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Master of Magic
Yall
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I consider myself a gaming aficionado, so I was surprised to see an article in PC gamer where some famous developer stated that one of the all-time best games was one I'd never heard of.
That game was 'Master of Magic' by Microprose (one of my favorite old school publishers, which made my total ignorance of this game even more of a surprise to me).
I found that the game is [redacted]. I'm anxiously awaiting trying it out once I'm done with work today.
Does anyone here have any fond recollections of this title? It's old and obviously the graphics are dated, but supposedly it has a 40,000 page strategy guide, which alone is enough to warrant my attention.
Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_magic
That game was 'Master of Magic' by Microprose (one of my favorite old school publishers, which made my total ignorance of this game even more of a surprise to me).
I found that the game is [redacted]. I'm anxiously awaiting trying it out once I'm done with work today.
Does anyone here have any fond recollections of this title? It's old and obviously the graphics are dated, but supposedly it has a 40,000 page strategy guide, which alone is enough to warrant my attention.
Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_magic
Yall on
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Posts
I'm quite interested in the spiritual successor coming up soon from Stardock called Elemental: War of Magic. In fact that reminds me to check into it again since I thought they were going to try some sort of beta this year.
But yeah, MoM got a bit brutal on the harder difficulties just because the AI players would start at such a much more advanced state than you. Once you got a solid base going, you were usually ok but spread yourself a bit too thin at just the wrong time and you could quickly get taken advantage of and banished. It has been a while so I can't even remember all the names of the Champions that I liked. I know when playing mostly Life magic, getting Torin the Chosen was an early goal, pairing him up with a regiment of Paladins as soon as possible so they could begin laying waste to everything they came across was fun. God, elite Paladins were overpowered for 'normal' units.
Many many many games were played. I often remember getting into a dispute with the other wizards (which happened constantly once power levels in various areas were exceeded), then getting the notification of another beginning to cast the final Spell of Mastery, which was one of the ways to win the game if it was finished. Sending a squad of ridiculously beefy heroes and some normal units like Paladins flying across the map to the Wizard's capital to try and decimate their heavily fortified city before they could finish the spell.
I think my favorite victory type was utter conquest though, taking over all of the enemies' cities except for their capitals while I populated virtually every spot I could on both planes of existence with a new hamlet to be grown into a full city itself and murdering any settlers that any other wizards tried to send out.
*sigh*
It does make me sad that I never really got into Age of Wonders, particularly Shadow Magic, which was the most MoM-like. I really liked the tactical dungeon crawls that you got to do for treasure and such.
Fixed.
I eagerly awaiting the modern remake of the game but stardock's version doesn't seem anything like the old game. It looks more like HofM&M
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
And how. There's some "spiritual successor" in the pipeline somewhere. Elements or something.
http://www.masterofmagic2.com/
Which hasn't been updated in three years.
So true.
You don't need to add in any more stuff, just redo the graphics and I'll buy it. Same goes for a lot of the old classics like Privateer, X-Com, Jagged Alliance, etc etc. Us 20+ year old gamers will buy that shit in a heartbeat.
MoM
Civ I
MoO 1
I'd say Master of Magic ('94) a good mix of all strategy games at the time, Civ ('91), MoO? ('93), HoMM('95)*
*Oooh scratch that
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
Considering this is the exact formula used by Hollywood, I'm surprised we don't get more of this in the gaming world.
I'd spend upwards of 500 bucks for a balanced multiplayer version of MoO1.
And just like Hollywood, they will destroy people's memory of their perfect childhood
Streaming 8PST on weeknights
Pool of Radiance 1988 vs. 2001 anyone?
Torin the Chosen though, he needed a nerf.
buy warhams
I love the Artificier ability. Decking out your Hero with a Lifestealing Sword and an Amulet of Magic Immunity is silly.
Making wands with a bunch of +mana for your spellcasting heroes is nice as well.
So, you *haven't* heard of Age of Wonders then.
What are you talking about?
Also, MoM is great and works really well on DOSBox.
Stardock's next game - Elemental: War of Magic - is supposed to be an homage to this, in part because they couldn't get the rights to make an actual MoM 2. The game is right now in closed beta, which you have access to if you've preordered it. It's been ... a bit ... since I played the beta game, but it is coming along really, really nicely. It's not quite to MoM levels of awesome yet, but it is seriously getting close.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is completely awesome and damn near perfect IMHO. The amount of stuff in it is pretty great. Plus there are a number of really cool player made scenarios and a few mods that are awesome. Can't think of any off hand at the moment, but if I remember their names I'll post em.
I bought it, and I bought AoW2, not really playing that much of either.
Then Age of Wonders:Shadow Magic came out which I followed and which finally had the coveted randomly generated scenario capability. I bought it as well... then never played much of it either. At some point I may finally get into it. Strangely, they've gotten quite a bit of my money while I've gotten little gaming out of the products in return. That's my fault though.
I still have Shadow Magic installed, just need to try to get into actually learning the system. I played MoM for so long that I just knew what was possible for the most part, AoW in general is so foreign, I just haven't had the inclination to learn it as well.
Elemental: War of Magic, made by the Gal Civ people.
Also, MoM was fantastic, if horrifically unbalanced.
I had the same kind of feeling from AOW. The tactical combat didn't really hit home to me, and there just wasn't the same depth as MoM (though shadow magic improved things a lot).
One thing that annoyed me a bit was it seemed like only level 3 and 4 units were remotely useful, so rather than playing as the orcs and fighting as orcs, I would play as the orcs and fight as some wierd T3 units that had very little to do with orkyness.
Seriously.
I have Civ 4 so the mods are interesting me. Plus, I'm reminded that I need to play MoO at some point in my life.
That's an odd little trend...
When you can beat it on the smallest universe on impossible with full AI slots and without a diplomatic victory...then you can move on to MoM.
Wasn't Elemental supposed to be a new MoM, but that they had some trouble with the license (or what-have-you) and said, "Fuck it, we'll call it something else."
Yeah, which is what I said, like, last page.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Pfft, how can I keep track of two pages! You ask the impossible! :P
The first time I was going to beat an Impossible MoM game the game crashed. And then I reloaded the auto save and it crashed again. Forever.
That's because you went beyond the impossible...
If he had beaten Impossible he would have created a Positive-Negative and collapsed existence. Thanks for almost negating Reality asshole. :P
And dear lord, if you could get Regeneration and put that on them with Spell Lock to protect it, a squad of 6 to 9 Sky Drakes were utterly unstoppable. Ridiculously high magic upkeep on that sort of setup though.