Warlords II Deluxe

The Good
Where Warlords II came with some army sets, some maps and thus, gameplay always taking place in the same place Warlords II Deluxe came with hundreds of army sets, several different terrain sets and hundreds of city sets. This allows you to get the feeling fighting something like WWI one day and beeing a mighty pirate another day. Or just play some fantasy setting, like the game originally was intended to.

For a 1995 game the graphics look quite well (you don't see pixels, like with the original C&C). This is made possible because the units exist of one image, never changing. This also is the reason it is possible to create the hundreds of different settings I spoke about before.

I am not sure if Warlords II already contained it, but WIIDELUXE also came with a feature later introduced as "revolutionair", Play By E-Mail. This shows us one of the positive things about turn-based games. Do what you want and send it to your friend. Such a game can go on for a long time.

Also the diplomacy is nice. Have a peace treaty with one player and have war with the other. For the time it was great, though it doesn't come close to modern games like Alpha Centauri and Civ III.

This is probably the only game I do regularly play since 1995. Because it doesn't run on computers created after probably 1997/1998 this is the only reason I still have my p100. Quite amazingly, I don't feel like the gameplay of Warlords II Deluxe has ever been beaten, except perhaps by Warlords III. But sadly Warlords III didn't feature the many different settings of Warlords II Deluxe.

The Bad
The AI isn't the best available. When you are an exercised player the computer opponents aren't really difficult to defeat, even on the highest difficulty setting. There is a setting which tries to undo this (called "I am the greatest"). When you use this setting you are constantly at war with all computer opponents. This is indeed very difficult, but it doesn't give the same feeling as using the diplomacy. For optimal gameplay you should play it with 8 humans.

The units, buildings, terrain etc are completely editable. But you can't skin the entire game with the standard settings. Like, on the start of a turn there is a dragon, with the turn number. It would've been nice if you simply could've selected a tank for that in say, the WWI scenario.

The Bottom Line
I bought this game for about 5 Euro in 1996. You can now purchase it from SSG's website if I'm not mistaken. If you have a computer at home made before 1998, and after 1993, I assure you, you won't be disappointed by this game. Even my friends who don't like strategy like this game.