Age of Castles: Warlords Reviews

It's kinda fun, sorta, but definitely doesn't hold a flame to the original. Not saying that as a "originals are always better" sort of thing, there are multiple issues I have with this. Before the issues though, I do appreciate the attempt at a recreation of an old classic. While it needs work, I do like that there was an attempt at all, and it was a fair effort too. Problems with the game I've encountered within a half hour of playing it: -Sometimes your people do not do their jobs, despite the allocation. You can have 60-80% of your people allocated as peasants and watch as your resource count doesn't change, or even possibly drops (aside from events that raise/lower them externally). -Combat is stacked against you. Is your attack 3x higher than the enemy's defense? Might score you a 25% chance of hitting them, if you're lucky. Is your defense 2x higher than their attack? You may wish to consider retreating as they will hurt you quite badly. If I had a nickel for each time I lost 15-20% of my people in a "You will completely demolish them. Kill them all!" match-up, it'd pay back for the purchase (though the price is quite low another thing I do appreciate is the affordability.) -Combat rewards are negligibly small. While they give gold, granted that is almost the sole source of the stuff unless you're playing as the sorceress, it's not much. With the frequency of encounters, more so with the warrior, that could arguably add up. However, I would like to make the point that if the next upgrade costs 100 gold coins, having half my people slaughtered every other day for 1-4 gold from the few victories I can get and needing a few days to recover doesn't really feel very rewarding. -Magic stuffs is quite grindy. As the magic upgrades are permanent upgrades (top-ups aside), it's fair to have a slow progression system there. However, the main source of gold is combat, to the point that is, for all intents and purposes, your main source of gold when leveling up gets slow. And as mentioned above, it's a laughably small amount. Needing to win 50 victories for a single upgrade at the cost of losing a large chunk of people that I need to pause the grind to replenish to continue the grind, its a multistep wheel that is a bit tedious. Maybe add more gold events like the classic? -No incentive to move. You get new and stronger enemies and the familiar ones get stronger as you progress, regardless of where you're at. The events also get boosted to keep relevant to your progression regardless of location. I do like that it doesn't force you to move like the classic did, but at the same time it makes me wonder why I should bother spending the already slow to acquire gold on a pointless change of scenery. I haven't spent much time in the game but maybe add more incentive, like better resource gain, maybe have moving further along be what boosts the effectiveness of events and/or strength of enemies, rather than them scaling by you specifically. And, possibly, add punishment for staying in an area and just building up to make sure players don't just slaughter everything in their path in one fell swoop after a few hours of nonstop building and massacring the locals of the first town. -Couple bugs, one with the day system. I will frequently have the "end day" button either appear at the start of the day or before the day is truly over, which leaves me waiting for a while to ensure I am not missing any events which makes day progression either slow or wasteful. Other, I think it's a bug but am not entirely certain, encounters end the day. If you retreat, you may continue the day. But if you win, the rest of the day is skipped. If you get an encounter first thing upon starting a day, you basically just lost that day. Now that I've listed the main issues, I shall finish up with some things I enjoyed about this game. -Affordability. While I do have this as a negative review, because the issues do frustrate me considerably (namely the first two, though the combat rng being rigged against you rather than pinning your stats vs theirs I think takes the cake), I do think that for a <$5 it is indeed worth the price. It is one where if a friend of mine asked about it I would have no trouble simply buying them a copy to try out, and if they don't enjoy it I would not feel like the few bucks would be much of a loss. -The warrior. The heroes each have their ability that assists with an aspect of progression, both in this and the classic. The classic was the prince for people, dwarf for gold, mage for gems (or gold in this one), and I think it was a knight or warrior for more defense? Been a while. Either way, in this game, they have their characters for the same bonuses, as well as another Warrior, which boosts encounter rate. While I believe I have made my stance on the combat clear, I do very much love the idea of a character to boost encounter rates. That would have been fun/challenging to play in the classic! -The term 'Resources'. In the classic, you had gold. That was the resources. It makes sense, you pay your people to do their job. It's called Resources in this, and while it was a bit odd as I was expecting a direct copy of the classic, I think it makes more sense for building your castle or recruiting people. Materials for the castle, food to keep people satisfied and not have to leave/starve, wealth to incentivise people to join your cause, if that's even a term, whatever. All grouped in the term 'resources'. Small edit that has no effect on game play yet I like it. -Magic Shop Progression. The magic shop has many upgrades and some of them even have tiers. The classic had its books and charms you could get and that was that. While it was satisfying to purchase the items and watch them all come to color when you've unlocked them in the classic, this has more of a productive feel to it, like I'm actually getting somewhere. Slowly, sure, but still. -The attempt. Again, I prefer the classic, as was my first point. But, again, this does have the same feel as it. Maybe a somewhat buggy and kind of beta version of the feel of it, quite a few adjustments to make, but the style is there with their own takes on it. I like the art, I like the shop, I like effort. All in all, my main issues are the combat being too heavy on the rng and not enough on the actual stats, as well as not being very rewarding at all, and the issue of the people not doing their jobs sometimes. Maybe add a day-in-progress visual so I know when a day is over, so even if the button pops up early I know when it's good to go. The rest would be nice adjustments too but if these main issues were fixed, this would honestly be a game I'd get for my friends. And I'd change my review from "No" to "Yes". To players, hope this review helped warn of some issues you may expect to find before getting it. To the game devs, I hope my suggestions are of use to address some of these issues. I did enjoy the time, quite nostalgic of the old Age of Castles, simply it needs a bit of adjustments. Cheers!

It's not that good I bought it for basically free like 50 cents and I still feel cheated... Get the other similar title "Ant War Domination" It's way better while still being pretty much the same game. If this game's battle system was the same as AWD where stats - like defense - mattered; then, I'd be able to change to a recommended rating. As it stands, not fun at all. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2961637233

saw the boobs on the thumbnail heard the fascinating voice of the dev in the trailer thought it was a good game... i was once again fooled by boobs

Gold income needs to be better. There needs to be another way of winning beside reaching level 100. This game desperately is in need of a goal to reach because as of right now all you need to do is click start day, end day, and retreat keep doing that and you win. Only reason why I got this game is I wanted to get one of the most craziest and dumb game possible for my 69th game. The trailer was pretty crazy and the game was pretty dumb lol. I really wanted to give this game a thumbs up but as it is right now I just can't nor can I recommend this for anyone to get.

Its like Ant War, but better. I completed in 28 minutes, while Ant War took 3 hours. It is more visually pleasing than Ant War. The goal of this game is to reach level 100. To get to level hundred, you need to recruit a particular amount of people. Just like Ant War, this game is very repetitive. You'll be clicking on "Start Day" "End Day" repeatedly. The only reason why I am recommending this is because it is a childhood game, and it is less grindy than Ant War.

I really loved the original game back in the early 2000's. Thought I'd grab this for nostalgic purposes. Unfortunately, this version of the game does not live up to the older one. A couple of key points: This one has done away with crystals entirely. This takes out a big element of complexity in the progression of the game and makes the hero choices much less important. Also, in the past when playing, if you stayed too long at a certain area after leveling up, the likelyhood of negative "random" events increased. Instead, in this version, all areas seem to have equal chance of negative events happening, regardless of how long you've stayed there, and it is overwhelmingly negative events that occur (I'd estimate 75% neg vs 25% pos, and they are much more significant ie. in a typical positive event you gain 50 resources, negative you lose 800). Also, certain areas gave you a higher chance of receiving specific daily bonuses if remaining in that land, that element has also been removed. Daily bonuses almost never occur. Overall the game has completely gotten rid of any element of strategy and made everything entirely random. This slows the game down so much that where it used to take me an hour or less to progress to in the game, I've played over 4 hours and am not even close to getting there. Just play slots instead. It's more fun and you probably have better odds. Sad I played too long to request a refund hoping for this game to redeem itself.

I have the perspective of a lot of similar reviews for this game. Rather than being the OG Age of Castles which actually had some difficulty, this is just Ant War re-skinned. It has not even half the substance of the original game which had less upgrades and did rely on you making the correct decisions. In this one, you just save your gold to buy the next 10 upgrades at once. They're not even necessary though, since everything is SO boiled down in this game. Anarchy, if you are looking through these reviews, please post the OG Age of Castles. I know I downloaded it from another site and since Flash is dead... Well, let's say you'd make a killing on Steam by giving us the OG. This game just doesn't have what it originally had, and it just becomes sad.

Gameplay is *extremely* minimal, I don't know that there is much of any strategy to it, really. Wish I hadn't bought it...

As others have said, there is no challenge to this game. Click to advance another tedious day. That's it. The battles have two strategy options; either fight or retreat each round. Dull and boring.

Pros: Has multiple characters to choose from. Has many different opponents. Nice art and music. And well it never crashed Cons: Waaaaaaaaaaay to simplistic. It looks like you can build several building in the pictures, but it’s all just 1 building (your castle) You have a map, but to win you have no need to move anywhere. (Just get to level 100) You have no need to use Builders. (The game will build your castle just fine from random events and leveling) You have no need to use soldiers, you have no need to ever fight, just run its better for you, even if you win. You level by gaining population so that is really all you need to do, fighting loses you population so it’s a bad idea. No level of difficulty it’s all just super easy. Comments: When I got to level 38 I was able to jump to 51 the next turn, then to 89 then 100, game over I win (no need to concur any other provinces). This game is in need of play testing and re-balancing.