The campaign is centered around Artos, the young son of Baron Amalric of Cravant. Cravant is a small fiefdom within the Holy Empire and Amalric has spoken out against Granitas's rule. Naturally, the Patriarch does not take kindly to this. Cravant is subsequently invaded by the Imperial Army. Baron Amalric is executed on a trumped up charge of treason and his city is razed to serve as a warning to other nobles. Artos manages to flee with a small group of loyal soldiers across the sea to Angland where he begins his quest for revenge.
Differing from other Real-Time Strategy games at the time the player starts as a default generic medieval army and through decisions made in the campaign, or what buildings they construct in skirmish and multiplayer games, progress down one of three alignments:
- Pagan: The Pagan path relies are using a combination of cheap mass-produced units to overwhelm opponents in combination with indirect damage to enemies through magical attacks.
- Imperial: Imperial-aligned players use expensive, well-armored troops and strong fortifications.
- Renaissance: Renaissance-aligned players use gun and powerful artillery units to blast enemies from a distance.
In addition, there were two hybrid alignments, Imperial-Renaissance and Pagan-Renaissance.
A sequel called Warrior Kings: Battles was released in 2003; taking place 100 years after the events of the first game.
This game provides examples of the following tropes:
- Anti-Magical Faction: The Renaissance alignment in it's pure form does not use mana and lacks any supernatural units, relying on human ingenuity and science instead.
- Barbarian Tribe: Standard enemy mooks for the first few missions.
- Boring, but Practical: The humble archers can be INCREDIBLY powerful at whittling down enemies early on, and when positioned on hills, provided with a supply wagon and protected by pike men can wreak havoc on an army twice their size.
- Church Militant: The Holy Empire. The player can become one if they decide to go down the Imperial or Imperial-Renaissance paths.
- Corrupt Church: Under Icthyus Granitas the state religion of the Holy Empire has been transformed into this. However, if Artos follows the Imperial path he can turn it back into a Saintly Church.
- Determinator: Artos. He might have to take on the most powerful military force in Orbis but one way or another he will avenge his father's death.
- Faction Calculus:
- Pagan: Subversive. They rely on massive armies of cheap and easily replaced units to overwhelm their enemies while hitting them with magical attacks.
- Imperial: Powerhouse. They use expensive and heavily armored shock troops to hit the enemy hard and strong defensive fortifications to protect their base. They can also call on support powers in the form of Acts of God.
- Renaissance: Cannons. They rely on powerful ranged troops and artillery to win their battles for them.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Holy Empire is modeled after the Holy Roman Empire while Angland is modeled after England and Fanicia being the Holy Land. The world map itself looks like heavily altered Europe with more than a few real-life sounding names and geographic terms like Etruscia, Ibericus, Agyptus or Illyricus.
- Fantasy Gun Control: Averted, the Renaissance faction's main strength is they have guns and the other two factions don't.
- Human Sacrifice: The Pagans, naturally, and their Vickerman building uses sacrificed peasants to summon their most powerful units.
- Magic Versus Science: If you go down the renaissance path you will inevitably clash with Pagans and Imperials who heavily use magic, while your own magic capabilities will be nil.
- Magitek: The hybrid alignments could be considered this very broadly as they technically combine science and magic though the Pagan-Renaissance to a far greater degree in terms of magic.
- Multiple Endings: The campaign branches off depending on which faction you decide to align yourself with.
- Our Demons Are Different: The Pagan demonic units are by their own description simply nature spirits that are as good or evil as any mundane animal. The Church of the One God of course HEAVILY disagrees.
- Shining City: Telemagna, the Rome expy that is the center of the One God worship, though by the time the game takes place has become the corrupted seat of the Church.
- Shown Their Work: The world makes heavy references to real-life ancient and medieval history, even referencing uncommon historical tidbits like the Varangian Guard or the Etruscans (through the in-game fantasy variants of course). A student or a fan of history will have a field day with all the references in the manual.
- The Magic Comes Back: Going down the Pagan route basically sees you become a pagan warlord that brings the faction into a new age.
- Walk, Don't Swim: Both the Pagan and Imperial super-units, the Archangel and Abbaddon, do this.
- Worldbuilding: The game had a pretty decently detailed and developed world and the manual contained whole pages worth of information on various lands, factions and histories.
- Zerg Rush: A pretty common tactic for the Pagans as they specialize in fielding large numbers of cheap and easily replaced troops.
