Master of Magic Hint Thread - Page 4

Ari Rahikkala · November 28, 2000, 17:35

Report of my current game: As always, I'm the life mage that wants to make his country (magedom?) as good and pleasant place to live as possible, while maniacally killing every other wizard in sight without even trading spells with them... This time I'm trying the "Life supertactic #2", which involves getting 11 life spells book from the start, choosing the Stream of Life as your rare spell and spelling it into your every city. I have observed that it is wonderfully pleasant to live under a dictator that taxes 3 gold pieces/month/person, at least if you get to drink the water of life.

I'm raiding my surroundings (found three mages: one ruthless, one aggressive and one maniacal...) with four elite rangers. Gotta love the pathfinding and speed. Anyway I'll find a tower or research the plane shift soon, so that I can get to Myrror and train some raiders with magical adamantium weapons, of course blessed with holy weapon.

When you have a Stream of Life, it is actually a good idea to micromanage your first city - When building housing, it should be able to produce 350-500 (!) people a month at some stages. So, give it two turns building housing, then switch to some building (with nomads, try to get to Animist's Guild -> rangers) you need. Your city will grow VERY quickly, but at the same time, you can build stuff. And when your city grows, you get more tax revenues, which you can then use to buy stuff (or to convert them to mana - you have to hassle with the alchemy menu a lot, but you'll have a lot of mana then... pity you can't take alchemist with 11 books).

Also remember: When playing with life magic, always boost your new heroes with heroism. It takes away the part where your hero just gets his ass kicked because he doesn't have experience.

Now, as I have written this long (?) post, well... One little hint for everybody whose computer's BIOS takes up 10k of the conventional memory - Try the Techw0rm bootdisk at http://w0rm.8m.com . It takes weirdly much memory management problems away.

Remember: Work hard, work smart. Your future depends on it. Now arriving at sector C test labs and control facilities. I have played way too much HL and MOM lately.

Rex Little · November 29, 2000, 17:43

Assuming you're in a battle which you can prolong by running or flying, perhaps the most cost-effective spell in the game is Confusion. If it takes effect, the affected unit will eventually attack one of his own troops, as the AI doesn't have the sense to stay away from a confused unit. (If an enemy wizard Confuses one of your units, be sure to keep out of its attack range.) At worst, it'll get killed and weaken the other unit; with luck, it'll kill one or two others before dying. A tremendous return for only 15 spell points.

December 8, 2000, 12:49

bump

Shadowstrike · December 9, 2000, 22:35

Hehe.... looking back I can see many posts by Strategist..... da DL....

Oh and normal elves are pretty good too.....

December 10, 2000, 01:10

Dark Elves rule

their Warlocks have the ability to cast the Chaos spell Doom Bolt

so do either of the magic spheres (rule, that is)

join CGN!!

December 10, 2000, 11:33

Strategist? why doesn#t he post here anymore? and what is a DL?

Shadowstrike · December 10, 2000, 14:14

*Frames Andy's sarcasm*

*Proceeds to use sarcasm as window*

Anyhow, we should be getting back on-topic...

Andy: Spam-fight!

Ari Rahikkala · December 10, 2000, 18:07

OK, back on-topic... I really should use my sig more often. Now I'm just collecting stuff in it, but never showing it. Oh well.

I haven't played so much MoM lately due to my NetHack craze and again breaking down my computer... But, I just thought I would say that I am going to try a few editors' function and do some stuff. As a programming exercise. Don't wait for anything anytime soon. Especially for Windoze

.

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- I must have a perverse keyboard - tonic
- Yes, Monk, we all know that Stefu is a cute little furry creature and that you would like to touch his cute little furry balls! - ME!
- *Frames Andy's sarcasm*
*Proceeds to use sarcasm as window* - Shadowstrike

Shadowstrike · December 10, 2000, 20:28

I'm into Warlords III quite a bit right now....

I think I'm going to try some different races just for fun in MoM, like halflings (amazing slingers!)

December 20, 2000, 14:16

Now I like this game as you can see by my username.

I prefer playing with chaos books, crushing the enemy with my powerful Lightning spells

Shadowstrike · December 20, 2000, 19:53

I knew it..... You are who I think you are aren't you......

Rex Little · December 20, 2000, 20:11

I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that spell point for spell point, Psionic Blast (Sorcery) does more damage than Lightning. And at high levels of Nature you get Call Lightning, which is just devastating if you can stay out of contact with the computer army.

My favorite Chaos spells are Magic Vortex (just as good as Call Lightning if you can play keep-away) and Flame Strike, which lays waste to those big stacks of rangestrikers (priests, shamans, slingers, etc.) that the computer loves to put together.

December 21, 2000, 11:25

Rex Little: Doom bolt is another very effective spell. I casted it on Provost Harrison several times

Rex Little · December 21, 2000, 15:01

You're right; I forgot about Doom Bolt. Just the thing to use on that high-level enemy hero with magic resistance up in the high teens who shrugs off Lightning, Psi Blast and the like.

Sikander · December 27, 2000, 08:25

Ah, MOM. What a wonderful game. The only thing that really bugs me about it is having to reconfigure / reboot my pc to play it. Does anyone know how to get around this?

I tended to play hard level, usually with the Nomads, or when I played in Myrror Dwarves.

I loved building weapons, and always took the two special attributes which made building weapons cheaper. There was an interesting 'feature' when you did this, where you could create fairly substantial amounts of mana by building weapons, and then smashing them. I would build mana in this way until I had a lot, and then build a kickass weapon for one of my heroes. I always set it up so that I could make magic weapons with flight and invisibility for my heroes. Once they had these weapons they were very hard to stop.

The flying (invisible) Warship was another game busting tactic. You could load non-flying, non-invisible troops on board. The warships had good missle weapons, and being invisible they were impervious to missles themselves. As flyers, they could not be attacked by ground troops.

I agree with those who rate this the best Civ spinoff ever. A damn fine game. I got it in a multipack of obsolete games (including MOOII) for about 20$ That was the best value I ever got for software!

Shadowstrike · December 27, 2000, 10:44

Hehe.... gotta love those pesky flying invis warships....

February 13, 2001, 16:31

hehe... I should be the only one who managed to post in the same thread under 3 names, by 67% legal means

*BUMP* casted!!

hey, how many Mana do I have to spend for the BUMP spell?

BTW, SS, this thread will reach 150 soon, and then the forum DOES need a moderator

Chaos Spawn · February 17, 2001, 04:48

Master of Magic is my all time favorite game - any genre...PERIOD.

Someone just e-mailed me this link, and the link to the MoM2 project EZboard today. How they got my e-mail address...I have no idea, but who cares?

Just want to touch on a few things you newbies may want to try...

First there are two spells that are must haves, and are only available with Nature: Move Fortress, and Reveal terrain. This allows you to start with an easy starting race on arcanus (Halfling, Lizardman etc) and move your fortress to Myrror when you have conquered a suitable city on that plane (fortresses in Myrror generate more mana). This saves you SEVERAL spell/ability picks that you would be wasting with the Myrran ability upon wizard creation. Also, the reveal terrain spell opens up the map MUCH faster, and the cost is minimal 25 mana if memory serves me correctly (it has been a while).

Also, I am reading tons of praise for Sorcery's Invisibility and Flight...let me tell you, nothing replaces Nature's regeneration...just try to take a city guarded by a stack of 9 greater summoned (Wyrms, Drakes etc) that have regen. If even ONE survives (and at least one will) the whole stack of 9 returns for the next turn. God forbid you start buffing your heroes with it!!...lights out!

Also, my favorite feature of the original was the 'itemmake' function. As long as the cost of the item isn't too high (can't remember the exact figure), it is possible for it to turn up in game. That means you can custom set (with the same template you use for enchant item/artifact spells) the random items...this is really a game within a game, and a colossal time sink within a time sink. I always enjoyed 'themeing' a game with the Heroes, items, realm etc, and Itemmake was a big part of that.

Just incase you didn't catch the obvious, you can rename your heroes and your artifacts to suit your mood or theme. I never did care for the name Torin.

That is all for now, it is getting late, mention of this game always gets me soo enthused. I am glad to have come across more people who still discuss a true gem. They just don't make em like this anymore.

Also, a quick thanks to the person who supplied that link for the bootdisk to remedy the mem problem. I am going to have to look into that, as I gave up trying to run the game on my Win95/98 system. I figured the BIOS was a major contributer to the mem conflict, but didn't see a way past it.

-Chaos

PS. Nine elite halfling slingers would tear through a Sky or Great Drake like a paper doll. Don't diss the slingers, man! :lol
[This message has been edited by Chaos Spawn (edited February 17, 2001).]

Chaos Spawn · February 17, 2001, 18:12

Well I downloaded the program for a bootdisk off of Techworm, and still no dice.

In addition to the mem issues that have always denied me, I also seem to have a conflict with the CDX filename in my config.sys file, because MoM always gives me the following error (and did this time as well)

File->findcd.c,Line->56
Could not locate CD

-Chaos

John D Ward · February 18, 2001, 11:40

Chaos Spawn - I think this will get around your "CD" error message. In the directory you've installed the game to, I would expect to find a directory GAME, containing a copy of MAGIC.EXE and the other executables and other files. Change to this directory, and run MAGIC.EXE.

The version in the high-level directory that you're running is set up to look for the game files on CD.

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pchang · February 21, 2001, 15:20

I like to play using the Sharee picture for my custom wizards. Sure, its low res, but beggars can't be choosers.

Ari Rahikkala · February 21, 2001, 15:41

quote:

Originally posted by pchang on 02-21-2001 02:20 PM
I like to play using the Sharee picture for my custom wizards. Sure, its low res, but beggars can't be choosers.

Actually, it's a good idea to choose the picture of the wizard you hate the most... I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but you might also have to use that wizard's name, and he/she doesn't appear in the game. I'm not sure if this is true, though.

And Chaos Spawn (hmm... Andy v.4.0 ?

), what do you think nine great wyrms with regeneration cost in terms of mana? The five power points that you get from having your fortress in myrror hardly help...

I still support the idea that the most powerful tactic in the whole game is to get 11 life spell books and Torin. While other tactics might be powerful, too, they aren't just as quick as getting Torin.

BTW, CS, if you remade/renamed 255 artifacts to get a new theme for your game, you should be awarded a medal...

pchang · February 21, 2001, 16:08

You just have to use the picture. Then, the computer won't pick it at random. If I play on Myrror, I use the Sssla picture to make sure I am alone on the plane. Myrror, all life, halflings is pretty awesome. Once you get an alchemists guild and crank out adamantium slingers...game over.

Theben · February 23, 2001, 05:33

quote:

Originally posted by Chaos Spawn on 02-17-2001 03:48 AM
First there are two spells that are must haves, and are only available with Nature: Move Fortress, and Reveal terrain.

I'd add to that Change terrain, which can really enhance your cities. Too bad it won't allow you to change tundra.

I use it to turn all my tiles into grassland and forest, with one hill or mountain square so the city can build a miner's guild.

quote:

This allows you to start with an easy starting race on arcanus (Halfling, Lizardman etc) and move your fortress to Myrror when you have conquered a suitable city on that plane (fortresses in Myrror generate more mana).

Unless you plan to do a lot of fighting on Myrror, or have channeling, this will cost you a lot of mana in spell combat.

quote:

PS. Nine elite halfling slingers would tear through a Sky or Great Drake like a paper doll. Don't diss the slingers, man!

I prefer my elven longbowmen.

I guess my one tip is to make sure I have at least one spell book of each category, then I can get almost all the various types of spells.
That and be a warlord. Warlord is very nice!

Grumbold · February 23, 2001, 08:12

Wow, a MoM thread, and you're not talking about the PoS that Sierra produced with the same name! Age of Wonders has come closest to repeating the experience that was MoM, but sadly failed to quite capture the beauty of the random game. Since AoW is up for a second helping perhaps these guys (who were obviously heavily influenced by aspects of MoM) might turn their attention to doing a purer port of the old game afterward.

Ari Rahikkala · February 23, 2001, 14:02

quote:

I'd add to that Change terrain, which can really enhance your cities. Too bad it won't allow you to change tundra.

Except if you have also chaos magic, when you can first raise a volcano on the tundra, and then zap it with change terrain

.

quote:

Unless you plan to do a lot of fighting on Myrror, or have channeling, this will cost you a lot of mana in spell combat.

OTOH, in almost all of my battles, my heroes have a much higher spell skill than I have. This means that I don't have to care about mana so much. Also I have enough money to compensate with alchemy easily.

pchang · February 23, 2001, 18:27

If you are good at expanding and building your economic base (you can even do this with settlers alone, but it works better with settlers AND conquering), you will be able to build large and powerful normal armies much faster than you can summon magical armies. In addition, you will be able to handles losses and replacements so that you do not have to intervene in battles with your own magic. Attacking a lot enemy stacks causes the computer player to use up his manna. Then, when you take out his capital, they don't have enough left to return. All their armies go away and their cities become neutrals and easily conquered.

Ari Rahikkala · February 24, 2001, 15:35

The ten commanments of MoM

1. I am MoM, the game you play. Do keep other games if you want to.

Explanation: MoM is a good game, one of the best games, but there are always other games you can play if you want. Like NetHack.

2. You shall not take a battle in vain.

Explanation: It's not a good idea to fight even war bears with your starting spearmen and swordsmen, and even worse it is to go up against a flying unit, even the smallest of them. Always plan your battles so that you have the bigger and badder units. Boost them with magic to make sure that you do fight the battles you fight. You can win a war only by winning enough battles.

3. You shall not remove from your HD the game MoM.

Explanation: No matter how bad you could sometimes feel about the game, it's just a few megabytes of size and enough addictive so that you are going to return someday, and you don't want to download it again from some abandonware site with your 28K modem. It's better to keep it on the HD so that you can always play it when you want.

4. Remember the Spell of Mastery, to keep it holy.

Explanation: At harder levels it's incredibly tedious to just banish enemy wizards over and over again, and as tedious it is to conquer their countless cities one by one. The Spell of Mastery nets you much points if you are wise enough to use it.

5. Honor your underlings, for they bring you your wealth.

Explanation: It's better to lose a lot of mana or money than to lose a city in a battle. Keep your infrastructure up, micromanage. You soon get enroutined to micromanage even of your cities. Grand Vizier, well, you remember Iznogoud...

6. You shall not raze.

Explanation: No matter how much you hate those klackons or lizardmen, they bring you money and powerful units. They might not be as useful in late game as high elves or high men... But ask yourself: Do you think that you are going to build a new city for each city you raze? Most probably you are way too lazy for that. You lose your own city when you raze a city. And of course, you are going to need the fame, too.

7. You shall not commit cheating.

Explanation: This should be clear to everybody who plays MoM.

8. You shall not leave your cities undefended, lest would your wealth be stolen.

Explanation: It's a dangerous world out there. There are raiders from neutral cities, there are raiding fantasy monsters from nodes, and there are enemy units from enemy wizards. You don't want to hand your cities to anyone, so keep them fortified. If you play life magic and have a very high spell skill and mana reserve, you might just be able to defend a city with a single high-class unit (paladin, stag beetle, dragon turtle etc.). Other mages need more units.

9. You shall exchange spells with your neighbour.

Explanation: Enemy mages are usually too stupid to use the spells they exchange from you, even the more valuable ones. If possible, exchange spells even before your companion has even sent their greetings, so that you can start from as neutral grounds as possible. Every spell you get is important, because every spell gets you closer to the high-level spells and the Spell of Mastery.

10. You shall not covet your neighbour's artifacts, heroes, spellbooks or retorts, for you can not have them.

Explanation: Yet another reason for a sequel

.

OK, now that I've got over that...

quote:

Then, when you take out his capital, they don't have enough left to return. All their armies go away and their cities become neutrals and easily conquered

Except if you play at hard or impossible level, where you just banish and banish them over and over again. You'll have to kill them down to their last city before you can kill them.

About the good economic base and normal units... It's a good idea to boost'em with magic, at least. For example, if you use paladins, it's a good idea to use Endurance or Haste, to make them quicker. Also, if you use normal units, it's a good idea to try to get to Myrror ASAP and start making units with adamantium weaponry. And don't those paladins really change when they're with a hero with +3 leadership... ?

pchang · February 26, 2001, 15:36

Even at hard level, I find that I can bleed the AI of manna by going after all his units in the field on the way to his capital. Going after the capital first defeats them straight away about 50% of the time. On impossible level, the AI cheat so much that this no longer works. However, I usually can completely defeat 3 of the enemy wizards before I even get the Spell of Mastery. On impossible, sometimes there are 2 wizards left when I get Spell of Mastery. As for Adamantium, it is quite useful to get Myrror ASAP, but even mithril is usually good enough to make killer army stacks.

I like giving my high movement rate heroes wind walking. I then use them like flying islands (only much faster) to shuttle my armies back and forth.

pchang · February 26, 2001, 15:44

Oh and paladins have to be spelled with flying to make them really useful (flyers go around them and kill everything else). That's why I mostly build units with ranged attacks (slingers, rangers, long bowmen, etc.).

BTW, I don't really mind capturing enemy fortresses over and over as they cast spell of return. I get more spells this way than I've ever been able to trade for.
[This message has been edited by pchang (edited February 26, 2001).]