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Let's Play: Master of Magic - Jim's Diary
Imperfect
Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
Toronto, Ontario, CanadaRegistered User regular
Come with me for a journey down possibly one of the best games to come out of the early era of PC gaming. For a trip into the world of...
Jim's Diary, Year 1042
I went to see father today. It's quite time for him to raise my allowance, and I told him so. I mean honestly, I was speaking with Franz of his High Guard, and I get less than half what he does! I stated my demands plainly.
Father reacted predictably.
Honestly, I should have seen this coming, but of one my entourage, James, had his camera-wand handy and caught proof I didn't:
Thankfully for the privacy-respecting world at large, he also caught these two images:
And, of course, the fireball, full-on in the chest. He'll be in the hospital for a while, whilst the land's best doctors regenerate his ribcage.
Though I no longer had to worry about James taking any more embarassing photographs, I did have to worry about being cut off from Father. I decided to hit the books...
...and begin my campaign of conquest! I'll make my own fortune, dammit!
While exploring, I found this:
With this inside:
Free loot! Take that, father!
And almost right next to the keep, an abandoned cave! Bring on the loot!
Oh. Well. Nevermind! We can come back later! (With billions of goons.)
I decide to start my empire of terror peacefully, only later on imposing my domineering will over the countryside. (You see, I haven't quite got the evil sneer down such as my father has. You've got to twist your lip as you raise it somehow...) I send out wagons to settle the land.
What's this?
A challenging conqueror? This will not stand! Quickly, I duck in front of my magic mirror, practise my sneer a couple times, and ring the pretender up.
Oh hey, Freya! What's up, babe, how you doin' lately...
Oh, whatever. This is JUST like high school.
On the plus side, my new settlement begins to take off.
And wow, how it takes off.
Oh what, Freya's got TWO expansion towns? I was really proud of how quickly I got my first settler out there.
Thankfully, I get some unexpected help:
Heroes ALWAYS help out. Serena (who becomes Silpheed, incidentally) is lucky:
A caster:
Gets a bonus to hit:
And is a healer:
This makes her my most important unit in a lot of battles. A caster gets a ranged magic attack that can pick units apart, and the Healer bonus means that I can get back into the fight again quickly after winning my previous fight.
Of course, I can't be happy for long. Certain people won't allow it.
Fine, fine, fine. I detour around her precious city "Reading" and resume my explorations elsewhere. I mean, she is kind of hot, and I don't want to wreck my "chances" of "anything" "happening". Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. ...yeah, this is JUST like high school.
Zuul continues to grow like a weed.
And my first challenger appears!
It looks like an easy fight:
...but somehow things don't go quite as well as I'd hoped.
Oh well, that's why I'm an all-powerful master of dark magic.
Speaking of which...
Research pays off.
My explorers report something interesting.
Barbarian city? Oh, I'll be back for you.
Zuul sprouts further, unstoppable. I like this place.
And again:
I'm learning the easy spells for now. Though their utilitiy may be questionable just yet, I guarantee you'll run across a point where you'll wish you had them instead of being currently waiting 100+ turns to research some of the crazier ones. Once my empire expands a little, research will grow a lot easier.
Training pays off:
And Zuul gets huger.
I only keep pointing Zuul out because it's growing faster than my home city. I may well have to base my operations out of there shortly - it's a tremendous producer.
My reputation precedes me:
Of course, I take advantage of their services.
My second attept at peaceful exploration runs afoul.
I mean, that was EXACTLY where I was going to place MY city. Oh well, I'll just stick my settlers somewhere else and take that city for my own. It's nothing that a little EVIL can't fix.
Another challenger rises from the wilds!
Now, let me show you how awesome Silpheed is:
No-one else was necessary for that battle. That's how awesome ranged magic attacks are.
Of course, Ladies' Man Lo Pan decides to rain on my parade.
I swear to the All-Dark Zyrrch, I'll make that jerk rue the day he stole Freya away from me. Well, I guess he didn't really steal her so much as "go out with her when she turned from me in obvious disgust and revulsion", but dammit, being a Dark Lord means you don't have to have reasons for doing terrible things. And I'm going to do terrible things to him.
Time to start raising an army:
Oh what? See that twinkle there?
That jerk Lo Pan already has a node under his control. He can already harness the magic of the earth! He's ALREADY got an army enough that he could defeat the node guardians. I'm WAY behind the curve here.
I bust out my own spirit, so that I can take over my own node:
But MORE bad news. Lo Pan doesn't have one node. He's got at least two.
Diary, this is JUST like high school.
Jim's Diary, Year 1042
I went to see father today. It's quite time for him to raise my allowance, and I told him so. I mean honestly, I was speaking with Franz of his High Guard, and I get less than half what he does! I stated my demands plainly.
Father reacted predictably.
Honestly, I should have seen this coming, but of one my entourage, James, had his camera-wand handy and caught proof I didn't:
Thankfully for the privacy-respecting world at large, he also caught these two images:
And, of course, the fireball, full-on in the chest. He'll be in the hospital for a while, whilst the land's best doctors regenerate his ribcage.
Though I no longer had to worry about James taking any more embarassing photographs, I did have to worry about being cut off from Father. I decided to hit the books...
...and begin my campaign of conquest! I'll make my own fortune, dammit!
While exploring, I found this:
With this inside:
Free loot! Take that, father!
And almost right next to the keep, an abandoned cave! Bring on the loot!
Oh. Well. Nevermind! We can come back later! (With billions of goons.)
I decide to start my empire of terror peacefully, only later on imposing my domineering will over the countryside. (You see, I haven't quite got the evil sneer down such as my father has. You've got to twist your lip as you raise it somehow...) I send out wagons to settle the land.
What's this?
A challenging conqueror? This will not stand! Quickly, I duck in front of my magic mirror, practise my sneer a couple times, and ring the pretender up.
Oh hey, Freya! What's up, babe, how you doin' lately...
Oh, whatever. This is JUST like high school.
On the plus side, my new settlement begins to take off.
And wow, how it takes off.
Oh what, Freya's got TWO expansion towns? I was really proud of how quickly I got my first settler out there.
Thankfully, I get some unexpected help:
Heroes ALWAYS help out. Serena (who becomes Silpheed, incidentally) is lucky:
A caster:
Gets a bonus to hit:
And is a healer:
This makes her my most important unit in a lot of battles. A caster gets a ranged magic attack that can pick units apart, and the Healer bonus means that I can get back into the fight again quickly after winning my previous fight.
Of course, I can't be happy for long. Certain people won't allow it.
Fine, fine, fine. I detour around her precious city "Reading" and resume my explorations elsewhere. I mean, she is kind of hot, and I don't want to wreck my "chances" of "anything" "happening". Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. ...yeah, this is JUST like high school.
Zuul continues to grow like a weed.
And my first challenger appears!
It looks like an easy fight:
...but somehow things don't go quite as well as I'd hoped.
Oh well, that's why I'm an all-powerful master of dark magic.
Speaking of which...
Research pays off.
My explorers report something interesting.
Barbarian city? Oh, I'll be back for you.
Zuul sprouts further, unstoppable. I like this place.
And again:
I'm learning the easy spells for now. Though their utilitiy may be questionable just yet, I guarantee you'll run across a point where you'll wish you had them instead of being currently waiting 100+ turns to research some of the crazier ones. Once my empire expands a little, research will grow a lot easier.
Training pays off:
And Zuul gets huger.
I only keep pointing Zuul out because it's growing faster than my home city. I may well have to base my operations out of there shortly - it's a tremendous producer.
My reputation precedes me:
Of course, I take advantage of their services.
My second attept at peaceful exploration runs afoul.
I mean, that was EXACTLY where I was going to place MY city. Oh well, I'll just stick my settlers somewhere else and take that city for my own. It's nothing that a little EVIL can't fix.
Another challenger rises from the wilds!
Now, let me show you how awesome Silpheed is:
No-one else was necessary for that battle. That's how awesome ranged magic attacks are.
Of course, Ladies' Man Lo Pan decides to rain on my parade.
I swear to the All-Dark Zyrrch, I'll make that jerk rue the day he stole Freya away from me. Well, I guess he didn't really steal her so much as "go out with her when she turned from me in obvious disgust and revulsion", but dammit, being a Dark Lord means you don't have to have reasons for doing terrible things. And I'm going to do terrible things to him.
Time to start raising an army:
Oh what? See that twinkle there?
That jerk Lo Pan already has a node under his control. He can already harness the magic of the earth! He's ALREADY got an army enough that he could defeat the node guardians. I'm WAY behind the curve here.
I bust out my own spirit, so that I can take over my own node:
But MORE bad news. Lo Pan doesn't have one node. He's got at least two.
Diary, this is JUST like high school.
Imperfect on
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I've chosen Famous specifically so I get heroes at a greater rate, so sign up in this thread to get YOUR NAME as cannon fodder... I mean, Heroic Nomeclature.
(also isn't cloak of fear horribly broken, and if you're really maxed out in Black Necromancy you should just research Wraiths or even better, Shadow Demons and rape both planes with a vengeance!)
I've got a copy of Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, which is pretty much a spiritual successor to MoM, but it doesn't feature mithril slingers with heroism.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Great LP this far, Imperfect. Keep up the good job:^:
Hey, can you make a magical construct? 'Cause if you can, name it after me. Or name it Bender. That would be awesome.
Good job on the OP :^:
If you get B'shan the Dervish (Archer, noble) can you make that me? He was always my favorite, since you get him early in the game and can build him up into a beast. Also the +10 gold per turn he gives is always handy.
There is still nothing quite like it. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic came close, but it doesn't quite capture the same feeling of raw power at the late game.
Edit: Imperfect, what are you playing as? Custom all-dark?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Shame that the first version was horribly buggy. I mean, it was unplayable. Units appearing randomly, cities disappearing, etc. :P
Dosbox all the way. Wiki says that the game should support it just fine. What error install gives to you?
Run Install.exe and turn off the sound and music.
Then it'll run fine.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If you really really really want the sound and music, use VDMSound. It works much better than DOSBox for Master of Magic.
But personally I'll just turn the audio off, and once I've done that I've never had a problem running it on any XP machine.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Famos, Charismatic, Evilevilevil.
Also, regarding sound - don't enable music, just use Dosbox's settings for sound, and you should be just fine.
You love your heroes, don't you?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
DosBox works fine for me, fun game(Even though I suck at it).
That does not bode well for the future of this LP.
I had volunteered for XCom redshirt duty in the MoO thread. Being a hero, well, that's more than a simple piece of Chrysalid-fodder like me can expect. Or is it...? Sign me up if your stable of heroes grows sufficiently large.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Flying paladins is all I'm gonna say. Almost completely unstoppable.
I agree that Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic was almost as good, and it had mapbuilding and mods to its credit... I dearly loved the "War of the Ring" mod that included the entire Middle-Earth map and had lore from both the movies and the books (including the Silmarillion).
...anyway, back to MoM.
The hardest difficulty modes were just insane. The only way I could usually do it is to start in Myrror with, like, High Men (for paladins) and hope that nobody else did.
But then again, there was always giant muthafukin undead war trolls. Undead units don't heal? NO PROBLEM. Trolls regenerate, yo. Those units were nigh unkillable.
Fixed :P
And wow, I had no idea there was so much love for this game. It's an awesome game, and I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one who has played it.
Only the most detailed turn-based fantasy strategy game ever made. It tallied the attack power of each soldier in each unit, so that, say, a group of 8 soldiers would get a larger benefit if their unit was the recipient of a buff spell than, say, a four-person unit (half the benefit, really) or a hero, who would only get the bonus once.
It pioneered the modern conventions of overlapping planes of existance connected by portals, magic item creation, random events, and hero units. Even better, the maps and computer opponents could be randomized, so you'd never fight the same battle twice.
You could win either by attrition, killing everyone else, or by researching and casting the Spell of Mastery... or, for the most points, eliminate all your foes down to one paltry city and THEN cast the Spell of Mastery. Booyah.
That said, Shadow Magic did absolutely nothing for me. I loved the civ-style city and empire building, and Shadow Magic seemed to gut that and replace it with Heroes of Might and Magic style gameplay, which I've never much liked.
Ah well... I need to find my MoM CD now!
You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake
Shiren FC: 3093-6912-1542
Hardly. That prize goes for Fantasy General. But it doesn't change the fact that MoM is still awesome game.