4X Master of Magic, the good, the bad, and the ugly

fastjack · Dec 28, 2013

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a strategy game to scratch my 4x itch after reading a lot of poor impressions about Pandora and ended up deciding to revisit a favorite of mine (and many others), MoM. I first played MoM some time in the last five years so it's not just nostalgia speaking when I say that I think it hold up really well. However, even after my first playthrough I knew there were things that I'd like to see a new fantasy 4x do differently. I made this thread because I'd like to hear some opinions from the other MoM fans on the codex as far as what they would change and what they feel is integral.

As an example, I feel that the tactical combat 'mini-game' should be an integral part of any MoM successor while I would like to see such a game improve the balance between 'regular' units, fantastic units, summons, monsters, and heroes.

TBH with y'all I had a lot more things in mind right after playing through a few games a couple of weeks ago but just my luck that once I finally get around to making the thread I had been thinking about making on the subject my mind goes blank.

Hopefully you bros can throw in some of your favorite 'little things' the game does as well as some your own pet peeves with MoM and forgive me for having a pretty bare op.

Agesilaus · Dec 28, 2013

The heroes have personality. Some heroes are utter shit, some heroes are extremely powerful, but the point is they're all interesting and special in their own way.

I don't want some bland line-up of heroes who all look incredibly similar and have long-winded, but ultimately meaningless, backgrounds. Make sure they look unique, give them unique abilities, make them sound unique.

Kaucukovnik · Jan 1, 2014

1. Enchanting your own artifacts was great!
Then I remember those "ultimate" artifacts, that sometimes even granted invulnerability. Not craftable, under any conditions, so there goes the awesomeness of being the enchanter yourself.

So a sequel should do this:
-make gradually more powerful enchantments available, depending on some aspect of your magical powers
-no ridiculously OP artifacts. Guys like Warrax or Mystic X were godly champions already.

2. Even more world shaping couldn't hurt. In general, playing an endgame mighty wizard should feel a bit like using a level/game data editor.

You are bending and reshaping the rules at that point.

3. More involved magic research. Researching spell components and composing the final magic yourself. Or researching improvements on existing spells. Or some kind of "tech tree". Just more than picking one of researchable spells and waiting what comes next.

Gregz · Jan 1, 2014

There have been dozens of attempts to make a better MoM, and none have surpassed the original.

Master of Magic clones are cursed. Alternatives?

For all its flaws, it's still the best fantasy 4x ever made, by a mile.

The conversation you guys are starting has been had thousands of times all over the internet by lots of people with good ideas, but no one with the programming know-how and the wherewithal to see it through. I was following a guy on roughseas.ca for 9 years watching him try to mod/improve MoM and he made a few nice additions but that project, like many many others, eventually stalled out and died like all the rest.

Our own kyrub has done some very good work however:

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/master-of-magic-unofficial-patch.43788/

TigerKnee · Jan 1, 2014

Good: There's a lot of shit to do and a lot of ways to do shit and they all feel different rather than being numbers shifted around.

Bad: dun dun daaaa balance. Yes yes, someone go ahead and tell me that single-player games don't need to be super balanced and all that.

Now MoM has way too many customizable parts which is one of those things that makes balance very hard to achieve, especially silly effects like having 11 books in one colour giving you MASSIVE advantage, but I think there are a few points where it should really have some tweaking done to it... although perhaps some of these issues are "unfixable" due to the design concepts of the game.

Units: Balance between Mundane and Fantastic units are bad, and ironically it's Mundane that comes up on top. There's really only a handful of actual strong Summoned units and they usually can't benefit from OP buffs or gain levels so they tend to get use on something like 11 book strategies where you can get units like Wraiths WAY earlier before anyone has the tools to deal with abilities like Weapon Immunity.

Magic: Buffs are too dominating, Direct Damage really isn't that great (this is one of those "probably can't be fixed due to design concepts thing, way too many enemy units, way too little Mana to use DD on all of them), and Summons need help.

Also I think a lot of item enchantment don't mathematically work out with most being way too niche.

Races: Mostly I see the big problems being Halfling (somehow the best race in the game), Orcs (more "boring" rather than balance issues), and what I call the 3 rush races (Klackons/Gnolls/Lizardmen) could use to see some buffs, ESPECIALLY Klackons (their Capital bonus is a neat concept but doesn't really make up for all their weaknesses... why the hell would a rush race not be able to use conquered cities well?).

Rest of the races are fine, which is kind of surprising.

Diplomacy's kind of fragged but I think Kyrub took care of that in his patch, which is the 2nd best thing next to a balance patch which will sadly never come to fruiiation because no one has the discipline and skill to see it through. Oh well.

Damned Registrations · Jan 1, 2014

I think the only thing I'd change about MoM is make it easier to gain more books during the game (by finding them in ruins and such, and maybe adding the option of using research on getting more books instead of a new spell.) Unit balance could use some minor tweaking as well, but that would mostly be fixed by changing the way buffs work so halflings don't reach effective damage immunity with ultra deadliness with a trivial amount of effort. Tweaking the cost of various perks would help here as well.

DwarvenFood · Jan 2, 2014

The imbalance was always a part of it's charm to me, but not a necessity for a sequel/successor. It's just a lot of fun, on top of the usual Civ stuff, the heroes and the items plus casting of spells - not just for combat but on the world map - were pretty brilliant things to add back in the day. I have never been a bog fan of the whole 'portal to the other plane' thing though, or what was it exactly.. can't remember properly.