One thing we wanted to do with Warlords IV was create a personality for each unit. We wanted to bring each unit to life, and get the user to either like or hate them. Sound played an important part in achieving this. Initially, I gave each unit a voice; however, unlike a real time strategy game, a turn-based offering doesn’t lend itself to having voices blaring at you all the time. In an RTS, you’re constantly giving orders to units, troops are being attacked, buildings are being built and destroyed - there’s a lot going on, and voices help you keep up with things. In Warlords IV, the amount of stuff going on is much less, so having that many voices would sound out of place. For that reason, each unit now has two or three voices spoken once in a while when you give an order. When a voice isn’t used for orders, we use a generic sound for each unit, such as the neigh of a horse or the clank of a shield.