undead have skeletons and liches as units. The races also have distinct architectural styles in the looks of their cities. Each race has a strength or weakness compared with another race. This means that certain races while facing other races will have an advantage. Each character (warlord) a player makes has to have a certain "favored" race, which means that the character will produce only that race's units in his/her cities. If a player conquers the city of another race, he or she can produce those types of units, but depending on how opposite that race is from his or her favored race, it will take longer or shorter than it would for his or her own units. Warlords The player's character is called a warlord. The player chooses one of 33 portraits to represent the warlord during its creation. The player must also choose two types of specialization for the warlord. For example, picking "combat" and "combat" will result in a non-magic-using warrior. Picking "combat" and "nature magic" will result in a ranger, and so on. The warlord can only enter direct battle when its capital city is under siege. Naturally, it is the most powerful type of unit in the game. In a normal game, when a warlord is defeated, all its cities become neutral and up for grabs, and it leaves the game with generally a few experience points. These can be used to advance levels for the warlord, and allow the player to either add on a building (from a finite number of types) which gives some benefit to future campaigns. For example, adding a certain type of building might increase the amount of gold (necessary to produce new units) a player earns per city. Instead of add a building, the player may choose to increase one of four skills for the warlord. Warlords are persistent characters which can be used in an infinite number of campaigns. Development Warlords IV uses pre-rendered 3D sprites for its unit and city graphics. It also uses particle graphics for various effects. Map editor Warlords IV contains a map editor which allows users to design their own world maps to play on. Various types of terrain features are available, and the interface is user-friendly. Four sizes of maps are available (50X50, 75X75, 100X100, 125X125) based on the number of squares on the map's grid. Up to 50 cities, 100 sites