I’m hanging out for New World + Ulthuan expansion myself (you could have Dark Elves, High Elves, Skaven and Lizardmen as the major factions, Chaos threatening to invade from the north as usual, and various minor factions as escaped slaves (the lore had some greenskins in Naggaroth at least), colonies, the Vampire Coast, and so on. I believe CA has said they ultimately plan to have all the major factions from Warhammer as playable (what they define as ‘major’, I guess we’ll see), which will include a couple of big expansions. If it was to fall short on the definition, I’d say it was because of the general lack of an “explore” phase: you usually know where everything is (or at least everything within a practical striking distance) and jump straight into the other phases. Furthermore, I don’t think there’s anything about the 4X genre that actually requires even the strategic level to be turn-based: it’s just that 4X games often involve a level of empire management complexity that is impractical in real time. I wouldn’t exclude Total War from 4X status due to having real-time combat, particularly since some classic 4Xs autoresolve combats: the strategic-level gameplay is turn-based 4X gameplay. 6 and 7, though, do seem to mark a certain degree of deterioration. Personally, I looked over it, and felt that I preferred the way that 3 and 4 worked, including the lineups (dungeon should be a monster town! Not Warhammer dark elves with the serial numbers filed off!) – but that’s subjective enough that I can recognise the viewpoint that 5 might have been the best. I haven’t played it myself, but it seems to basically be 3, with a new set of units, dwarf faction instead of swamp dweller faction, non-hero spellcasting units a la HoMMIV, and instead of having two heroes per faction you have one hero with a faction-specific special ability. H IV, with Heroes on the battlefield may also be worth a look BECAUSE of that when you come from AoW.ĥ is probably the best of the non-NWC instalments of the series, from what I’ve heard. D3 Reincarnation isn’t bad at all, and might be the better pick for someone not knowing the Disciples series at all, because combat is more like AoW. Yes, Disciples 2 Gold is probably the game with the best campaigns ever, but the Disciples series as such isn’t much suited for single map games. I also disagree a tad about the Disciples series. 6 and 7 are indeed very diasppointing, but 5 is REALLY good. HoMM V (complete) is a brilliant game and better than H3 in so many respects, especially now that the massive and excellent HoMM 5.5 Mod is out. Since then, though… well, ‘shovelware’ might be too harsh a term, but it’s in that direction. If NWC had survived, I expect they would have ironed out the issues Heroes IV had and made something better than III or IV. TBH, while a lot of people didn’t like Heroes IV, that was a mix of some elements that didn’t pay off while on the other hand the game suffered by being rushed out the door. The later Heroes really feel like they’ve taken what they thought was the glory age (Heroes 3) and just repeated the same formula while losing the spark that makes Heroes 3 regarded as the standard now. I tend to think of this as an example of what happens when a third party takes over a franchise without really understanding how it works. III was a good one, IV had the best ideas of the entire franchise (but crap combat and crap execution in a few other areas), and after that it became total crap – graphic improvements but the gameplay lost it’s addictiveness.
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