Warlords Battlecry II Preview

SSG's Warlords series has been around in one form or another for more than 10 years. The Warlords games were originally a fantasy-themed turn-based strategy series that let you create armies of knights and wizards and explore an overland map, defeating enemy armies and capturing castles and towns along the way. In 2000, SSG took the series in a new direction with Warlords Battlecry , a real-time strategy game that featured all the trappings of a real-time strategy game: base-building and defense, resource gathering, unit production, and massive battles. But Battlecry was different from all other real-time strategy games not only because of its unique origins as a turn-based game, but also because of its hero system.

The new barbarian hero assaults a fey encampment.

Warlords Battlecry II will feature an enhanced version of the previous game's hero system, which lets you develop a hero character in much the same way that you develop player characters in traditional role-playing games. Both the original and the sequel let you create a hero unit that belongs to one of the game's fantasy races and keep that hero character through both single-player and multiplayer games. And in both games, heroes have four basic attributes--strength, speed, intelligence, and charisma, abilities that affect a hero's attacking power, movement speed, ability to use magic, and ability to recruit large armies, respectively. However, both games let your hero gain experience points by defeating enemy units, capturing enemy holdings, and, most importantly, surviving each battle.

As your hero unit gains experience points, it will eventually gain experience levels and be able to learn new skills and even magic spells. And as in the original game, you'll usually want to keep your hero in the thick of things, since a hero unit conveys special bonuses to any friendly armies within that hero's command radius. Even though heroes may look like just another unit onscreen, they're surprisingly versatile, since they not only act as military generals, but also build structures, capture resources, and play crucial roles on the battlefield as a wizard, a frontline fighter, or a spy. And Warlords Battlecry II will let you choose a hero from the game's original nine fantasy races, including the barbarians, which previously served as only regular units, not heroes. It'll also feature three all-new playable races: the powerful demons, the evil dark dwarves, and the nimble fey. The sequel will let you play in four different modes: normal, tinman, bronzeman, and ironman. Normal mode will award your hero experience, even if it's defeated in battle; tinman will award your hero with 25 percent bonus experience if it's victorious, but none at all if it loses. Bronzeman will give your hero 50 percent additional experience if it wins a scenario, but if defeated, your hero will actually lose experience; and ironman will double any experience your hero gains, but if that hero is defeated, it's lost forever.

Ironmen get the most experience but are lost forever if defeated.

And like the previous game, the sequel will let you develop one of many different kinds of hero types. Developing a strong hero will be more important in Warlords Battlecry II than ever. As in the original game, you'll be able to choose from only a few basic professions when you start a lowly first-level hero, though as you advance, you'll be able to change your hero's profession to a more advanced character class. But the sequel will feature not only new race choices with different sets of abilities, but also a total of 20 different advanced character classes, which should make creating and developing a high-level hero an even more engaging pursuit than in the previous game.