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Warlords IV | 
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| From: Ubisoft
Category: Video Games
List Price: $4.99
Buy New: $3.99
You Save: $1.00 (20%)
New (17) Used (2) from $3.99
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 9473
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows Xp
Genre: role_playing_games
ESRB: Teen
Media: CD-ROM
Number Of Items: 1
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 98
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5 x 1
MPN: 68107
Model: 008888681076
UPC: 008888681076
EAN: 0008888681076
ASIN: B0000A1VEP
Release Date: October 21, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Experience a unique blend of role-playing and turn-based strategy gaming | | • | Detailed Tactical Combat system for field and siege battles | | • | Players grow and develop heroes from battle to battle | | • | Detailed Warlord and Leader unit development | | • | Expanded experience-based magic system with strategic and tactical spells |
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Product Description
In Warlords IV: Heroes of Etheria continues the fantastic Warlords tradition of immersive tactical combatwith creator-made heroes! Thrilling multiplayer action for up to 6 players
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Not as bad as people say, but not great June 15, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This game isn't as bad as some of the other reviews say (especially once you get the patch), but I would agree that it's not great. The main problem is that they removed some of the nicest features from previous versions of the game:
1. No more "King of the Hill" feature. To win, you have to capture every other enemy capital. That gets pretty boring once you've established an invincible supply chain. At least you don't have to conquer every city; you just have to capture every enemy capital.
2. No more unit vectoring! Removing this was a big mistake. The new "production waypoints" system, as people have said, is a step backwards and can be a MAJOR hassle to tinker with once you've built a large empire.
3. I agree that magic items have become kind of wimpy now (though I don't agree with whoever said that heroes have become expendable--you won't feel that way when you see what a very high level hero can do). Exploring ruins usually isn't a good gamble unless you have a very strong stack. Otherwise, you'll lose units in the battle, and the reward is rarely worth it.
4. The AI is still very predictable. Basically, the computer will always choose the fastest route to its target, meaning that if you can take control of the obvious transit routes, the AI will have a hard time positioning its troops to attack you. So I don't agree with the reviewer who said that strong flying troops negate the effect of terrain. In practice, it doesn't work that way, because the AI (stupidly) always tries to use roads if it can. You almost never have to protect your flank.
On the plus side:
1. Magic, though still too weak, has been seriously upgraded. There was virtually no reason to fool around with magic in previous versions of the game; at least now the spells are stronger and the magic system is more complex.
2. The graphics are a lot better. But no one has ever played the Warlords series for the graphics.
3. Combat is more balanced. Plan on losing more units than in the past. You also have to think more carefully about how to put a stack together. Hint: having an archon and a unicorn in the same stack can be VERY useful, because they bless and heal your troops (respectively).
4. The game is stable and loads surprisingly quickly.
 Warlords the Magnificent March 16, 2006
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Excellent game play. It seems that every aspect has been considered in the creation. Lots of fun!
 Really Crappy Game January 10, 2006
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
This game went wrong in a lot of ways. Warlords III: Reign of Heroes and Dark Lords Rising were awesome games, nearly perfect in their execution. Warlords: Battlecry II was also in itself an incredible game.
Along comes Warlords IV, which tries to mix the two games, and fails miserably. Most of the cool features from Warlords III are gone, apparently in the name of "simplification". While a lot of the animations and sound effects from Battlecry II are ripped off the original game and presented here in a very stripped-down way.
I wanted to like this game, but it is just such a departure (in a bad way) from the two games that it is based off of. I have no problem with gaming innovation, but this isn't innovation. This is just plain bad programming.
As another reviewer stated, it really seems like the developers of this game ran into some budget problems and just "threw it out there", so to speak. The new warlord system just really stinks. And the heroes, which were so cool and played such an important part in both WL3 and Battlecry 2, are conspicuously weak in this game. They are all wimps! I don't know why they are even included in the game, because the moment you put them in a battle they are guaranteed to die right off the bat.
And the vectoring system which was so useful in WL3 is now absent. The units actually have to travel ON SCREEN from where they are produced. This is more realistic, perhaps, but it certainly calls for some micromanagement to make sure your units out wandering alone don't get slaughtered while you aren't looking.
The only good thing I could say about this game is that the graphics are somewhat improved from WL3. Even so, most of the animations are still just ripped directly off of Battlecry II, so we're not seeing anything innovative here. In fact, the graphics in Battlecry II beat this mish-mashed hodgepodge of a game by a long shot.
Besides, graphics alone does not a good game make. Warlords 3, while having graphics that are now showing their age, is a FAR superior game to this one. (And I STILL highly recommend it for turn-based strategy game lovers! WL3 is an excellent game indeed.)
This game was really disappointing. It shows a lot of potential with the ideas used, but the execution was horrible to say the least. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend it.
 Disciples II is better November 24, 2004
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
My bottom line is that if you want a more engaging and more appealing turn-based fantasy strategy game, go for Disciples II. The only draw-back of Disciples is that there are only five races (human, undead, demon, dwarves, and elves). Warlords have more.
My biggest gripe about Warlords IV is the animation and the graphic; it's really bad. I suggest you download both demo of Warlords and Disciples and compare the artwork and gameplay. Another problem is that there are no real resource management... no gold to mine and no mana to collect. Also, each race has only 6 units! The human race has the swordman, bowman, knight, siege engine, archon, and a hero. In comparison, the human race in Disciples has almost 20 different battle units, ranging from assassins to white wizards.
Some of the drawbacks of turn-based strategy are evident in Warlords, but the negatives outlined above didn't impress me. If the price is low, I guess then it isn't a big concern.
Kind of a mixed bag November 18, 2004
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I am still undecided about this game. I've only put about 10-15 hours into it so far, but had put hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours into Warlords 2, 3, and 3 Dark Lords Rising.
For the most part, what it offers is impressive and visually pleasing. Once you get into it more, you realize that it actually has fewer features. Kind of like how Heroes of Might and Magic IV lost a ton of features, only not quite so bad. Good graphics, unfortunately, are not what I consider important in my turn-based strategy games however.
Anyway, I am not quite addicted to the game. I will probably finish the campaign, just because I am convinced that there will be something along the way that will be cool. I haven't seen it yet, however, after breezing through the first 3 parts of the campaign.
Some of the things that particularly bug me is there is no vectoring. You have to physically manage every single unit when you send them to places. You can set production waypoints, but that is a huge mess. Chances are, once they get to a city, there will already be 8 troops in it, so they will just stand outside unless you happen to see them. Also, the movement points really bother me... if I have a stack of 7 units, and they pass by another unit which is out of movement... everybody loses their movement for that turn. It doesn't matter if my stack of 7 had 20 mv points left, or if I ungroup the one unit that was out of movement. Very frustrating.
Also, heroes are seriously crippled in this game. In the other warlord games, you built up heroes that would be one-man armies, and stockpile every magical item and hoard every quest available. Here, magical items are rather weak, quests and ruins are so time-consuming to be almost pointless, and heroes are expendable.
There are some interesting ideas here, and I think this could have been a great game if they expanded on the previous games rather than slashing out so many old features. It almost feels like the game was unfinished, and that it needed another two or three months to be developed.
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