Mom?

Tuberski · March 1, 2002, 21:29

Just a quick question here.

Does anybody remember Master of Magic? A lot of people are complaining about combat on the site: warrior vs. tank and other nonsense. The combat system now is just like the original civilization, except with hit points.

Master of Magic, which was released in 1993 or so, around the same time as CIV, had a much better combat system, IMHO it has yet to be equalled. It was easy to learn but hard to master...for a while anyway. Why hasn't anybody upgraded and incorporated a similar engine?

By the way I STILL play this game about every six months or so. It was more addicting to me than CIV, CivII, SMAC, SMAC-X, the ctp's, and MOO I and II. But it had no MP or editor.

Still addicting after all these years

Plus it had units unique to each civ and an AI that took quite a while to Beat at the harder difficulty levels

korn469 · March 1, 2002, 22:49

Quote:

The combat system now is just like the original civilization, except with hit points.

well if you throw out bombardment, air units, armies, and experience levels, yea its about the same

Quote:

IMHO it has yet to be equalled. It was easy to learn but hard to master...for a while anyway. Why hasn't anybody upgraded and incorporated a similar engine?

i have never played MoM, could you please explain how the system works? i didn't even know about MoM until a couple years ago, and all i know is that it is like civ except with magic

Tuberski · March 2, 2002, 00:21

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469

well if you throw out bombardment, air units, armies, and experience levels, yea its about the same

i have never played MoM, could you please explain how the system works? i didn't even know about MoM until a couple years ago, and all i know is that it is like civ except with magic

true about the bombardment,air, armies exp levels, but you knew what i meant.

As far as MoM, you could have as many as nine units in a stack whatever kind you wanted, catapults, bowmen swordsmen, flying creautres, etc...

when you moved onto an enemy unit a new window pops up and displayes the battlefield. Battlefield changes depending on type of terrain enemy unit was on. Each unit then would move individually defender group first, then attacker. winner took the space being fought over. Leaders(Great Leaders) had special abilities to either enhance your magic, the army they were with or their physical and/or magical prowess.

Ranged attack units could fire normally from long distance but the closer they get to the enemy the better their chance to hit.

Also a unit attack also depended on the amount of figures in a unit.

For Example: A recruit human spearman has an attack value of 1 with a 30% chance to hit, but it has 6 figures so EACH figure attacks in succesion. the unit could do 6 damage a round.

but a recruit halfling spearman has 8 figures per unit at 30% plus an additional 10% chance to hit because of a racial special ability.

these figures also go up as they gain experience

the graphics are obviously dated but the gameplay is quite excellent. There has been talk of a MoM 2 for a long time but they keep re-doing the MOO series.

that is basically how it works

Terser · March 2, 2002, 00:31

I have to agree that MoM was awesome--easily one of the ten best games I've ever played.

Something that's noteworthy--by the end of most games my A.I. rivals would have dozens of citys and hundreds of unit stacks in play. There would typically be dozens and dozens of local and global magic spells in effect, as well.

And the game ran smooth as butta on my 486/25.

Tuberski · March 2, 2002, 00:37

there also were different strategies for the type of magic you(the wizard) used, the abilities you had and the race you chose to play as.

alot of depth for a really old game!

And i still have it on my hard drive.

player1 · March 2, 2002, 04:06

MoM, an awesome game.
Pity MP didn't exsisted in those days.
It fould be a HIT.

Unfortunately AI is WEAK!.
I alway win on Hard level.
Impossibile isn't intetresting since AI get HUGE bonuses.

One thing more.
THERE SI NO ICS IN THE MOM.
Yes, you settle cities, but it's not inflatory as in Civ games.

City managment was so interesting and inovative.

Diplomacy was nothing special, all hate you at higher levels.

Mom was diffcult to balance.
For example with Death magic, when I get Wraiths, Shadow Demons or Lycatrope AI just can defend against me.
Easy kill.

It gets little boring at the end of game (like in any 4x game), too many cities and units.

It's easy to beat opponent.
Just disable enmy wizards by capturing their capitols.
If they don't have enough spare mana they are defeted, but if they do they are disabled unit they can spell of return.

This game had manu revolutionary concepts.
Unfortunately, SimTex, doesn't exists anymore (Mom developer).

I hope Quicksilver could get licence from Infogrames to make Mom2.

Father Beast · March 2, 2002, 10:10

Fantastic Game, absolutely!

we have had some awesome disussion on it in this forum, check this link:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=12876

in there is a link to the previous MoM hint thread also.

since nobody seems to have touched on this point, there is no tech tree in MoM. all the research is into spells. Unit enchantments, city enchantments, even spells which affect the whole two worlds (yes, 2 worlds). I was fond of the wind mastery spell, which gave all your naval units an extra move, and cut everybody else's naval moves in half.

the global enchantments are kind of like wonders, except they can be disrupted and cast by another player.

Quote:

originally posted by player1

One thing more.
THERE SI NO ICS IN THE MOM.
Yes, you settle cities, but it's not inflatory as in Civ games.

yes, you can't settle a new city within 3 squares of another city. and in addition, it starts out as a useless outpost, which takes a long time to turn into a useful city. this can be speeded up considerably if you cast stream of life on the outpost.

Quote:

originally posted by player1

Mom was diffcult to balance.
For example with Death magic, when I get Wraiths, Shadow Demons or Lycatrope AI just can defend against me.
Easy kill.

one of the reasons MoM was so difficult to balance is because it is so deep. the possibilities are absurd in the strategies, and in the wizard creation. there are so many options it's absurd. from the 11 book strategies, to people winning with no magic books at all!

Korn, I can't believe you've never tried this game. but you might have some trouble getting it to run on today's OS's.

player1 · March 2, 2002, 10:16

This game HAS SERIOUS MP potential.

We need MoM forum!
(since we already have MOO2&1 forum)

I have played it recently.
(since I was bored a little form civ)

The game is DEEP.
Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep.

Pity, AI can't handle that too well.
Most of my games were ended befroe of middle game.
Rarely I ever see some advanced magic.

P.S.
I think it can be dowloaded from somewere.
Not rememer where.

davidttm · March 2, 2002, 14:58

I always wondered why there was never a Master of Magic 2. It is by far my favorite in the series.

I played it more or less non-stop for three or four years (until my CD got trashed).

The things that would need updating would be the ai's strategy and the Civ-I-ish graphics (and I kinda still like them anyway). The interface is simple to use, stacked movement works well, the combat system and screen are head and shoulders above most other turn based games I've played (I think Master of Orion must be similar but I haven't played it). The sounds and music are well chosen. The spell and terrain effects are cool and easy to understand by checking around the map.

The replay factor is so good because there are about 16 different wizards (or your own custom wizard). Each wizard has a different combination of 5 different typs of magic (so each wizard has his own 'tech' tree to research). Each wizard can be combined with (about) 16 different magical races (like 'lizardmen', 'wolf-riders', 'dark elves'; each of which has its own characteristics and units). The human plays against 4 ai wizards and explores 2 maps: the earth and the astral plane (which overlap, but are usually quite different. Aside from building your own race's units you can also take over cities from barbarians or other wizards and start building their special units as well. And you can cast spells to create even more units. There are also about 10 heroes you can find in the goody huts or attract to your banner (as your reputation grows). You can then enhance each hero with spells and magic weapons or artifacts (which you can find or 'build' magically in your artifact workshop).

The ai was not a deep thinker, but up to the medium difficulty the four ai wizards have different personalities, actually attack and kill each other, and don't gang up or connive against the human too much. It could create a credible threat (e.g. a stack of tough units with a 'hero' or two thrown in). I don't suppose it would give the Deity level players too much trouble (heck it was pre-win '95 and pre-pentium), but the FUN factor was definitely there.

Rex Little · March 4, 2002, 11:59

As Father Beast said, we had a big MOM thread running not too long ago. Check out his link.

I still have MOM on my computer, and play it occasionally. I've managed to run it from a DOS screen in Windows 98 and NT.

The AI is unquestionably the weakest part of the game. I don't expect it to be a genius, but it does some really blindly stupid things that shouldn't be hard to fix, unless I know a lot less about programming than I think I do.

Quote:

I think Master of Orion must be similar but I haven't played it

Not similar at all, David, but also an excellent game (whether you're talking about MOO or MOO2).

aaglo · March 4, 2002, 12:02

Here is a decent MOM-site, and this site is somewhat regularily updated. Great site for a GREAT GAME!

Oh yes, I play it about once a month... I'm not getting tired with it... it has a certain pull, which I cannot resist.

player1 · March 4, 2002, 12:59

Quote:

Originally posted by aaglo
Here is a decent MOM-site, and this site is somewhat regularily updated. Great site for a GREAT GAME!

Oh yes, I play it about once a month... I'm not getting tired with it... it has a certain pull, which I cannot resist.

It can also be dowladed from some sites. (including that site)

I lost my old copy so long ago.

There are also some MP-shells, all unfinihsed.

Skanky Burns · March 4, 2002, 21:05

Many thanks Aaglo, I have heard many people talking about this game and saying it was great but I didn't think it was abandonware yet... Well looks like my chance to try it out

Buck Birdseed · March 4, 2002, 21:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Father Beast
Korn, I can't believe you've never tried this game. but you might have some trouble getting it to run on today's OS's.

MoM is possibly the only DOS game I've tried that runs PERFECTLY under Win 98.

General Ludd · March 4, 2002, 21:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Snapcase

MoM is possibly the only DOS game I've tried that runs PERFECTLY under Win 98.

Well, that experience isn't shared by all.

I usually have to modify my system resources and config files before playing the majority of DOS games - including Master of Magic.

Du_Chateau · March 5, 2002, 14:21

Master of Magic is a great game. It had good potentable that no other game has duplicated. The cities the unique races like the draconians, dwarves and my favorite the lizardmen with their dragon turtles.

I would be please also if a sequel for this great game came out, only if to add a few more races, more spells, update the graphics, add multiplayer and to make it run on window 9x. I wonder why no company has taken this up on a game that is almost 10 years old.

player1 · March 5, 2002, 15:02

Quote:

Originally posted by Du_Chateau
Master of Magic is a great game. It had good potentable that no other game has duplicated. The cities the unique races like the draconians, dwarves and my favorite the lizardmen with their dragon turtles.

I would be please also if a sequel for this great game came out, only if to add a few more races, more spells, update the graphics, add multiplayer and to make it run on window 9x. I wonder why no company has taken this up on a game that is almost 10 years old.

Quicksilver would like to make MOM2. Only quiestion is will Infogrames allow it.
Infogrames ownes the right for MOM, while Quicksilver is developer of MOO3.