Warlords III
1997 video game
Warlords III: Reign of Heroes is a computer wargame released in 1997, and the third release in the Warlords video game series. In 1998 it was followed by the expansion Warlords III: Darklords Rising.
Warlords III was a critical success but failed commercially, a performance that some commentators attributed to the rise of the real-time strategy genre.
Gameplay
After a four-year hiatus, SSG developed Warlords III: Reign of Heroes.
The game was released for Microsoft Windows and used new system capabilities to dramatically improve graphics:
animated armies' movements
skinnable user interface
several landscape options
more advanced city graphics
The heroes acquired the ability to cast spells to receive the temporary benefit. Each spell has its price expressed in mana points, which became the second (after gold) resource in game.
The campaign system also became more advanced: the heroes from the previous game of the campaign followed the user to the new game, keeping their experience and items.
Another new feature of the Reign of Heroes is the flexible races concept: every player had a number of pre-defined units he was able to produce, and an additional number of units that could join him. This allowed for more consistent storyline in the campaigns and made players' advancement more challenging, as the natural production of the further cities normally wasn't matching the player's race.
Unlike the previous versions Reign of Heroes provided several hero classes.
“Warlords III” enters the record as 1997 video game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Warlords, video and game can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3007698. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997 and 1998.
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