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[IronyOwl]

Ah, it sure it great being a Great Mage. Free food, spacious accomodations, and whole cities and regiments of hardened veterans at my command.

Of course, I couldn't have gotten this far without my loyal supporters by my side... and so of course, they've probably had some impact on what I am today.

Spoiler: What Do I Look Like? (click to show/hide)

To start with, I'll need a name and appearance. Neither has any in-game impact, which makes them perfect for first choices.



I'll also need a color, which also has no in-game impact but at least adorns my borders and icons.

Spoiler: What Do I Do? (click to show/hide)

Now I need something that does matter- my traits. As you can see, I've got 10 points to spend on various traits, each costing various amounts.

The ones on the left are normal perks, the ones on the right are starting spells and favor with the gods. Most of the starting spells are nothing special, so I'd avoid them unless you have something very specific in mind or have literally nothing else you want. As for the rest:

Treasury, Mana Vault: +100 starting gold/mana, respectively
Master of Blades, Demonic Advisor: Start with a decent but expensive unit, a warrior or demonic caster respectively
Magnate, Researcher: Flat +10 gold production or +3 research, respectively
Trader, Farmer, Conjurer: +20% increased gold, food, mana production, respectively
Archmage: +20% casting speed
Instructor: All units gain +1 exp/turn

Favor of: Grants +30 reputation (quite a bit) with the chosen deity, as well as a starting spell. Divine spells can be researched just like normal ones under the right circumstances, so the starting spell isn't of massive consequence, but here they are just in case:

Agrela, Goddess of Healing: Powerful heal
Dauros, God of Order: Undead smite
Helia, Goddess of the Sun: Elemental nuke
Krolm, God of the Wilds: Protective rune that shields things around it
Krypta, Goddess of Death: Undead heal
Fervus, God of Chaos: Summon bears
Lunord, God of the Moon: Movement buff
Grum-gog, God of Pestilence: Summon strong rats

Of course, that's just me! There's a lot more to a Great Mage's holdings than just the Great Mage!

Spoiler: Who Do I Lead? (click to show/hide)

Next up, I'll need a race to lead. There are three starting races (four if you have some DLC; I don't), and it's possible to acquire the cities of the others as you go. Note that races not your own suffer a growth penalty and a 20% production penalty to all resources, so we should start with what we want.

Human: Humans specialize in gold production and generally have fairly powerful but costly units. Gold is used to purchase and upgrade units, and is a common upkeep cost on most "normal" units.

Monsters: Monsters specialize in food production and are somewhat split between cannon fodder and monstrous units. Food is used to support living city population, and is a common upkeep cost on most normal units, generally being higher for monstrous ones.

Undead: Undead specialize in mana production and have, not surprisingly, mostly undead units, immune to Death damage, weak to Life, and often highly resistant to Missiles. Mana is used to cast spells and maintain enchantments, as well as supporting undead population like food does living residents. It's a common upkeep cost on summoned and undead units, as well as some magically-inclined creatures.


As might be expected, it's possible to acquire the units of other races by conquering and then upgrading their cities. However, since cities of other races grow slower and produce less, it's usually a fair bit trickier than homegrown stuff.

Spoiler: Where Are We? (click to show/hide)

Now we need to figure out the actual map- the size, landmass type, and number of rivals and other worlds.


I'm not especially familiar with the different land types, but they seem fairly self-explanatory:

Great Land
Supercontinent
Continents
Islands


Size is fairly self-explanatory as well; or rather, it's about as self-explanatory as it's going to get, because I'm not very familiar with those either. I will say that they aren't kidding with Small, though.

Also of interest, the map size dictates the maximum number of Great Mages and other worlds allowable. You can play with just one of each on any size map, but higher numbers require a minimum size map:

Small: 2 Opponents, 2 Worlds
Medium: 4 Opponents, 3 Worlds
Large: 6 Opponents, 5 Worlds
Huge: 8 Opponents, 6 Worlds


Other Great Mages should be fairly self-explanatory as well- rival computer-controlled factions like us, that can attack us, ally with us, trade spells or resources, and... well, not a whole lot else, but they're out there.

Other Worlds might be a bit less intuitive. Essentially, on any map there's a number of portals leading to other, fairly strongly themed worlds. These worlds are generally incredibly dangerous, requiring top-end units to successfully explore and clear out. Of course, this varies somewhat; it's often entirely possible to clear out the entrance to another realm with relatively weak units, but you can rest assured there's utter monsters waiting out there somewhere.

Other worlds can be colonized just like the main one, and are frequently home to rarer special resources than the overworld, if you can clear the elder daemonwoods and gilded dragons off of them.


Oh, and as a footnote, we can also select a flat or cylindrical world. I tend to prefer flat, but if you want a world where the left and right edges wrap around, we can do that.

Spoiler: What's Going On? (click to show/hide)

Now for the actual gametype. We'll start with win conditions, then difficulty.

Win conditions are as follows:

Defeat the Great Mages is your standard kill everyone type.

An Avatar appears when you enrage a deity sufficiently, which is accomplished through buddying up to his rivals.

The Unity spell is a very difficult to research, difficult to cast spell that can't be counterspelled.

Holy Grounds are special resources that pop up rarely, more commonly in other worlds.


We need at least one win condition active, but can otherwise pick and choose as we like.


I'll be honest, Warlock is not usually a hard game. There's obviously some rampup, and individual situations can get pretty sticky in higher difficulties, but we can play on pretty much anything and not seriously be concerned about losing, as such.

Now, that said, that is the way I normally play the game. Relying on a bunch of headless chickens to settle glacier towns and then specialize in fine cheeses might complicate things a bit, for better or worse.

Ah, but that's not all! Who could forget my loyal supporters, to whom I owe so much?

Spoiler: Who Are You? (click to show/hide)

What's an empire without scheming, brainless nobles with bizarre fetishes and no sense of priority? Boring, I say! Let's let the people help decide things, that'll end well.

There's two ways you can participate, neither of which is mutually exclusive.


Suggestive Nobility
The first is simply to offer advice, suggestions, or even requests, presumably as some sort of noble or other official. These can be good, solid suggestions, like expanding our military to be ready in case of war, but they can also be things you want done because you want them done, like mining gold so you can wear fine jewelry. While there will obviously be some limits to what I'm willing to do at any given time, in general I'll try to honor non-conflicting requests as a favor to those making them.


Direct Control
The second is like the first, but a bit more hands on- simply put, you take control of a city or unit directly, and I try to have it perform your general wishes, again within reason. Earn honor and glory commanding a unit of our finest, strike out as a noble hero yourself, or just found a city so you can stuff yourself with bacon. The choice is yours!

Now, there are a few snags to this, however. For one, cities can be renamed, but units can't; you'll need some distinguishing characteristics if you want me to be able to tell your cannon fodder apart from anyone else's.

Secondly, there's certain limits to just how much gold or settlers or habitable land we have, so depending on who's fond of what, we might just not have room for that many governors or heroes. I might resort to random selection if it comes to that, but good reasons or convincing excuses are likely to sway your sovereign more than generic claims.

Spoiler: But What's A Shank? (click to show/hide)

Ah, so you've never played Warlock before and have no idea what any of this means. That... could be a problem, usually, but you know how politics work out sometimes. You don't need to have the faintest idea what you're doing to demand I build a silver mine on those pigs, after all!

However, in the event that you're hoping to further your understanding of things, here's a quick crash course.


So here's our main city view. The game takes place on a hex map, as you may have noticed, which allows you to found cities, move units around, claim shiny stuff lying around, and so on.


So the first thing we'll look at is the city proper. Unlike most city-building games, each building added onto a city requires space and a population point; that is, the maximum number of buildings in a city is equal to its population. Buildings can be demolished at the cost of 1/5th a population point.

Terrain sometimes matters but not always- specifically:

Plains and green hills tend to give +20% food production
Snowy areas tend to give +20% gold production but -20% food production
Desert areas tend to give +20% mana production but -20% food production
Swamps and lava tend to impose an extra upkeep cost on building things over them

Otherwise it's all the same- a mill built on a forested hill will function just like one built on an open plain. Note that percentage adjustments apply only to flat production, not % adjusting structures, so a marketplace (+4 gold) will benefit from being on tundra whereas a bank (+50% gold) will not.

Finally, some structures require special resources. You notice to the very left, there's that greyish rock-thing? That's Iron, and once the city's radius expands over it, a Foundry will be available to build on top of it. Other resources, from pigs to adamantium, function similarly, and many resources allow multiple, often race-specific improvements. As an example, Silver can support a Silver Mine (+6 gold), or provide silver weapons for humans, silver potions for monsters, or raw mana production for undead.


Speaking of buildings, what can cities do and how, exactly? Let's look at the two production queues to find out.

To the left, we've got the building menu. Buildings often are or have prerequisites in their general line of production; for instance, in the case of humans, building a Marketplace (+4 gold) allows you to build a Rogue's Guild (+2 gold, recruit rogues) which allows a Bank (+50% gold) which allows a Mint (+75% gold) which allows a Treasury House (+100% gold). This can make it beneficial to specialize cities towards a specific goal, especially if they've got local resources in line with said goal.

Similarly, different units require different structures. Most units have a basic and upgraded form; for instance, all basic infantry can be upgraded to advanced infantry (or advanced infantry trained outright) near the end of the warrior line of construction. As these are expensive and take a while to produce, you'll usually (but not always) be using the base form for a while before you get your advanced stuff up and running.

Finally, it would behoove you to compare the two lines. Buildings require only time to produce, though demolishing and rebuilding them costs population. Units require both time and gold, and neither can be reduced by any means.


One final issue regarding cities: Population growth and radius. Cities grow automatically, and their growth slows as they get larger and is penalized if there's not enough food (mana for undead) or if they're from a different race than your main one. Cities expand their radii at levels 5 (2 spaces) and 10 (3 spaces). I'm honestly not sure if I've ever gotten a city to 15 or not, so I couldn't tell you if they expand at that point.

Spoiler: Purple Thingies Continued (click to show/hide)

So that's basically all you need to know about cities; now let's look at units.

Units have all the expected stats and then some.

HP
The green vertical bar with a number atop is their HP; this can be recovered by spells, a handful of traits, or by resting when there's no adjacent enemies. HP never increases unless you upgrade the unit to its more powerful form, so watch out for that.

Attack, Type, and Range
Moving on, we've got a purple arrow thing with a number and then a curving arrow and another number. That's it's attack damage (main number), damage type (arrow, in this case Missile), and range (curvy arrow, not shown for melee units). Units with additional damage types, as is fairly common, will have additional icons above their damage bar, and a more thorough breakdown can be had by mousing over it.

Movement and Type
The boot-and-bars thing below that looks self-explanatory at first glance, but does have a few nuances to it. Specifically, movement is heavily affected by terrain, but some units have traits or enchantments to alleviate that. The foot icon is actually different for flying or swimming units, incidentally. Open terrain like plains costs 1 point of movement per tile, hills or forests 2, and swamps can cost three. This can make moving through hills with a 3-speed unit rather torturous, but at least they can be auto'd to move over several turns and thus not lose their fractional moves.

Experience and Level
Below that we've got their experience bar and level. Units gain 1 exp per turn just from existing (though not if they're on a boat, sadly), but since it costs 20 exp to gain level 2 and keeps ramping up from there, just sort of stashing a unit in the corner is of limited utility in leveling them up. More useful is actual combat- units gain (I think) 5 exp for attacking in melee and 4 exp for anything else, with the strength of the opponent being irrelevant.

Perks
Now, if we'll jump down a bit to those little boxes, one with an eye and one with a tree, we'll talk about the benefits of leveling. Each level, units get to pick from three traits; these traits are predefined, but I assume it modifies your options when you've already taken one of the three it was going to offer that level. Traits show up as little boxes like those; in this case, those are innate traits, but leveled ones look pretty much the same. Enchantments or gear upgrades also go there.

Class
If we move back up to their icon, we see a little bow and arrow icon inset into it. That signifies their general class; Figher, Ranged, Mage, Healer, and Creature are the ones that come to mind. A unit's class determines what levelup perks it gets access to and what item upgrades can affect it. A handful of regular buildings, and several special resource buildings, grant access to equipment upgrades, but only for the classes specified; some affect all units, others are specific to martial units or spellcasters. Units trained in a city with such an upgrade receive it automatically, otherwise it costs gold to upgrade an individual with the specified gear.

Sight Range and Upkeep
Moving back between that and perks, we get Sight Range (most units have 2) and Upkeep. Both are fairly self-explanatory. Note that this unit requires both food and gold, as is typical for living, intelligent creatures.

Resistance
Finally, we have resistance. This is where things get interesting, because unlike HP, resistance is highly situational and altered by a wide range of effects. From my calculations, it seems as though each point (or rather, five points, since they don't come in lower increments than that) of resistance provides fairly steady benefits; that is, you should see about the same improvement going from 0 to 10 as you would going from 200 to 210, barring rounding errors. If you're familiar with damage mechanics of this sort, every 50 resistance appears to double your effective health against that damage type.

You might also notice that this particular fellow has 0 of every resistance against Life, against which he has 100. Most infantry starts out with an armor perk that improves their Melee and Ranged resistances; obviously, this archer isn't so lucky. His only resistance comes from being alive, which automatically grants 100 Life resist. Some of the more common traits are as follows:

Living units have 100 Life resist.
Undead units are immune to Death damage but suffer -25 Life resist.
Skeletal units possess 75 Missile resist.
Beast units suffer -25 Missile resist.


So, if you've actually read all this, you probably know almost all you need to in order to demand I build a silversmith on those pigs or move those wounded archers next to that enraged hill giant. If you just sort of skimmed it and maybe glanced at the pretty pictures... eh, good enough.

[Stworca]

I'll just butt in, and say that even the largest map feels somewhat small (for a directed-AAR), and furthermore, the other worlds are more or less useless. With the AI as unwise as it is, one usually wins long before being able to tackle the dragons and elementals (Both in HUGE quantities)

Starting with the Blademaster & Humans is usually a good idea, gobbo's (Rats) are too ineffective, and undead mana cost can - should one choose BM - cripple research and spells.
Net increases in gold are useless after a few turns, so if you were to choose an eco-bonus, best go for %.

Hmm hmm.. Good luck

[Sonlirain]

As a person with 0 experience with Warlock (but some with Master of Magic, Age of Wonders and several other games of the genre) i'd like to suggest the following.

Picture - Some beasty leader.
Skills - Instructor, Favour of Helia

Race - Beasties.
Map - Everything set at max. Islands. Cylinder world.
Victory - Unity spell disallowed.

Who am i - Suggestive Noble (but i'd like to have a city i could dedicate towards a goal of my chosing (like Baneblade production).

[Xeron]

Picture - Anything evil
Skills - Arch Mage,Fire Storm,Summon Imps

Race - Undead
Map - Everything set at max. Super continent Cylinder world.
Victory - Kill all the enemy filth

Who am i - a governor of a city

[Myroc]

Picture - That two headed dragon. Their name escapes me.
Skills - Archmage. I don't really care for anything else, but Archmage is pretty significant because as far as I am aware it is the only thing in the game that can reduce your casting time. (If there are others, then they're probably fairly rare and/or lategame, as I sure as hell haven't encountered them.)

Race - Not humans.
Map - Large, default number of alternate worlds, islands, cylinder, max amount of enemy mages. Let's not go TOO overboard.
Victory - All of them.

Who Am I? - Field General, leading your ruthless soldiers into battle.

[Neonivek]

Most of the abilities though are outright useless.

Only ones I'd suggest is the 20% productions or Casting speed

Also Myroc there is no reason not to just max the number of alternate worlds. It is so hard to take advantage of alternate worlds that you will win the game first.

[Thexor]

As someone who has 0 knowledge of Warlock, my only advice is to remove the 'Defeat Avatar' victory condition. Because a) it'd suck if the AI killed an avatar without you noticing, and b) if you win after killing one avatar, you don't get the chance to kill a second avatar!

Also, PTW.

[Neonivek]

As someone who has 0 knowledge of Warlock, my only advice is to remove the 'Defeat Avatar' victory condition. Because a) it'd suck if the AI killed an avatar without you noticing, and b) if you win after killing one avatar, you don't get the chance to kill a second avatar!

Also, PTW.

It really isn't that easy to kill an Avatar or find an Avatar.

The computer is never going to get to that point, nor, will our hands ever be tied with dealing with one.

[IronyOwl]

Alright, so the current tallies seem to be as follows:

Portrait

Something Beasty	I
Something Evil	I
Dragon	I
Dragon Assuming He's Beasty And Evil	III

Perks

Archmage	III
Firestorm+Imps	I
+% Something Bonus	I
+% Econ Bonus If Econ Anything	I

Race

Humans	I
Beasties	I
Undead	I
Not Humans	I

Map Size

Extra Large	III
Large	I

Landmass

Islands	II
Supercontinent	I

World Type

Cylindrical

II

Other Worlds

Default	I
Max	III

Rival Great Mages

Max

III

Win Conditions

All Enabled	I
Kill Only	I
No Avatar	I
No Unity	I

So, we're tied for starting race and that's pretty important. Wincon and perks are a bit vague, and I'm not certain if the dragon meets both the beasty n evil requirements.

[Frumple]

Portrait of bald dude with pimp robe gets my vote. And purple, for the color.

Throwing in for archmage as well, and a percentile bonus if you can fit it. Or archmage and a hero, plus, like, lesser heal or something. Whichever fits better.

And beasties, because gimping amuses me.

Also, bonus challenge mode: Clear out at least one other world before victory. Maybe make an alternate save for that, for a post-win reload and rumble.

[Gamerlord]

Wait a second... this is the Majesty universe! 

[Alkhemia]

I second Frumple for the Beasties and the challenge 
also Islands just because the sea monster are jerks

[Xantalos]

Eh, why not follow this. I vote for the dragons. Because they cool. Victory conditions...why not all of them. Difficulty: Challenging, for funzies, and Archmage, Goddess of healing, max world/number of enemy archmages. Should be fun.

[LoSboccacc]

I vote for monsters race, as their specialization with food is hilarious and amusing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

wouldn't have been better specialize human in food and monster in gold? That at least gives a reason for monster lairs and dungeons to be ripe in gold coin.

[Neonivek]

I vote for monsters race, as their specialization with food is hilarious and amusing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

wouldn't have been better specialize human in food and monster in gold? That at least gives a reason for monster lairs and dungeons to be ripe in gold coin.

Even better when you consider that half of Food overproduction it turned into gold. Essentially allowing you to get large amounts of gold through food production if you set yourself up correctly.

The Goblins greatest weakness however is that they probably have what I consider to be the worst low level units in the game (though their Shammans are invaluable in a way... Since Spirit magic is the only thing almost nothing in the game is immune to or has great resistance against)

The other is that I believe Goblins are dead last when it comes to research... and this is a game where Spells far outstrip almost any unit in the game (There are only a tiny few exceptions. One is Heros and the other are hidden fun stuff... if they ever get unlocked in this playthrough)

The other advantage Goblins and Undead have over the humans is they both have a unique Pumpkin patch building... and the blessings you get from it are almost invaluable (+3 regeneration is nothing to scoff at if you are making a Siege engine)