Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria

The release of the game was planned for 2001, but subsequently the release date was postponed all the time, publishers changed, and as a result, the SSG development company decided to stop development and stop working with the Warlords series altogether. After that, the creator of the series and game designer Stif Fockner left the SSG and founded his own company Infinite Interactive to continue to engage in Warlords games. Since it was completely impossible to get the code base from SSG, all the developments were in a mess and the publisher was in a hurry with the release dates, the game was created from scratch in 6 months. Steve Fouckner himself admits that the game turned out to be unfinished ^[11] . To fix all errors, imbalances and introduce new features that we did not have time to implement earlier, several patches were released that were developed jointly with the community of fans of the game. The last patch was released in July 2007 and the community is not going to stop there.

On the strategic map, according to the canons of the series, there was nothing superfluous - only cities, ruins and sites (structures that provide various bonuses to cities). Armies moving on the map are now fully visible, and not as before, only the unit in first place on the stack. On the map, as before, there are various types of soil, forests and swamps, which require a different number of stroke points. There are no more ships in the game and the water can only be overcome by a hero on a flying unit.

There are only two resources, as before, gold and mana . The only way to earn them is to capture cities and search the ruins. A search of the ruins now does not differ from the usual battle - you need to do your best to destroy the inhabitants of the ruins.

The map can be open, hidden, and starting from version 1.04, the ability to play with the fog of war has been added.

The game uses a new system of relations races - "wheel races." Friendly races here are nearby on the wheel (like elves and knights), and opposed races are on the opposite side of the wheel. The wheel of races has undergone major changes and in the game version 1.05 is very different from the first version. There are ten races in the game: Knights, Empire, Elves , Dark Elves , Dwarves , Dragons , Undead , Orcs , Ogres and Demons . Each race has five units and one hero, which can now also be made in the castle. In Warlords IV, the set of units for each race is fixed.

Units are acquired as in the previous parts of the series. They can be produced in a city where each unit has its own number of moves for production and price, or they can be found in ruins or received from allies. There are several types of units : humans, elves, gnomes, dragons, monsters , giants, orcs, undead, dark elves, demons, siege devices . Units can also have subtypes - this is infantry , a flying unit , an archer, and cavalry . Also, units and heroes can be the type of "good", "evil" or dwell.

In cities, as before, products are produced. When a city is captured, you can plunder it (bring a lot of money), partially plunder it (bring less money), leave it the same (it will not bring money, but it will not lower it in level), raise the level or destroy it.

Cities can have sites - buildings that enhance some of the characteristics of the city.

Each belligerent has its own capital, in which Varlord is located. Capturing cities is the main goal of the game.

Warlords IV introduced a new type of battle that is very similar to collectible card games . Now the player needs to choose during the battle which of the following units will go into battle. Archers and siege devices can fire at enemy units and buildings without entering into battle.

A new tactical type of battle can be turned off, but the automatic battle in Warlords IV is not as well thought out as in the previous parts, where it was the only possible type of battle.

Warlord is a unit that is the player’s alter ego . By combining primary and secondary skills, you can get a huge number of different warlords that will affect the gameplay. Warlord goes from script to script with his retinue and after each game he raises his level. In the game, the warlord learns and uses various spells, he cannot move on the map and enters the battle only when the enemy attacks the capital.

There are many pre-created warlords of different levels in the game that you can play if you don’t want to swing your own or want to play a warlord of a certain level, which is useful for multiplayer games.

Warlord Characteristics

When creating a warlord, you need to choose three of its characteristics - a privileged race, primary and secondary skills. As primary and secondary, you can choose one of six skills: battle, white magic , rune magic, nature magic , invocation and necromancy . By combining these skills you can get many different classes of warlords. For example, if you choose a battle with both primary and secondary skills, then the warlord will be of the “warrior” class, if you choose battle as the primary skill, and the magic of the runes will be secondary, then you will get a “barbarian” class warlord, and if the opposite, then “Lord of the runes”.

A map editor is attached to the game, with the help of which the player can create his own cards on which he can play. The editor's interface is user friendly. You can choose from four card sizes (50X50, 75X75, 100X100, 125X125) and many types of soil. On the map there can be up to 50 cities, 100 sites and 50 ruins. Cities and ruins will be given random names, but the user can change them to their own. The creator of the map also chooses the level, status of the capital, income from the city and the garrison. The card maker also selects the number of players and racial restrictions.

Like Warlords III , Warlords IV has a powerful random map generator.

Single player

In Warlords IV, there are three types of single-player games against AI: A campaign in which you need to complete story missions, play on a script made in advance, which you can choose from a large list of ready-made ones or make it yourself in the map editor, and there is also the opportunity to generate a random map by setting its various parameters, such as the number of cities, ruins, sites and others.

Campaign plot

The plot in the campaign is the same regardless of the original race of the player and is represented on behalf of an unknown hero of the human race, a knight or imperial. There are 10 story missions in total, in each of which the player defeats one of the ten races of the game. In the first mission, the main character, being in his own castle, learns about the orcish raid on the surrounding lands and defeats them. It turns out that the orcs acted on the orders of the Dark Elf Sorceress Aravein. The hero rushes into her fortress (2nd mission), declaring war on the way blocking the path of the ograms and interrupting them, but the sorceress is not at home.

For explanations, the hero goes to the dark elves and, after defeating the dark elves (3rd mission), their king Garranroth declares that he has nothing to do with it, and Arawein is trying to conduct a dark ritual that can destroy the whole continent. Garranroth recommends that the hero go for advice to the oldest and wisest creature on the continent - the giant dragon Kelturaks.

The hero decides that he cannot just come to the dragon and you need an offering. He attacks the Knight's Order (4th mission) and, having defeated the knights, kidnaps their relic - Dragon Stone. Having defeated many wild dragons, the hero enters the cave of Kelturax, who accepts the offering and claims to know about the ritual of the sorceress. But he will tell in detail only after receiving treasures of the gnomes from the hero. The hero defeats them (6th mission), the dragon also demands the treasures of the old emperor of the local empire of people, the hero brings them to the dragon (7th mission). The dragon says that Arawein wants to cast the Separation spell, which is supposed to bring crowds of demons to the continent. But to save the world, it is enough to get a counter-spell in the lands of the light elves and read it next to the witch. The hero defeats the light elves (8th mission), makes his way through the swamp infested with undead (9th mission) to the refuge of the elf, defeats her demon servants (10th mission) and thereby completes the campaign. Continent saved. True, the main share of deaths and destruction to its inhabitants was brought by the main character, not the witch, but such a trifle does not bother him.

Massively Multiplayer Game

Warlords IV provides many opportunities for multiplayer games. You can play on a local network via TCP / IP or IPX , on the Internet, several people on one computer ( Hot-seat ), and, by tradition, by e-mail .

Previously, there was still the possibility of playing on ubi.com, but since 2005 UbiSoft has suspended the service for online games in Warlords IV. Now, to find opponents for an online game, players have to use various forums and third-party programs.

There is a version of Warlords IV for PC / Windows only , but game author Steve Foukner said in an official forum that there might be a version for the Xbox 360 that will be distributed through the Xbox Live Arcade ^[12]

• - official website of Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria
• Official forum
• Warlords IV Forum
• Russian fan site games
• Warlord and Suite Editor
• Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria on Absolute Games