As it was earlier said, this game are making guys responsible for Fantasy Wars (1C: Ino-Co) -- a very nice, rather simple turn-based tactical game on hex board. As I can see (from watching beta gameplay videos) Warlock has the same base battle mechanics (hex tiles, 1UPT, etc.), but bigger map, some city management, discovering spells... This is probably going to be a nice game as well, but I'm pretty sure it's much simpler than Civilization V and Fallen Enchantress. So I'm looking forward to playing it too, even if it's no more than a decent stand-alone fantasy Civ V mod.

I read a fair bit of comments about FE on other forums, and as far as I can tell about one in four consider "all faith lost" in SD, and will not ever purchase or play again (at least, that's what they say... internet attracts big claims). But the positive side is that for the first time I'm seeing comments like in that thread, where some claim that it is already a fantastic game, much, much better than E:wom (often attributed to Derek Paxton).

I should be getting my other PC up and running next month, and having access to both games, I'll try and do a head to head comparison in an article of some sorts. I honestly never dreamed of seeing a year where the biggest competition for TBS games would be other TBS games. Sure, WoM was a month apart from Civ 5, but this year we've got FE and Warlock, Xenonauts and X-Com, Jagged Alliance Online and Jagged Alliance Back in Action(although that one is more real time), and a bunch more I can't remember this early in the morning.

That's mostly my take. What I'm hearing about FE so far sounds a lot different than what I heard when I checked into Elemental mid-beta. But I try to take that as neutrally as possible until I can mess with it myself. But things like "each of the races feels distinct and purposeful..." is encouraging to hear.

If FE turns out to be a good game with the right mentality behind it, I'll be more than glad to say so other places and judge it based solely on its own merits, and not on how much better, or worse, it is than Elemental.

As for what SD's rep is ultimately with gamers out there right now, I can't really say. A game that under delivers can do serious damage to that rep, but a game that does deliver can easily restore it.

Had the chance to play it for a few hours today. It's a lot like Civ 5, same combat, similar rules, but with spells instead of research, more in a blind research sort of way, and simplified city management, in the sense that there's no unrest and stuff. City development though is quite nice, very limited building space means you've got to specialize a lot. The graphics are very colorful which lends it a whimsical and charming atmosphere that suits the game very well. You can cast spells everywhere you please, you can set up maps with up to 6 parallel worlds and Sean Connery is your advisor again. So far I've enjoyed it a lot, but it could use a few Elemental features, like champions and tactical battles. 

Screenshots look like Civ 5

Don't worry about it too much.. generally people that are enamored with paradox wouldn't buy FE anyway (unless you got paradox to Publish it )

I have to agree with this. I've watched all the game-play footage I could find on Warlock so far and the combat seems like it was ripped right out of Civ 5 and given a fantasy spin. While this game looks cool in some respects, I need more strategic depth in my armies organization and representation to truly enjoy game-play of this type. If the combat were to take place at another scale aside from the world map, like FE's or like MoM's or even like "Lords of Magic" I would probably like this game better.

I'd say it's worth keeping an eye on at the very least though.

Got my eye on this one.

Hmmmm... It seems it's closer to Fantasy Wars/Elven Legacy. And the combat system was far far far far better than the system of MoM or FE.

I think I'll take it as an Elven Legacy with strategical options (what to build and spells). So I think it coul dbe a must. Let see if they can achieve something at least as good as Elven Legacy.

RavenX is right, this is fantasy Civ 5.

The combat system in Elven Legacy was the same style as the Panzer General games. Warlock does not have that.

How sad Elven Legacy was such a brilliant game.

Indeed it was.

This is a screenshot from Fantasy Wars, a game released by the same developers as Warlock back in 2007 (i.e. before Civ5).

Warlock is running an updated version of the engine from this game. Similar to Civ5? Yes, but only because Civ5 was similar to Fantasy Wars.

Fantasy wars (awesome game) is a fantasy version of Panzer General. And Panzer General is what inspired Firaxis when they made Civ 5.

The real question is: who discovered hexes? I bet Ancient Greeks. They should have patented the idea! 

No, it's not. I read a preview a few months ago where they said that the game engine they were using was the Civ5 engine licensed directly from Fireaxis. So the reason that is looks so much like Civ5 is that it IS Civ5. They also said that the early development preview version was still using a lot of the default Civ5 assets still. The game combat is pure Civ5.

Let's hope that they differentiate their game as much as possible from Civ5 and don't take the easy way out.

Citation needed.

ps *Firaxis

I did a little research and it appears the guy who wrote the preview I read was just plain wrong, although this does seem to be a common belief out there that is irritating the developer. I found a post from one of the game developers on the Paradox forums denying that they had a license with Firaxis. He says the engine is indeed an enhanced version of the Fantasy Wars game engine and uses none of the Civ5 art assets. He says it just happens to look a lot like Civ5.

So, my apologies to CladInShadows.

That's a good news, because combat in Fantasy wars was much better than in Civ 5, which is not that hard, though.

Sorry but combat is still like civ 5. Engine is not the same as combat mechanics.

I loved the combat in fantasy wars, far better than Civ5 of course. Unfortunately, I got into fantasy wars too late, the graphics were too ugly for me to watch while playing so I couldn't enjoy it.

The tower defense these guys just released was a total disappointment. I'll wait for reviews and patches before I pick up this game, but if it looks good and plays like a better fantasy war with strategy elements, I'm in.

Yeah. I'll quote Alexey Kozyrev (Development Team Leader of Warlock) to cut all misunderstandings:

But why would they drop their own combat engine to borrow the inferior civ5 mechanics? That does not make much sense :o

From what I recall, Fantasy wars had unit casualties replacement cost, defensive support from archers and mages to adjacent units being attacked, suppresion(ie temporary damages) , and more interesting units progression (and the unit stats were more detailled).

That may have required a bit of streamlining to adapt it to a larger map and army, but not as much as turning it into an Civ 5 clone :o