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From: nad@tegra.COM (Nancy Durgin)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games
Subject: Re: Warlords from SSG
Message-ID: <2130@joker.tegra.COM>
Date: 5 Mar 91 15:55:52 GMT
References: <1991Mar2.075356.10035@macc.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: nad@joker.UUCP (Nancy Durgin)
Organization: Tegra-Varityper, Inc. Billerica, MA
Lines: 88

In article <1991Mar2.075356.10035@macc.wisc.edu> gilmore@vms.macc.wisc.edu (Neil Gilmore) writes:
>In article <2807@beguine.UUCP>, rhunt@uncmed.med.unc.edu writes...
>
>>Has anyone else gotten hooked on Warlords yet?  I picked this up at the
>>store 3 days ago and haven't gotten a good night's sleep since.
>Yes, I have it. Wargaming friends have always liked SSG's games, which 
>was a factor in my decision to buy.
>

I have 3 SSG games -- REACH FOR THE STARS, GOLD OF THE AMERICAS, and
WARLORDS.  All are excellent, with no copy protection and all HD 
installable (I think -- never installed the first 2 on a HD...).  Of those,
REACH FOR THE STARS is probably the weakest, in terms of playability and
bugginess, but it is also the first, and they have only gotten better.
This company does *good* Amiga ports!

>>It does have a few minor problems, mostly with control of the units.  For
>>instance, when a leader rides a dragon, the stack moves at the speed of
>>the leader, not the dragon.  You also either have to get one unit of a
>>stack or the whole stack, so it is a pain to grab half a stack one unit at
>>a time and move them one hex, and get all the ones you want that way.
>>Most of the problems I have encountered are minor however and don't
>>really detract from the game, once you learn to expect them and work
>>around them.
>Also annoying is that a navy is always on top of the stack. This means 
>that to have armies disembark you ALWAYS have to click at least twice, 
>slowly.
>
Yeah, I found manipulating the navies a bit annoying... But overall, didn't
have any serious problems with stack manipulations.

>>It installs on a hard drive and multitasks, if you have enough memory.
>>They suggest having 1 meg free when the game is started.  It is also not
>>copy protect _in any way_.  It doesn't even have a lookup method, which is
>>pleasent for a change.  It is nice to see a company that is brave enough
>>to do that.  After about 24-30 hours of play, I haven't seen a crash,
>>guru, or hangup.  It seems very solid.
>I have occasionally been able to lock up the cursor so that it won't 
>select armies, but I can get out of it by just trying to click 
>everything in sight, including the menus. Also, the production gadget in 
>the center bar sometimes gets confused. Also the indicator on the right 
>side of the screen (which I surmise is a sprite) remains on screen if 
>you switch screens. Not serious flaws.
>

Hmm..  I played a *lot* and didn't notice any of these problems.  One
session, it had some kind of glitch that caused recurring instances where
it would make me fight battles against phantom opponents (squares where
something had been located, but had died in an attack against me, for 
instance...).  It was just the one game though, and I've never seen it
again.  I haven't seen *any* bugs or glitches other than that one time.
(Running on an A3000 under 2.0X).

>What is a serious flaw is that (like most games of its type, most 
>notably [Interstel's] Empire) is that the computer opponents are 
>dumb,dumb,dumb. After getting used to the controls on an easy game, I 
>played the Sirians with all computer opponents on Warlord level. It took 
>only a short while longer to win, and I can attribute most of that to 
>the fact that a couple of the others started with dragons, so that I 
>couldn't concentrate my production. I've never seen the computer produce 
>a navy (even for the Selentines). I also notice that when playing with 
>itself, the computer first tries to get artifacts, not grab any 
>territory, but when it played me, I never found a single artifact in its 
>posession.
>

I agree on this.  It said that playing the Sirians against the Warlords
would be the toughest game, so after my introductory game (where I played
the Elves), I tried that.  Won it on the first try.  Kind of disappointing.
And it seems that although the computer collects the artifacts, you can
never get them from his dead heroes.  I've been meaning to check if
it is different when the opponent is human.  I assume it must be, otherwise
the manual is in error, or there is a bug in the program.

>It would probably be a lot of fun to play amogst humans, though. 
>(Mumbles about sending game files email, etc.)
>

Yeah, I'd really like to try this against another human..

	Nancy


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Nancy Durgin          | (Usual disclaimers | Tegra-Varityper, Inc. 
uunet!tegra!nad       | apply...)          | Billerica, Massachusetts
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