Seems like a Civ5 rip-off but turns out to be something very different and refreshing. More than meets the eye!
It turns out the game shares little more than the interface and looks. Lots of people call it simplified Civ, but to that I say that the combat system in Warlock is much more complex. I'll clear up the other stuff and get back to that later on...
This is a variation of a 4X game.."eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate". Let me cover these topics:
Exploration overall is pretty similar to Civ5 with raging barbarians. There are LOTS of camps and they pump out units. Some of these units are very strong and can as opposed to Civ5, they will group up and steal your cities if you are not paying attention (and even if you are, when 2 ogres and a fire elemental come knocking, you better have a good strategy or you'll get steamrolled. These pretty much 1 shot most but the most expensive units if you are unprepared. The rewards are good though, you will find gold, mana, spells and units in these huts and as an added benefit, they'll stop pumping out hordes of mobs, allowing you to focus on the real enemies.
As far as expansion goes. right off the bat, there are several monster and neutral cities as well that you can pretty easily take over to create an empire core early on. Just fill in the blanks with settlers. As opposed to Civ5, there is no reason NOT to spam settlers and just cover all you can. The settlers are cheap and there is no penalty for building cities, only bonuses, so the city spam rush at start is very important. The more city you have, the more money, mana and food you'll be able to churn out and these are the building blocks of a strong army.
On to exploitation, similarly to Civ, you'll find special tiles on which unique buildings can be built. As opposed to Civ, you do not have a separate city-building and tile-building systems. When you have enough population, a new tile can be constructed on and you'll automatically be prompted to choose a building, filling an hex the city has access to. The "tech" tree is tied to city building as well... Some buildings allow to build certain units and some buildings are required to build others and when you have the right setup, new more powerful units will be available. Some nodes you can exploit give access to very strong units with the proper buildings, so it is critical to do a good land grab at start.
Before getting to combat, I should mention magic. The magic system is something that can't be linked to Civ5. You basically have global, unlimited range spells that you can cast from your mana resource pool. You start the game with usually 1-2 known spells and spend time researching others. You can find some in huts and camps as well. The twist to all this is that the spells available for research are random. You get access to 5 spells to research and when you research one, that slot will contain a new random spell you can research. The system can be a bit frustrating, I've had games where I had no direct nukes until very late in the game and it can significantly affect the course of the game.
The spells are extremely varied.. Some can be cast against units, tiles, cities or even whole factions or their leader (ex: a counterspell will interrupt another leader's spell). The spells can be buffs, heals, direct attacks, AoE attacks, summons, etc. This system by itself is extremely important. Some of the spells are extremely powerful. For instance, you could cast a fly spell and an invisibility spell on a ranged unit and end up with a unit that cannot be seen, cannot be attacked by ground troups and that can attack from range. There's a bunch of other fun and complex stuff you can do.
On to combat... As you can guess, the spells change the whole dynamic of the game. A strategy that works well is to have your strongest units buffed with all you got and send them up front, pretty much invincible. Around them you can have a bunch of ranged support units (nukers or healers for instance). Basically, they took the holy trinity and brought it in a turned based game which is awesome. Note that having spells running constantly as buffs drains mana, so you need a strong city system to support a strong army otherwise you'll find out of mana quick.
Another very interesting system is the unit leveling system. This is similar to the Civ5 system but much stronger. You can have units that you pumped in the first couple rounds end up being total beasts at the end of the game with enough upgrades. Units gain XP over time and in combat, so even if you don't use your units (ex: city defenders), they'll still level up at a descent pace and grow stronger. You pretty much never have to disband units to replace them because of this. Some of the upgrades are totally insane, you can stack several 20-30% boosts to damage for example and end up with a unit that hits for 2-3-4-5x more than it did when it was created.
Some units have special attacks like cones, AoE around the unit, ranged AoE, healing auras, death auras, etc. All units have some innate resistances and vulnerabilities as well... For example, undead units are immune to death-based magic and somewhat resistant to ranged physical damage, but they are weak against life-based damage.
All this richness that you might very well miss at first glance makes the combat system extremely complex and engaging. With proper strategy, 10 or so units is enough to conquer the world. You can also opt for numbers and churn out loads and loads of cheap, quick units. With proper magical back up, this can be just as good a strategy especially if the enemy has no access to AoE spells or units. He might 1 shot a guy or two per round, but your cities are pumping replacements each round and you can usually keep up.
There was a patch recently that really fixed a broken feel the game had at launch. It's undocumented, but it clearly fixed a lot of AI issues. Speaking of patches, the developers are working on integrating multiplayer soon. This game will be really fun in MP for sure.
All in all, this is an instant-classic. There is room for improvement, but so far the devs are on the ball and it's already extremely enjoyable as it is. Totally worth the 20$ and even more.