasy turn-based strategy games. Filled with some interesting RPG elements, Warlords IV is currently being developed by Infinite Interactive and is to be published and released by Ubi Soft in October. I recently had the opportunity to try out the latest beta and I am happy to report that I liked what I played.

What is immediately apparent is the vast amount of options available for the player. You have the single-player campaign, skirmish maps, a random map generator as well as an editor. The single-player campaign comes complete with some nice cutscenes and in many of the scenarios included with it, you have some interesting events occur that move the story along. There are over 20+ skirmish maps which are stand-alone maps that have been included for you to play outside of the campaign. The random map generator has many different options for creating a map to your liking, from the size of the map, to the type of terrain that you want used, as well as to how many cities and ruins you want appearing on the map. The maps it is currently producing are decent but it needs much improvement. I am sure the random map generator will be better when the game is finally released.

If you feel like creating your own maps for others to play you will find the editor easy to use. The editor seems very flexible and allows for the quick and easy placement of cities and ruins on the map as well as other features such as trees and mountains. The hybrid 2D/3D graphical engine used for the game may not impress as much as the graphical engines used in other games but it gets the job done and has some nice special effects such as puffs of smoke coming from fires to the way they depict snow falling upon the mountains. You can actually see snowflakes drifting in the air and falling to the ground below. Even so, many areas seemed bland and could use some improvement.

Some very exciting gameplay is at the heart of Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria. When you first begin playing you will create your warlord which you can use in the campaign, in the stand-alone maps or in almost any other mode of play. You will be able to choose many attributes for your warlord such as abilities in combat or magic when you are creating them. In the game, your warlord is attached to your main capital city and can never leave it but is there to defend it if the enemy decides to pay a visit. Your regular units and heroes will be the ones that attack the enemy’s capital, cites, units as well as any mysterious ruins that you come across. You have 10 different and unique sides to choose from, with over 70 spells and over 130 different units. With so many different spells, sides and units it is likely that you will never tire in finding different styles of playing.

Units in combat are depicted with a nice amount of detail and you will come across a varied assortment of units depending on the side you choose. Many forms of dragons, knights, elemental creature units and others will be at your beckon call. You start with your primary capital which is defended by your warlord as well as a hero unit. It is from this capital that you will create the armies you need to vanquish all enemy cities and any enemies that come your way. As you expand the reach of your empire you will gain the power you need to build the most powerful of units and complete your objectives. There are also ruins you will find along the way which have you fighting for gold, other resources or even special units that may have been imprisoned there. When you are victorious in taking over enemy cities you will often have to decide what you will do with them. Sometimes you will be able to occupy and recruit the specific units there, or raze the city completely, which means that you will destroy it but receive a huge amount of gold.

One of the major new features within Warlords 4: Heroes of Etheria is the use of the new Speed Tactical System. Previous Warlords games used a very simple combat system where a screen would show your units on one side and the enemy’s on the other side with virtually no animation. In combat you also had no control of your units or spells. Your units and the enemy’s units would fight until one side was victorious. The Speed Tactical System hopes to change this by allowing you to control the order in which your units will fight as well as greatly reducing the amount of time it takes to fight these battles. When you engage in combat you will also see your units fight on some nicely rendered backgrounds.

Similar to a card game, the Speed Tactical System will allow you to choose when to use your spells and units in combat. But you can only choose one unit at a time and once the unit is chosen there is no turning back and you can’t choose another one until the currently selected unit is defeated. I can see the benefit of this system as you will need to employ strategy and tactics as you decide when to use a specific unit against the enemy because if you use one too early you may easily loose it in combat against a stronger enemy unit. I still would have preferred a little more control of my units and hopefully they will tweak this system more before the game is finally released.

Interesting RPG elements come in the way you can customize your warlords and units in the game. Units gain experience from combat and because of this you will learn to care about them as they increase in power and abilities. When units level up, their experience will be shown by a star that will appear under them. When this happens you can increase abilities such as the amount of life they have or combat strength as well as other unique abilities. Something that I did not get to see with the beta I received is buildings that allow you to take special quests as seen in other Warlords games. I believe this feature that will greatly increase the RPG element in this game will be added in a future build of the game. In the end Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria looks like it will deliver what it promises and with enough improvements and balancing it may be a game worth looking forward to when it is released this October!

Official Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria Website

Minimum System Requirements:

• Windows® 98/ME/2000/XP
• Pentium® III 450 MHz or faster
• 128 MB RAM or greater recommended
• 8X CD-ROM
• GeForce 2 or equivalent video card with 3D support
• Windows®-compatible pointing device
• DirectX 9.0a (included on CD)
• Internet or LAN connection for multiplayer
• Up to 8 players in multiplay