There have been a few developers to incorporate some sort of hero-system into their strategy games. We've seen it in Heroes of Might and Magic for one (gasp!), it's still looking like it will play a role in WarCraft III, and Strategic Studies Group did it with Warlords
Battlecry, their first venture into real-time strategy with the originally turn-based Warlords franchise. Now they have a sequel on the way to the PC with much of what made the first game work with plenty more of
it this time to satiate Warlords fans.
It would certainly seem that the developers of Warlords Battlecry II (WB2) are firm believers in the old adage, "There's strength in numbers". Just looking at the
sheer amount of troops, races, and heroes that they'll be putting at players disposal is really quite striking. When all is said and done WB2 will have 20 different
heroes, 12 races, over 100 spells and 100 special abilities, and almost 140 different units to choose from.
So, to distill these numbers a bit let's first take a look at the races in this game. First up we have the Daemons, dark, evil beasts who want to open a portal into the
world so that their malevolent goddess can enter and bring misery to all who oppose here. Worshippers of an equally dark
deity, the Minotaurs are actually scouring the land trying to find the parts of their fallen god so to re-assemble him. Don't expect them to be friendly about it either, they're big, brutish, and generally not very
nice. Rounding out the forces of evil, and otherwise not nice people we have the
orcs, the undead, dark dwarves, and dark elves. For the good guys players will
have the choice of the stupid, but loveable Barbarians, the Fey, Dwarves, Humans, both Wood and High Elves, and the gruff but efficient Dwarves. Between these
races there are almost 140 units in the game. While this is an impressive number, it's safe to say that they won't be completely unique to the last, they'll still serve
specific military purpose, like acting as infantry, ranged units, or mounted units, but they'll still have their own
idiosyncrasies differentiating them, not just being a bunch of the same units with different skins. Of course the extra special units are the heroes themselves,
specialized troops whose awesome might spreads confidence, courage, and an all around warm, fuzzy feeling to all the units near him or her so that they all work a little harder and fight a little better. Heroes will vary
from knights, to illusionists, to sorcerers, to assassins, to healers, all highly skilled and crucially important both for the direct results of their actions, and the added
statistics they impart on nearby friendly units. They don't exactly grow on trees either so take care of your heroes or you could be in trouble, but if they eat their
spinach, or in this case fight a lot, they gain experience and go up levels like in an RPG, getting stronger and better at handling themselves in battle. Hero or no
though, magic will play a role in battle, necessitating the need to have a healthy arsenal of mystical might with ice blasts, fireballs, and the other expected
zappy, blasty, ka-blammies that come part in parcel with practitioners of the arcane. But when your typical magic spell just won't cut it players will be able to summon their
race's god to come onto the battlefield and really give the enemy a shellacking for a short while.
Customization also looks like it will play a big role in how the game works. The AI of the enemy in general right down to the individual units will be customizable but
how this will differ from your typical scaleable difficulty settings is anyone's guess. Oddly,
additional AI will actually be downloadable from Strategic Studies Group's website
for players to add after the game is released. And if you aren't terribly taken with the landscape, a map editor will also be included in WB2. The landscape shouldn't
look too shabby either as it will be fully 3D so hopefully that will mean plenty of lush environments with eye candy for the whole family.
Sometimes bigger is better and it would appear that the folks at Strategic Studies Group agree judging from their approach to WB2. With legions of units, spells,
and races to choose from, plus the tactical elements that the heroes bring fans of the original game should have plenty to keep them happy when this game ships in
the Spring of 2002.
