After reading everyone reminisce about the glory days of Master of Magic (1995), I decided to pony up the $5.99 at GOG.com and give it a try. Until this week, I had never played MoM. Heresy! I know. Back then I was playing the crap out of Final Fantasy I and II (US) and loving them. Computers weren't on my list of fun until '97 or '98 (Diablo/Civ 2) and certainly not in 1995.
Therefore, I find myself today playing a game in DOS markedly similar, in ways. to every other 4x or TBS game I've played in the last 10 years. In many ways FE seems, in beta 1, close to MoM with all the faults everyone cries about. Hero stack of doom? I had one before the first 200 turns:
(I got that Dragon as the first Hero to recruit and never looked back; I made that ring for ~1500 MP)
This unstoppable stack trounced every AI Wizard's (and neutral) city when I felt like it; which was often. The AI is also pretty ineffective on normal and hard, remind anyone of anything? The only thing this stack couldn't destroy was 2 Sky Drakes and 8 Phantom Warriors guarding a Sorcery Pool on Myrror. Regular units only really feel particularly useful to guard cities and in the early game. Once this stack is leveled and fully enchanted it can pretty much do anything. (They all have awesome items/artifacts I made and have flight/eldritch weapon/holy armor cast.)
Furthermore, there is just as much "city spam" in this game as there is in any other game:
(Most of my cities are on Myrror, which I didn't feel like taking a pic of because it is a pain to get in and out of DOSbox everytime.)
What I do like about this game is Heroes coming to you because of your fame or not coming because of your lack of it. Said fame influencing the quality of said Heroes. The all inclusive cities. The monster lair/magic nodes exploration. The item/artifact creation mechanic, which is arguably the best thing about the game. It is a satisfying payoff when you have to wait 10-20 turns just to get a custom designed ring you made for your Hero and even more so when you see your enemies driven before you.
Overall, yes, this game is worth the $5 I paid for it but not much more. I've played and won several games already and they don't feel all that unique on subsequent playthroughs. I make a custom Wizard and take the best traits, why play with an inferior one? The magic system is pretty unique but it also feels similar to FE, in ways. In fact, a lot of this game does.
Just as I do with many video games from my "early days," I let nostalgia and novelty cloud reality. I think this is also happening when, often, people draw parallels to MoM and FE. Ultimately, to each their own.
If you were 15 and had never played a TBS before, and all your friends agreed with you, E:WoM would be just as sweet as MoM was.
It's interesting; one of the arguably most fun features in both MOM and AOWSM was item creation, either through spell (MOM) or building (AOWSM). It allowed equipping heroes with ultrapowerful items of your own design. It was essentially late game breaking, but at that point, if you were able to do it, the game was over anyway, and it made it fun to do mop up.
Any thoughts of putting player designed items into FE?
I can only hope that tactical battles will have some thought put behind them, or we're better off disabling it in the options. If tactical battles are going to be reduced to Move -> attack -> attack -> attack -> win...
Well, I'd rather just have it off and nonexistent.
I too would like more thought on tactical battles and I agree with your desire for large stacks for epic tactical battles. The latter might not be possible but perhaps larger (not quite epic) tactical battles would be possible. One thing that AOWSM allows is adjacent multi stack fighting. I had a lot of fun with three stacks vs three stack battles with both sides having units at level 1,2 and 3. I would think that could be implemented in FE (squares vs hex though).
If you liked MOM's tactical battles you'll probalby like FE's. If you didn't, you probably won't.
I wasn't much younger last time I played it, and it was still fun. Last time was the day before the FE beta started.
The point with MoM is that it was fun, even with a nonexisting AI. There were so many ways to build your wizard, so many cool spells, that it was simply fun, even though it was not challenging. I would ussualy deliberetly handicap myself, just to prolong the game and try to win in a given fashion, instead of adopting the most strait way to victory (paladins, paladins, paladins)
Sometimes I would play a warlord (no magic, no champs), sometimes a summoner (always a favorite for me), sometimes the adventuring band, sometimes the solo uber hero. All combined with lots of different spell picks and race combinations. All that has been guaranteeing me fun for over ten years (don´t exactly remember when I first played but still play to this day).
The problem with WoM is that it simply wasn´t fun, no matter how you played it. A decent AI might have turned the game challenging, but it was so flawed in the design that it would never be fun.
FE seem to be going the right way, It´s fun, it has potential, it just feels a little too vanilla tasted and unbalanced (but hey, we are in beta!).
MoM was relatively balanced (of course there were sploits, but no option was a game killer), had lots of options and “soul”. That´s why regardless of the lack of challenge it is still a classic to this day.
MoM was fun because of the number of choices you could go thro in the metagame.
Units, heroes or fantastic creatures?
Death or life, nature, chaos or sorcery?
Mana, research or ability?
Mastering a single spell school or being well in a few?
Which of the 12 distinct races?
Which of the ~300 spells (across all the schools) should I cast? They are all good, after all.
City building- you got all the options right at the start. Should I rush the race's super unit, build the city, or city spam?
Should I build a few good units to protect my city, or I can manage with the pikemens to reduce unrest?
Each one of these question is inherently different than, say, civ games. In civ games, the only questions left is the city building, and slightly the unit decision.
The biggest problem with the game was bugs and AI, but the 1.4 insecticide mod did a nice job- the game on the hardest setting is indeed not an easy one, now.
For these that say that It's impossible to lose is MoM, I just lost a game a week ago. Everything was going well, I thought I was winning and then BAM! Timestop. He starts casting Spell of Mastery. I lose.
I got Checkmated by a computer with crappy AI. How many times do you see that happening, huh?
Tactical battles of FE are much better than those of WoM, but still (beta 0.77) are often more boring than funny (for example, if your sov or champion has a bow and enemies have not, he simply has to run for the battlefield targeting his enemies from a distance).
If you want a great example of funny tactical battles, look at King's Bounty (especially Crossworlds): they are interesting, they last the right amount of time, the units are very different, you have to choose your tactics purposely, you can choose the initial disposition of your units... only thing that can be improved is to give more importance to the terrain...
Lol... 300 spells in Master of Magic!
theres 214 spells, 40 x 5 elements, + 14 arcane. Yes, I counted.
I also believe there are 14 races, High Men, High Elves, Halfing, Barbarian, Gnolls, Nomad, Orcs, Klackons, Lizardmen, Trolls, Dark Elves, Beastmen, Dwarves, Draconians.
Yes... I have played the game ALOT. And read the manual + strategy guide many times.
MoM was a truly great game of its time. But released today, side to side with other 4x fantasy tbs games, even if we ignore the graphics, the game is subpar. As mentioned before in this thread, people remember the good parts and forget the bad. MoM was also likely one of the most awesome gaming experiences when you were younger, a lot less cynic and a lot less aware of options of similar games. It was just good enough to be different from warlords, and follow-ups like might and magic & aow didn't push the envelope at all, rather they focused on balance and AI (compared to MoM).
Imho, most 4x fantasy tbs games of the last 10 years greatly outdistance MoM in terms of fun.
For me, my "awesomegame" of my youth was Civilization. I still have problems playing new civ games because I remember Civilization in this hazy fog of glory that it simply wouldn't deserve today. FFVII also, my first true rpg (I played strategic games only up until that, then got a PS christmas preset). I still think back whenever I play a group-oriented RPG, "yeah, this is alright... but FF7 was AMAZING". Feature to feature, detail to detail, Dragon Age:origins would take FF7 to dinner, show it a good time, end the night with a kiss on the cheek, then never call it again.
MOM was a great game for its time. Today it is still a great game becuase it passes the fun test. I don't know how many fancy graphics games I have played in the last few years that in the end are not fun for very long. MOM's mix was was fun - with all its faults - to keep me and others coming back when nothing else gave us that enjoyment. The point some of us are making is that for FE we should look at the mix of things that made MOM fun and try to get that mix right in FE. If we then add a working AI we would have something truely great.
Good post by the Op. People tend to view MoM through rose colored glasses.
Bad AI, steamroller Hero stacks and other such flaws. MoM was far from perfect.
I happen to like FE's tactical battles. They remind me greatly of MoM's and once the AI is up to snuff, it'll blow them away.
What I would like to see in FE to make it more like MoM would be creatures that guard shards. Like a Fire Elemental guarding a fire shard. I know that they have that in some of the wild lands but I'd like to see that extended to all the shards.
I'd also like to see some neutral towns like there were in MoM. It was cool meeting Gnoll towns.
More spells, especially dealing with nature.
Anyway, FE is shaping up to be a great game.
I loved MoM for the feeling I got when I played it. I felt powerful. A master of magic. I want FE to take this type of game to the next level with a finally good AI that can also play the game. In the long run that is why I love Stardock games. The AI is the best I have played. I always find lack of depth in every game I play, but I tend to overthink things. I plan to overthink the awesome mods I make for this game. I think FB in particular will be impressed with how well the AI used my leveling system I am creating.
Imo there are many good traits in MoM I am never sure which one to pick. And different ones make for very different games at times. Take Myrran and you get amazing mana and interesting races - Warlocks? Take Warlords and High Men and your UltraElite Paladins will bring down even enemy heroes. Take Channeler and you can mass enchant your troops while your mana almost never ends. Archmage is very handy for early attacks and enemy dispels. Artificer... well, it's a lot of fun. Node mastery is also pretty handy for 1 point. And I could go on.
The fact that traits have requirements in terms of magic books was cool
The fact that even a Hero with defense 1000 and magic immunity could be taken down by a couple of phantom beasts was nice.
Sure, the AI was kind of terrible. But their cities were often full of crazy units and they were casting powerful spells soon enough to make your life hard - remember Tauron casting Meteor Shower every 40 turns? Ever experienced Talos casting Time Stop? It's not easy when it happens since he plays dozens on turns in a row while you can't do nothing and your mana does not regenerate...
There were overpowered heroes, spells, units, items... but since there were a lot of overpowered stuff, in the end it was a lot of fun
Why Frogboy! You insult me! The fights in MoM were har.... no wait, what I did in some of my games was waltz in with 3 heroes with staffs of elemental summoning and toss an army of Earth and Air elementals at cities. Just for kicks and giggles. Or Wraithformed Paladins. Or Warlocks. Or Adamantium Doom Drakes. Or whatever other godawfull combo you could do, because I dont know what pink glasses some folks are wearing, but MoM is very, very, very unbalanced. You can win any single way you like ( as with FE). Master mode? Pfft... once you had a city that could produce some of the higher tier soldiers ( and for dwarves, those were Swordsmen with Adamantium weapons and armor....) everything can die, easily. Just toss several stacks at em. Or one stack o doom. Or blast em with spells. Black Prayer, Terror, Wrack anyone? Cast that combo and against all but the most resistant armies you could simply stand there and watch them all die without moving an inch.
MoM is a nice game... its essentially a wizardry sandbox. If FE will become a wizardry sandbox with a working AI... and to be honest, that's what we are looking at at the moment, because the tech tree, the units, the magic, all can be modified given time ( I seriously dont get why folks get so upset over the tech tree or spells being this or that, they can nilly willy add in a tech tree per race given a few more months, and there's no release date...)... as soon as the balance is nailed and the AI is good enough to put up a fight, we are in buisness.
I still have MoM on my hard drive. Occasionally I touch it, but its not that pretty on a 22" flatscreen.
I did like MoM's tactical battles and while they were simple, they did have interesting elements. Spells like Phantom Warriors could turn the tide. Summoned units like Zombies had special traits that gave them advantages. I felt like these could only reach their potential in tactical combat, not by auto-play.
I guess what I don't remember is concerning myself to greatly with unit stats. They had attack and defense, these were modified by traits and built upon. I've always felt this game (FE) was going for longer tactical battles because of the more in depth unit stats (Con, Dex, Str, Crit rate, Weapon Damage, Damage type, Armor, etc.). I like the units being more in depth, but I think the more complex a single unit becomes, the more complex tactical combat becomes.
The 3 minute philosophy makes sense, as long as it's not some siege on a capital city with two fairly sized armies with good tech. I do feel the traits that modify stats should be swapped out with traits that modify raw combat function. Let the base stats of an army be determined by the race, not by a myriad of traits that lower 1 stat to raise another.
I don't want tactical battles to be Total War stuff and I liked MoM's so not so unhappy about not getting some extra stuff to spice them. I would like to point though, that I only played battles that involved my Heroes and/or enemy mages. Battles between normal troops would usually be autoresolved.
Could we at least get to set the army's initial deployment in the battlefield? I hate getting a Champion blocked by the archers because the game decided to put them in the front row and the melee Champion in the back row. I find that so annoying that my main army doesn't use ranged units beyond the "mages" (to each his own, huh?).
Totally true. Is still a lot of fun to play game.
I like Dark Elves (which also means Myrran) but also High Men. It was very cool to pick just only one Life book and get lots of perks like Alchemist, Warlord,... and focus on Heroes/Armies instead of Summons/Enchaments and such. Or go summoner. Or any possible combination actually (no matter if it was not the best. There is also fun in trying different ways to play the game).
Disagree. If it is a good enough battle system, it will not become boring.Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic. Long battles with big armies, insane depth, insane fun factor. Enough said.I think there is overall too much focus on MoM when there were far better games out there, doing various things better.
I played MoM last year to see if I was mis-remembering how fun it was and to see how it aged. As much as I love games, I'm pretty bad at them so bad AI doesn't really bother me as much as other people.
The best part about MoM is that you could basically write your own fantasy story, because it had all the generic fantasy tropes. It was fun to cheese the AI with admantite halfling slingers. Building a halfling city in Myrror took some planning!
How old were you when you first decided MoM was a great game? I was about 14 or 15, and it was the shit. So was Stonekeep. Both games are great to me. But my opinions were formed when I was not able to be critical, as I am now. I was also able to suspend disbelief much more, and allow my imagination to influence my enjoyment of the game. That enjoyment is now baked in. That's nostalgia.
MoM was one of my favorite strategy games. It still will get taken out every couple years and played for a while. What I did to make it a little more competitive (although the only real times you lost is if you overextended your early exploration and left your city undermanned), was randomly generate my start. Race, skills, spellbooks, etc... all random. This way I was never following the same path to victory. It made the game more interesting... I got to play with more racial abilities and spells...
It made it more challenging.
I've already started doing it in FE.
The tactical combat it MoM was good, but flawed... I mean, flying alone was ridiculous, especially since you could defend a city with a flying unit the other side couldn't kill... and just click "next" until combat ended.
The best tactical combat for a 4x game was in X-Com in my opinion... fog of war, multiple levels, solid combat AI. A ton of options. Tough game to win.
I'd love to see the combat gain some complexity, and fall more towards X-Com than MoM... but it doesn't sound like that's the goal. Makes me itch to break out the old games now... lol.
Telaeus
It's silly to assume that nostalgia influences peoples opinions any more than new and shiny objects. From a critical standpoint I am aware of the flaws of Master of Magic. Cracks Call was one of -the worst- designed spells ever invented. The computer rarely upgraded their buildings and instead focused on pumping out massive groups of spearmen/swordsmen. It was easy to find an adamantium deposit and pump out hordes of significantly more powerful units. Players that started with all magic books in one school had a -significant- advantage over those that did not.
But it was fun! Because the opposition wasn't just the computer, it was also the sometimes near impossible group of skydrakes guarding a sorcery node, or the greatwryms that munched your non-flying heroes in the first turn.
During this same time other games were released of a similar genre: Civilization and Master of Orion being the major ones. Civilization II and III were not better than master of magic, but did I still play the crap out of them? I sure did! I even played alpha centari well into the most annoying stages of 20+ alien spawns per polution square per turn. Because they were new and different and all super shiny!
Master of Magic is not being used as a comparison because it was the best turn based strategy game ever. Arguably Civ IV, Civ V and MoO II are all better games. The reason it is used is because it is the most similar to this game. You have an army limit max of nine, you have heroes and regular unit stacks. You have tactical combat, combat magic and overworld magic. You have empire construction and a 'research' mechanism.
Eventually all games run out of steam. There will come a point where all you can do is remember them fondly because you did everything there was to do. I want a new game that is at -least- as entertaining as one that was released 15 years ago. I do not think that is too much to ask.
I'm with Brad and Derek on this one...I even posted something similar in the thread about allowing a larger amount of units.
The tactical battles in FE would just slow down to the point of boredom if there were too many units on the field. Every turn would take like 5 minutes and it would be difficult to keep track of everything that's going on. Can you imagine how annoying it would be to fight trivial monsters if you had to go through 15 units turns just to get to round 2 so you can get into range? I think people would dread big tactical battles at this point and find themselves clicking on auto-resolve a little too much.
Huge tactical battles work in games like the TW series because the tactical system really lends itself to large battles. But I don't think the FE tactical system would fare well gameplay wise with tons of units to manage.
What I like about MoM and MOO2 was that they were fun and a decent sized game could be finished in less than 8 hours without the dreaded mop up phase dragging on. Beta .75 had a lot of that. Beta .77 less so because now making champions powerful is a chore. I still maintain that champions should not have been nerfed until they were tested against decent AIs.
If you spend 100 turns turtling or farming exp for champions of course they will be overpowered versus the brain dead AI. Try declaring war on the the minute you encounter them while also having designed some killed spearmen units. You'll find that Champions have a much harder time because they have had no chance to build up and spears reduce two thirds of the champions armor values.
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