I played a lot as a child, so I bought for remember the old times!

Buy this game because you will have many hours of fun and an epic campaign :)



Joguei muito em criança, por isso comprei para relembrar os velhos tempos!

Compra este jogo,pois terás muitas horas de diversão e uma campanha épica :)

I seldom write reviews for games, but I feel compelled to write one for this stellar game.

I bought this game back when it came out originally, and I have played it frequently over the years. So while my steam hours are very low, I can assure you I have sunk a significant amount of time into this game over the years!

WK:B is/was the sorta-sequel to Warrior Kings.It's essentially just a more polished version which added better MultiPlayer options, more AI options and a Skirmish mode.

The Good:
WK:B has some fantastic concepts that still make it stand out to me today.

You don't choose a faction when you start a round. Rather as you play, you choose which tech you want to explore which opens up/removes some options from the tech tree. This is great for multiplayer because unlike virtually all RTS, you never know for certain what your opponent will be building in each round.

The variety of troops/vehicles is great, and there are some very entertaining units.

Supply lines are implemented in a way that heavily affects your strategy. In order to actually support your eventual army you need villagers working in your villages collecting goods, which are then need to be transported via wagon back to your home base for use. (Which all happens automatically). The actual wagons themselves can be attacked and destroyed/looted by the enemy. Certain troops (projectiles) will need ammo during ammo from Supply Wagons, which eat away from your resource pool.

Villagers that go and collect wood, stone and gold actually cut down trees, and eventually will remove them from the map, which not only looks cool but adds more strategy.

If you go the pagan route in the tech tree, you can build a giant wickerman and while sacrificing your peasants at its burning feet release a giant red demon (Abidos) that runs around the map hunting your opponents.

It is possible to play this multiplayer over the internet via a virtual LAN (via hamachi or something like that), which is probably why this is being listed as Single Player as you can't play directly via steam.

There is a ton of maps in the game. (They have to be unlocked in the campaign before you can play them in skirmish mode though)

The Bad:
You can't play multiplayer without messing about with a VPN.

It's old, and while there is a mod to allow better resolutions, it doesn't look good by 2014 standards :)

There are lots of little glitches in the game that can be frustrating. Mostly around pathing for your troops. There is a formation feature, but its not very well implemented.

As with most RTS, the AI doesn't have much I (intelligence). So after a while you will find it hard to be challenged unless you are outnumbered by opponents.

This one could be good/bad depending on what you are looking for, but a full game on a large map with several human opponents can last for a long long time! (On the bright side, you can save the game and return to it another time)



Bottom Line - At it's core this is a great strategy game. If you love RTS and missed this one when first came out, give it a shot! (Make sure you enable "Free Look" in the options, which allows you full camera control (mmb) rather than the silly default camera view)

THE SHORT

The Good:

Brilliant faction system
Unique gameplay
*A lot* of depth
Massively varied units and tactics
Many paths to victory
In depth economy system
Decent music
Satisfying kingdom-building experience
Tons of replay value
AI General Editor is excellent

The Bad:

Buggy pathfinding - can be worked around, but don't expect a fix - the game's devs went bankrupt and it's 11 years old
AI generals can be predictable or downright (un)intelligent
Music can be jarring, dull or occasionally irritating
Very small multiplayer community

THE LONG


This is the first review I've ever written for a game, and I usually refrain from writing them but this game holds a special place in my heart. I've played this game since it came out in 2003, and let me tell you it is one of the best RTS games there is. The level of freedom in choosing an alignment or faction is brilliant and unique, and the replay value, thanks to its skirmish mode, is massive. I have spent countless hours playing this game before it came out on Steam, building massive kingdoms and launching invasions on enemy cities with vast armies. But like all games it has its strengths and weaknesses.

The game is set in a fantasy pseudo-medieval world where all the things people of that time feared and believed in are real. The selection of units is truly vast, ranging from Barbarians, Arch-Demons and Witches to Inquisitors, Archangels and War Elephants, to Arquebus-wielding Gunners, Bombard cannons and Rocket Artillery, as well as less fantastical troops such as pikemen, knights and archers.

Of course, the game is quite old now, so the graphics aren't its strong point, appearing blocky and, when zoomed in, blurry and lacking detail and definition, but who plays games solely for graphics anyway? The art style is not as iconic as other games nor as distinct, but it's certainly not sub-par, and it creates the necessary medieval feel. Building a large and bustling city filled with shops and merchants, with carts going back and forth delivering goods from outlying farmlands and settlements is truly a sight to behold, and is extremely satisfying to just look at especially after spending a lot of time building it all.

The music is either hit or miss, with some tracks being really good and some being really bad, and the way the music jolts around at times can be very unsettling and quite disruptive. The game plays quite relaxing, serene tracks while not in combat, but when your troops start fighting the music ramps up to war-drums. This would have been a good thing if it didn't keep stopping and starting, playing war drums when your enemy sends a lone man into your base (like a scout) and you order your men to kill him. Some of the tracks are too loud as well, and play in instances where they seem inappropiate, such as epic-battle music playing when the enemy sends a small scouting force and kills a few peasants. However some tracks, namely the ones carried over from the previous game Warrior Kings, are very good, and really capture the essence of the world of Orbis.

The Campaign is not as good as the first game, being a series of rather simple skirmish-type maps, with a number of AI generals to overcome on each map. What makes it worth playing through however is the fact that you unlock the maps and the AI generals for the skirmish and multiplayer modes as well.

There are five factions, or alignments in the game (or seven depending on whether you build a Church or a Maypole while following the Renaissance path). These are the Imperial, which features zealous inquisitors and powerful knightly units, the Pagan, which features Demons and savage barbaric warriors, and the Renaissance which has access to the most powerful technology. In Skirmish or Multiplayer modes each player whether AI or human starts off with a basic Manor and several Peasants, and may choose any alignment as they go along, and the alignment is determined by which buildings you construct.

For example, you can choose to follow the Imperial path, building churches, monasteries and cathedrals and you will get access to Acts of God, allowing you to call down meteors, lightning storms and plagues upon your enemies to cause mayhem while building a solid force of troops with powerful knights and longbowmen. Alternatively you can follow the Pagan path, and doing so allows you to summon hordes of powerful demons and use sorcery and subtlety to disrupt your enemies' economy before invading with powerful close-combat warriors. Methods of doing this include possessing enemy peasants and spreading heresy, which stops peasants in a radius around the possessed unit from working until the heretic is killed. You can also use the Sorceress to teleport powerful demons from one point on the map to another, such as into an enemy base behind their lines.

Of course you can also eschew superstition and follow the Renaissance path, the "technological" faction which gives you access to the best economic and civil upgrades, the best unit upgrades and the best war machines, including the truly devastating Rocket Launcher and cannon at the cost of sub-par melee troops, but with ranks upon ranks of deadly musketeers with plug bayonet melee capability and unrivalled accuracy and rate of fire, enemies will be hard pressed to actually get into combat with you!

The actual battles themselves in this game are very similar to the Total War games, following a doctrine of "combined arms" - that is, heavy infantry beat heavy cavalry, ranged troops beat heavy infantry and so on. Each type of unit is countered by another, but some units if massed in large numbers can overcome even their counter units, and if you use flanking and the right formations you can beat heavy infantry with heavy cavalry. Terrain also plays an important part in this game, with ranged units benefiting from increased range and damage when firing from on top of a hill, and suffering from greater inaccuracy when firing into forested areas. Cavalry move more slowly through forested areas and when moving over certain types of terrain such as muddy areas.

Not only are there the combat units, but also agent-type units like spies, priests and merchants. Spies can do a lot of disruptive things such as blowing up gatehouses, committing arson, stowing away on enemy carts then disembarking in enemy territory and spying on them. Priests will protect your troops from demonic influence such as Succubus powers and can also buff your troops with blessings and exorcise or banish demons, defending your kingdom from supernatural forces. Furthermore there is a Diplomacy system that, while simplistic, allows you to form alliances with other players, request for peace or declare war. You can also send tributes to other players to "buy them over".

There are ships in the game, such as transport ships, cannon-armed Galleasses, Fire Ships and catapult-wielding Carracks, but you only get access to them in Multiplayer matches, if you can find one that is. There is no multiplayer community to speak of for this game, however there is a group on Steam that organises games every so often, but it is mercurial, so don't get your hopes up. Of course you could always play against your friends on a LAN.

While there are a few small issues like pathfinding (that is admittedly quite rubbish, but not gamebreaking and can be worked around) the rest of the game makes up for it. The way you build a kingdom, choosing your alignment as you go along is totally unique and I haven't seen this kind of thing in any other RTS, and the depth of the factions with all their little ins and outs are superb. The music could be better, or rather better implemented, but the game is deep, trying different tactics with each alignment, using pike & shot formations, artillery batteries, demonic hordes, massive formations of knights or disrupting your enemy with espionage and subterfuge.

Overall I give this game an 9/10

I used to have this game on disc when I was younger. And it was by far one of my favourite games. Sadly I lost the disc and felt truly lost.

Though when the appeared on Steam, I ♥♥♥♥ myself with excitement, this game is great and brings back great memories for me.

9/10 - Great game :)

Game is good, mostly because of nostalgic reasons but also the mechanics and features of strategy in the game is somewhat unique compared to other RTS games. And besides you can summon satan and his demons to destroy your foes which is fun.

Best strategy game ever i played since i was kid 10/10 , it has so much cool functions and units to use from as well the strategies and it's never boring, there is a community of this game if you wanna find people to play with in multiplayer and mods, or how to fix some problems.

This game has an awesome tech tree system as everyone start the same then as the game progress each one can choose his path (alignement) by constructing some buildings which lead to the path you desire and you can mix them to have a sub paths, and you can have epic large scale battles.

All the hours i have in steam are just multiplayer.

I do recommend this game for anyone that likes large-scale RTS games.

We need a Sequel for this game !

Discord Community: https://discord.gg/GhJwZQ2

PROS:
+ building & unit tech trees
+ unit formations make a difference
+ battleground choice matters
+ really fun multiplayer
+ fixed many bugs from Warrior Kings

CONS:
- clunky & outdated graphics
- some AI bugs
- no story in the campaign, just skirmish battles
- maps start (mostly) with just manors built
- hard to set up a mulitplayer game

Comment:
Clunky graphics, AI path glitches and a bland campaign. But it is still fun to play. While I personally like the original Warrior Kings much more this is a good game for anyone who likes medieval-themed strategy games with a dash of fantasy. I feel they could have kept the epicness of the Artosian campaign in but I get their choice. However it feels weird that Telamagna (capital of the world Orbis in which the game is set) is just a bunch of buildings at the start of the last battle. However the AI is balanced and will give you a challenge until you figure out a strategy. In terms of mulitplayer this game is far ahead of the previous one and is really fun to play with your friends as then you will have more time to cherish all the different tech trees and the beautiful castle building.
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If you liked this review you can find more on the Curator page or in my Review Corner.

I absolutely loved the original Warrior Kings and this game only improved on the experience! I'm so glad that it's on steam now, since my old disk has been getting fairly scratched up over the years and it's nice to have a reliable copy.

While the game's graphics have probably not aged very well for those not viewing it through nostalgia-tinted lens, the strategy side is still rock solid, and it's implementation of formations and terrain remain uniquely excellent in my opinion. I know the old version had some stability issues, but I believe those have been addressed as of now. The single player story is somewhat weaker in this game, but I'd recommend giving it a try since I still found it enjoyably challenging. The multiplayer is where this entry shines though. I've had some good times unleashing my high tech trebuchets on the unwashed masses of my mate's demon hordes! And if that sentence didn't sell you on it, then I don't know what will... Buy it already!

In 2002, indie studio Black Cactus released a first-of-its-kind RTS game called Warrior Kings. One year later, they released a sequel, Warrior Kings: Battles.

Warrior Kings and its sequel were novel RTS games in that, when you play, you don't select a faction to belong to before you start a match, but rather, during the match you choose to build buildings that send you down the path of a particular faction. Besides having this novel mechanic, Warrior Kings and its sequel were also solid games in their own right, offering fun mechanics such as feudal economics, medieval/siege warfare, fantasy/magic elements, tactical terrain-based combat, and even the use of napoleonic tactics for your primitive gunpowder units.

Warrior Kings: Battles isn't so much a sequel to Warrior Kings as it is a version 1.5. They rebalanced the units, nerfed some overpowered game mechanics, fixed some bugs, added some useful features, and programmed better enemy AI. Otherwise it's just a re-release of Warrior Kings.

One thing the developers of this sequel did *not* do was bother making a single-player campaign. The "campaign" in Warrior Kings: Battles is just 22 different skirmish scenarios -- different maps, different enemy AIs, but otherwise all of the battles are the same with no voice acting, no subplots, and no objectives besides destroying the enemy base. This is a real shame, because the single-player campaign in the original Warrior Kings was really fun and interesting.

If there's one thing you take away from this review it's that you should play the original Warrior Kings for the single-player campaign, and you should play Warrior Kings: Battles for multiplayer games and for skirmishes against AI.

6/10 Although this game is one of my childhood specials, i can say even now that it packs quite a lot of action, as well as some unfinished parts. If you like RTS games like Age of Empires, definetely check this game out. Beware, however, the multiplayer option is pretty much dead and the campaign gets sorta repetitive after the first 2-3 areas. The idea of having different factions depending on the way that their civilization improves rather than their nationality sounds really good on paper, though at times its poorly executed in this game. The fantasy element adds a lot more variety to the troops and buildings, but watch out as there are some balance issues with some of the troops. Choose pagan-renaissance or regular renaissance for the win!