WARLORDS

 WARLORDS, from Strategic Studies Group (SSG), is the latest offering in a long
list of products that includes HALLS OF MONTEZUMA, PANZER BATTLES, and GOLD OF
THE AMERICAS. It's a deceptively simple game of conquest. The object is to
"eliminate" all of your opponents and gain control of the continent of Illuria.
You can play the game virtually out of the box without heavy documentation
reading or preparation, but there are lots of good hints in the manual. (This
review is based on the IBM-PC version of the game.)

 When the game opens, you're presented with a setup screen from which you can
specify the difficulty levels of your opponents. This is an eight-player game,
and you may direct the computer to handle all eight, or choose any combination
of human and computer opponents. It's interesting to watch all eight computer
opponents attempt to destroy each other!

 Your computer opponents may be either Knights (not very smart), Barons (not
much better), Lords (still lacking sense), or Warlords (a reasonable challenge).
I would've preferred a tougher Warlord level, with a more even grading from
Knight.

 There are eight different races to play. You may choose from:

 Sirians: a Knightly order of religious bigots
 Storm Giants: despise short races
 Gray Dwarves: feel their mining would be enhanced without other races around
 The Orcs of Kor: we all know about Orcs
 Elvallie Elves: consider the elimination of other races ecologically sound
 Selentines: run-of-the-mill cruel humans
 Horse Lords: fond of killing, but like horses
 Lord Bane: an evil force lusting for dominance

 Each race has various characteristics. For instance, the Giants get a movement
bonus in the hills, but are penalized when travelling in swamps. More
importantly, each race begins every game in the same geographical location on
the map. Some groups, like the Sirians, are at a distinct disadvantage, while
others may have an easier time.

 Once you chose whom you wish to play, you're assigned the capital city of your
race (always the same) and a hero. Heroes are one of the sixteen different
armies that you'll run across in the game. They're very important, being the
only ones who can search ruins to find treasure/magical items (more on that
later).

 There are 80 castles in Illuria. Your task is to capture all of them, and in
the process eliminate your obnoxious neighbors. Neutral castles contain rather
incompetent garrisons, but you must be careful: Some may get lucky.

 Once a castle is captured, you decide what type of army it should produce.
Castles have predetermined choices of:

 Light Infantry: quick to produce (cannon fodder)
 Heavy Infantry: longer to produce but better fighters
 Eleven Archers: quick to produce and fast in the woods
 Giant Warriors: longer to produce and tough
 Dwarven Legions: medium to produce and good fighters
 Cavalry: travel far on roads
 Wolf Riders: orcs riding on wolves, fast and tough
 Pegasi: flying horses; can fly over mountains, etc.
 Griffins: tough flying critters
 Ships: provide the ability to move armies over water

 The more powerful the unit, the higher the cost and the longer it takes to
produce. Castles are restricted to only a couple of choices from the above list.
Some castles also take longer to produce the same type of army than other
castles. Armies may be "vectored" to another castle at the cost of some turns.
This saves marching them across Illuria. As it is, they always seem to be in the
wrong place!

 There are also a few other special armies that appear in the game:

 Heroes: start with one...others may offer to join you
 Undead: long dead spirits
 Demons: creatures from the nether planes
 Dragons: very _tough_ opponents
 Devils: similar to demons
 Wizards: can fly and are potent

 These creatures are quite powerful but cannot be produced in castles. They must
either be found by heroes, offering to join your force while searching in ruins,
or appear as allies when new heroes sign on.

 By the way, flying armies (dragons, pegasi, griffins, wizards) are especially
dangerous, since they can travel over water or mountains. They can also travel
quite far. It's a real pain (if not the beginning of the end) to watch a group
travel into your lightly defended interior and start capturing castle after
castle!

 One very important aspect of WARLORDS is that it takes money to produce armies
or to sign up heroes. Armies also require money for maintenance (half the amount
to produce them, each turn). Castle walls are damaged in attacks, and it costs
to rebuild the fortifications.

 Money can be accumulated by capturing castles or searching ruins. It is very
easy to suddenly find yourself broke and unable to produce additional armies or
maintain the ones you have. The lack of money also means that you won't be
approached by any heroes; they want to be paid in advance.

 I should mention a few words about ruins. They play a very important part in
WARLORDS. Not only are there allies and treasure to be found in ruins, but
monsters, as well. Searching can be rather hazardous. Your heroes can be killed
by nasty creatures, so it's not a sure bet by any means. However, finding some
of the magical artifacts hidden in ruins can be a prerequisite to winning the
game. There are also libraries and sages. Although the location of these places
is always the same, their contents are randomized from game to game.

 Combat in WARLORDS is straightforward. The game works out factors based on a
variety of items (the defensive strength of castle walls, the presence of a hero
or other special army -- dragons are really nice to have, etc.). The same is
done for the attacking army. The game rolls and the decision is rendered
automatically. Although unlikely, a weak army has a chance to defeat the
strongest. It is always a fight to the death.

 Happily, SSG has chosen not to include _any_ form of copy protection with
WARLORDS -- neither on-disk protection nor any type of lookup scheme.

 The game I received came on 5-1/4" diskettes and included an offer to obtain
3-1/2" disks for $5.00 (plus $2.50 for postage and handling). Also in the
package was an instruction manual, a colorful map of the continent of Illuria
(where the action takes place), and an IBM Supplement card. The latter was
included because the manual is "generic" and covers all machines.

 WARLORDS is easy to install. Simply place disk 1 of 3 in a drive and run the
install routine. It copies the disks to a directory called "Warlords"
(naturally) on the selected target drive. I played from a hard drive, but it's
possible to play directly from floppies.

 The program supports either keyboard commands or a mouse. I used a mouse and
found the interface to be trouble-free, but some users have had problems with
their mice, so be warned! I ran into some memory-induced errors, but that was my
fault: WARLORDS requires approximately 560K-570K of free RAM, and I had only
507K. When I booted with a "clean" system, it ran problem-free. I believe that
SSG has a version in process that will require less memory and eliminate the
mouse problems.

 WARLORDS supports EGA and VGA only. There is no support for CGA. EGA is the
standard 16 fixed colors, while VGA has different groupings of 16 colors picked
from a palette of 256, depending on the scene. Both run in 640x200 resolution
and are quite acceptable (VGA is better). By the way, the graphics for the "off
with their heads" shot is particularly interesting (heh).

 Sound in WARLORDS is minimal, and what there is comes through the PC's internal
speaker. (Once again, my Sound Blaster is sitting silent!) Hopefully, SSG will
include sound support in a later release.

 The screen display is divided into three portions. The left-hand side is the
close-up view of a section of Illuria. The entire continent is displayed on the
right-hand side. The close-up view can be changed by moving a magnifying glass
icon around the continent view. The bottom of the screen is a message area.

 There is a vertical set of icons separating the two map screens that represents
the most common commands. Hidden across the top of the screen is a series of
pull-down menus that only become visible when selected by the mouse or keyboard
commands. I found the interface to be simple and intuitive. The pull-down menus
contain the Save/Restore functions (up to eight separate games can be saved), a
variety of reports (Production, Locations of Armies, Winning Status, etc.), and
other useful functions.

 An interesting report is the attitude of the computer opponents towards you.
There are seven levels, from Apathy through Loathing...not a game for delicate
egos! An opponent who loathes you spares nothing in his attempt to annihilate
you.

 WARLORDS is easily played, but there are a few enhancements that I would like
to see added. These are minor but I believe they would make the game more
enjoyable. The most important is the ability to select an end destination for an
army, and have it move all the way there. As it is now, the destination must be
provided to each army at every turn, and then the army travels toward that spot
only until its movement points run out.

 I'd also like to see a list of armies in a stack (up to eight may be stacked).
It can be rather tedious to have to check a stack to find its composition. It'd
be better to be presented with a stack's composition in the message area.

 While looking at the Production charts, I'd like to see an army icon at each of
my castles that indicates what is being produced at that location. I find I
forget what each castle is producing (old age?). Since I'm on the topic, how
about PBM, modem play, random maps, and/or hidden terrain? (Who said gamers are
easy to please?!)

 Fast and easy to learn, WARLORDS offers excellent play balance and hours of
playing time. It is both enjoyable and addictive; highly recommended!

 WARLORDS is published by Strategic Studies Group and distributed by Electronic
Arts.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253