MASTER OF MAGIC

MASTER OF MAGIC

Did anyone play this game? Or the "spiritual successor" Worlds of Magic that I haven't yet played?

Other urls found in this thread:

masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Random_Abilities
tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=3904
masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Channels
masterofmagic.wikia.com
masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Mystic_X_the_Unknown
seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/
realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=3663
masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Unrest
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

do any of you kids even know this game

If you mean the original DOS one, yeah, it was very good. It rivaled both Civ and Heroes in my opinion.

GoG fixed it right up playing it now on Win7

Does Insecticide work with it?

That game was fucking amazing. I loved to play as the edgy guy and do edgy magick all day, enslaving my people and wrecking havoc all around.
It was great to craft some OP items, summon a powerfull hero and make him exterminate everyone. Enchanting a stack of doom to make them unkillable was great.
It also had the mirror plane that was pretty unique and all resources worked in an interesting way, as well as actual differences between each race.

I still haven't tried the new game but it seems to be a direct port from it with all the features and the same gameplay but shinier graphics.
While I was expecting something new, I can't say it disappoints me.

Age of Wonders 2 and a few other clones that came in between try to improve the formula and sometimes they do it right, others not so much…

It's pretty noice and satisfied my hero building needs like no other game did.
Klackons did nothing wrong.

God tier game. I play it on my fagbook pro.

If I actually had a counter of how much total time in my life I've wasted on Master of Magic, I'd probably die of shame.
It's the only game that's been installed on every computer I've had since it was released.
I even played it on a DS with a Dos emulator.

hellya, I was playing this game in dosbox forever.

I'm gonna check out Worlds of Magic and see if it doesn't suck.

Myran
Trolls
Alchemy
Warlord
4 books of nature magic.

build:
regenerating (immortal), magic weapon, super elite war trolls. – hoping to dear god I can find more spell books once I get rolling.

My own usual choice is:
Myrran
Dark Elves
Node Mastery
Warlord
One book each for life, chaos, sorcery and nature magic.

There is the easiest game possible with that setup, as dark elven cities produce amazing amounts of magic power for your wizard. First an all-priest stack with some heroes, later replace priests with warlocks. Flying, invisibility, heroism and crusade are the spells to go to. On the highest difficulty Myrran magic nodes usually contain spellbooks and magic retorts with more perks for your wizard. At the start of the game conjure as many magic spirits as possible, cast endurance on them (if known) and send them to scout the map.

fuck yeah doom bolt

but dark elves produce so much mana that you will research all your spells toooooooo fast, it is always a race to get more books before your forced to research mastery.

Lately I've been dicking around with barbarians and chaos magic, especially Immolation and Flame Blade. Flame Blade augments both their throwing and melee attacks, and Immolation triggers on both. So, when attacking, an elite Flame Bladed Immolationed barbarian spearmen delivers a 40 hit throwing attack and a (4*number of enemy figures) Immolation attack before the enemy gets to even exchange blows, and then does both again in melee phase. Berserkers make a stronger attack, and cavalry (with first strike) deliver all four strikes before an enemy can counterattack.
Also I like high growth rates.

Current build:
Barbarian
Channeler
Conjurer
Chaos Mastery
7 Chaos

There's also Warlock - Master of the Arcane, which has most of the characters from Master of Magic, I don't know just how similar they are though.

Learn to switch priority on power distribution wands when needed.

naked fairies and nagas

Probably useful for some of you, here's how many spell books you need to enchant artefacts with permanent spells:

Sorcery
5: flight, invisibility, magic immunity
6: illusionary attack
7: haste

Nature
2: resist elements, water walking, stoning
3: giant strength, pathfinding
4: elemental armor
6: regeneration

Chaos
2: flaming
5: lightning, destruction
6: chaos

Life
2: bless, endurance
3: holy avenger
4: righteous
5: planar travel, invulnerability
6: true sight, lionheart

Death
2: cloak of fear
3: death
4: power drain, wraithform
5: vampirism

Maybe not complete as I never go below 5 books in illusion if I use it at all.

...

…and then they get cracks called into the depths of hell. Because once, just once, you decided to play without sorcery and therefore without flight.

yeah, until magic resistance makes that not a thing, that happens so rarely i admit it is a reload moment.

I'm pretty sure flight and wraith form are the only ways to protect against cracks call.

tbh I can't remember but it seems to me that it was never an issue in my flightless games, I often don't invest in sorcery, though I do try to buy trinkets with wraith form or flight on them…

I just used my trolls to zerg rush the Sss'ra and his Draconian city just as soon as I could buy 8 swordsman. It was close but he is dead and the plane is now mine for awhile.

I usually start with humans on Arcanus and rush towards mithril paladins, then the blitzkrieg on Myrror begins to get adamantium paladins. Fortify Arcanus with them, then throw a plane seal and take all of Myrror for myself. Most often you can avoid wars on Arcanus this way while still having its most potent units.

Worlds of Magic failed. The devs learned some lessons from that failed launch and released an overhaul called Planar Conquest (which they gifted for free to all WoM players). By all accounts Planar Conquest is much better. Haven't played either though.

I think what I usually rolled with was

Myrran
Dwarves
Alchemy
Artificer
Book picks to taste, maybe Famous or Archmage

I have simple tastes, I just want heroes and money.

People on the forums are saying they are playing with it, so it should work. The GOG release is just the original DOS version bundled with DOSBox and it shouldn't be using any cracks. I know I didn't need any crack for my CD version.

I think I discovered my earliest bug in this game. Summoned units would disappear after battle, but you could use a spell to return them to your capital and they'd turn into real units.

Either that or my memory's not that good.

Yeah, it's a real bug from back then. But it is not especially game breaking as they have from now on the upkeep 7 mana/turn. It's too much just for Phantom Warriors or a Fire Elemental, isn't it? Even for a Phantom Beast it's pushing it a bit.

Come to think of that, I never exploited it on Demons summoned by Demon Lord either.

It's so beautiful, it brings a tear to my eye.

My favourite game of all time, right here.

Don't bother with Worlds of Magic, it's broken. Go for Planar Conquest instead. It's the same game, just fixed.

The d20 thing is weird to me though. How's that working out?

It's… okay. It works similarly, thankfully; instead of each figure rolling a d10 for each point they have in a stat, they get a bonus to a single d20 roll for each figure.

I'm really curious as to how with a template of perfection Worlds of Magic became in the eyes of everyone who has played it. But I will find Planar Conquest and have a go.

became (shit) in

They're an indie studio without much experience. Their Early Access reviews were positive so after a lengthy period of Early Access they released it, but really it was still unfinished / obvious beta. Then they got a barrage of complaints and poor sales so they made patches and then went back to the drawing board (I think they had to rework the UI too) and re-released it. The Planar Conquest re-release was gifted for free to all WoM owners, and WoM support was discontinued. By all accounts Planar Conquest is much better.

Try Lionheart on them instead. And bring them to the Champion rank.

You could always save-scum Chaos-Channeling them to have wings. But that's quite risky, as they become vulnerable to many spells usable on fantastic units only.

And only the wraithform from artifacts, if my memory serves.

And nightblades are decent units for guarding important spots on the map. If you have flight and your enemy has not, you can always skip the turn 50 times to make the opponent withdraw from the battle.

Roll again.

Did that in my chaotic days but spamming flames over the whole battlefield just isn't my style anymore, it got boring.

Really should try going for death magic someday, but muh guardian spirits…
Regeneration on artefact works on undead heroes, right?

Probably. Undead troll units still have it.

If I would have to choose between chaos and death magic, death sucks mightily. For example if you want new zombies, you can't fight with a full stack, last I checked.

And for me it's not "muh guardian spirits", but "much archangel bonus" and "muh high prayer" "muh crusade" "muh planar seal", "muh true sight" , "muh stream of life", "muh incarnation"…. You get the picture.

What is Eador Genesis like?

Holy shit I love this game. Lately I've been trying to beat it with every mono-color build. Nature and Death were super easy, Life was okay, Illusion was kind of a pain, and I haven't gotten through Chaos yet. They don't have a lot of solid spells like Life, and they don't have a late-game dominating spell like the other three.

Do Life instead, you can endurance your starting swordsman and make him unkillable, then later planar seal and roll all of Myrror without any pesky interruptions.

Not to forget "muh warlord + crusade" on adamatium paladins. Life is pretty OP tbh fam.
But Torin? Overrated if you ask me. Get all three axe wielding heroes, then fill the roster with casters that bring spells from other schools you don't have naturally or archers. Torin may be strong in melee and casting but he doesn't add versatility to your doomstack.

Disagree. Spell Blast and lot of mana practically win the game for you. You stop worrying about opponents casting the spell of mastery ever. You can also easily disenchant or even steal any global enchantment that your opponents have. Blue magic is pretty good.

He has armsmaster or armsmaster* often. That means other heroes fleshing out quite fast.

And with blue magic you can make the most amazing artifacts in the game. Permanent haste and magic immunity for your heroes, m8.

And you probably don't know about the Confusion + Word of Recall trick, right?

Doesn't work on heroes, just normal units. Now, if we were talking about leadership, yes, that's nice. Doesn't work on fantastical creatures tho, so Torin can't boost himself with this. Then there are quite some buffs you can't lay on Torin in combat, just on the land map. Yes, he's strong, but there are better heroes.

ROLAND THE PALADIN ALL DAY ERRY DAY

Although it pisses me off if he has useless Arcane Power on him.

My bad. I haven't played the game since switching from WinXP to 7. Somehow I couldn't make it run there. Time to torrent the GOG version, I guess.

There are less than six heroes better than him, and that's all that matters. I'm counting two champions of life, one of chaos, one of nature (you can't have the necromancer and the death knight without death books). The illusionist is worse, for example.

Then look beyond the champions. None of the three axe wielders counts as a champion but they all can throw devastating attacks before the combat even starts. Enchantments on an axe also increase their thrown attacks. I'll take Shalla over Torin every day of the week, every week of the year, same as the other 2. They may be more reliant on artefacts but I'll be pumping mana into those nonstop anyway.

Enchanting flight requires only 3 blue spell books.

Thx, noted.

If you equip both with the best equipment possible, have the same positive enchantments cast on them, and have them both on the Demi-God level, I doubt that Shalla or Fang would win against Torin one-on-one.

Especially that he can have your Web and Cracks Call spells in his repertoire, heh.

I'm quite sure Shalla, Gunnar and Baghtru all have a fair chance at defeating Torin if wielding a good axe. More importantly, they're less likely to catch damage in melee at all as they annihilate all but the strongest opponents before they can counterattack and dispelled enchantments can be refreshed in battle which many can't be on Torin as he's a fantastical creature that can only get these enchantments on the land map.

Database errors have stopped my last two comments, sorry.

Axe-wielders? Not only the amazon, which can be pretty good with blademaster, but the orc and the barbarian as well? These suckers? I usually hire them, cast water walking or flight, and dispel it after moving them on the sea squares, lol.

You know about the Spell Lock, right? And I'm speaking about one-on-one, without wizards directly interfering.

Nice, tried again and it worked.

The Orc is pretty shitty, but the Barbarian is actually a total powerhouse in disguise.

They have both very limited and shitty selection of traits.

The Barbarian is pretty good, for a Hero. He gets Might, Constitution (sometimes, I think) and Throwing. Which makes him pretty good for a few gold hire.

No blademaster, shitty defense, only one random trait or trait upgrade, if my memory serves. I also like to have legendary heroes first, which allows me to hire champions faster.

Wiki says:
He has no Random Abilities, and thus will be the same every time you play the game.

masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Random_Abilities
See yourself at the bottom of the page.

I prefer what I'm doing now.
I've done life to death, and anyway Lionheart is a rare, and Champion requires both Warlord and the Crusade spell, so I'd be going from a fast start to a much slower one. The game is usually in the bag by the time I have a very rare.
Furthermore the point of the strategy is to one hit everything, so the hearts from LH are mostly wasted.

Also works well with the heroes
mentioned.

I confess I need to read a FAQ – I finally picked this up and I'm a bit lost. (Same with MOO2 – when I was younger I was fine with the interface, but oldfag me gets confused)

NEVER
underestimate the effect of a highly enchanted axe thrown in your face before it gets used to cut down what remains. I did at first as those 2 don't look like anything special but they're very very effective if equipped with a good axe.

2 tips for dealing with errors or perceived errors:
1. Check if your post went through by deleting the sys. subdomain, as far as I'm aware sys.8ch.net and 8ch.net handle caching differently so your post not showing up more often than not just means you got an old outdated version of the thread, changing subdomains fixes this.
2. Always copy your text before posting. Holla Forums can be quite temperamental and while it's running almost flawless now, I'm always prepared to repost if something fucks up. Over a dozen times if shit hits the fan as hard as it sometimes did.

Additional 11-12 damage dealt without equipment or enchantments. Won't prevent the opponent retaliating if you don't have first strike, and you don't have it.

While generous caster ability paired with Web and Cracks Call spells will bring down anyone, eventually. Moreover, if you have haste from your artifacts and movement points maxed, then the fight might be quite lulzy.

*anyone corporeal

Not denying it doesn't amount to much without equipment or enchantments, but a hastened flaming +6 axe thrown twice into someones face before proper melee starts isn't just a strong argument pro axe wielding heroes, it's the slaying of gods. Or dragons. Or whatever thought itself immortal.

Isn't that a mobile game though?

Eador: Genesis is more for Heroes of Might and Magic 3 fans, although it's also its own beast. It's great though. Played it and recommend it.

Here's a review: tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=3904

If by "fixed it right up", you mean "made you pay for DosBox", sure.

It's released on both PC and mobile. The mobile edition has shit graphics (why the fuck they used 3D instead of sprites I do not know) but the gameplay is still real. They didn't do that weird shit where you neuter and casualize it to hell for a mobile release.

So why did they go d20?

I torrented a version of "Planar Conquest" to "check it out". Couldn't get it to even get past a frozen loading screen. Went to the steam forums and found "1000000000000" bug posts.

:(

I wish there were more let's plays of Master of Magic on Youtube. I want to see some different builds and combos utilized that I may not normally do, or someone doing a challenging combo to win with.

MASTER OF MAGNET!

There's a couple interesting Worst Wizard challenge videos.
Pic unrelated.

Aping Age of Wonders series, I guess?

I remember great wyrms from the nature realm to be the greatest pain in the ass for melee-oriented heroes. Try clearing a Myrran nature node featuring nine of them (I have seen that repeatedly on impossible difficulty) with one and only one of your beloved characters and then return to tell the tale.

*black knight

You can't expect to win unscathed, because it's impossible to deal enough damage in one attack to clock all the 45 hitpoints they have.
Shalla is always charmed, so she should be more survivable because of practically ignoring their poisoning attacks, but that would be a close call anyway.

9 would suck, but six heroes (champions, geared, leveled) with 3 summoned wryms or other with either regenate or reincarnate will get you through it.

also fly i guess

Sole flying Warrax can just clear the node after clicking "Auto" button.

*on impossible difficulty with powerful magic

That actually would be pretty fun.

It's a pretty extensive mod.
The creator is also continuing the work of insecticide and made a 1.5 patch available that includes all the bugfixes without the mod stuff.

If he doesn't run out of mana, afterwards catapulting himself into a suicidal melee attack. The point wasn't presenting the unbeatable genocide machine, it was about presenting the strongest heroes without ranged attack. Of course they'd be supported by ranged attackers, Warrax quite often one of them. One other frequent support would be Alorra, weakening threats with magic immunity before a flying axe finishes the job.

Shallas unmodified thrown attack at demigod is 12. A flaming +6 axe adds 9. Jewelry bonus also adds to thrown attacks, so another 4 can be added. That's a thrown attack of 25. Hastened then means 2 thrown attacks before melee is entered. So, while unlikely, it very much is possible for Shalla to kill a completely healthy great wyrm only with her thrown attack. Bahgtru and Gunther have only 1 less innate thrown attack so they both could do this as well, they're just less likely to achieve this result.

Test that in practice, then.

Demi-God Warrax has at least 90 mana. That's 30 times using a ranged attack, and, if my memory serves, you don't need more than three shots per wyrm.

How would I do that? There's no indication if a kill happened before melee. I just have to trust in the known formula.

Don't be daft. If you have no additional sources of defense points, your hero would be wounded if the wyrm doesn't get killed before entering melee.

The wyrms 60% hit chance still has the possibility to deliver only blockable damage. Even emerging unscathed from battle with a great wyrm doesn't guarantee that it was slain before melee.

So you do it multiple times and test the expected result vs actual.
You don't even need a large sample size, since we're mostly testing "can it be done at all."
Just make sure not to go out of your way to pump defense.
I'm curious, I'm going to run the math on it now.

On the other hand, being wounded each time guarantees that it wasn't.

While Shallas attacks have 100% hit probability we're still talking about overcoming 12 defense at 30% defense probability with 2 attacks of 25 strength and a maximum of 5 blocked damage to achieve the tested result. I have no idea how high the success probability would be but that sounds like a shitload of testing.

D'oh, forget as great wyrms aren't immune to magic and don't have true sight, so illusionary attack enchantment should achieve a pre-melee kill every single time. Huh. Might take some days but I think I'll try it, should work.

Yeah it's pretty easily done.
As far as the testing goes, the question I was referring to is whether an undamaged Shalla means she killed it with the thrown attack or merely blocked all the damage, so you need the opposite set of probabilities - her defense and the wyrm's attack.
Unbuffed demigod Shalla has 8 defense, which means she'll block an average of 2.4 hits, up to a very small chance (about 7/100000) of blocking 8 hits.
The great wyrm has a 60% chance to hit and 25 swords, so it delivers an average of 15 hits and has less than a 1/100 chance of dealing less than 9 hits.
In other words, even if she had a 100% defense chance with 8 shields, if she thwacked a wyrm and got out unscathed even just once, you can be pretty certain that she killed it before it could do damage.

ITT: Master of Mathic

It's amazing. I never thought I'd see people discussing my favourite game so thoroughly.

In the old days before the 1.2 patch I also took Channeler when it had the cost of one spellbook and Artificer or Charismatic for better odds of trading spells with other wizards.

What the fuck is this?
It looks cool, but I've never played it nor do I even have a basic idea of what you do beyond cast spells and found cities and shit. If I were to consider getting this, should I instead get this Planar Conquest thing I've seen mentioned?

There isn't really a 4x that does magic as right as Master of Magic does. Lots of options and almost every single one is, or at least feels, broken. Get it for free and install the fanpatch to fix most of the bugs it has.

Could you even cast Black Channels on a hero? Other than that, neither Animate Dead nor Life Draining attacks/spells would work or heroes.

Yes you can.
masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Channels
Just let them reach max level before making them undead as undead can't gain experience.

Not worth it, personally. The bonus is rather small for a one-figure unit. On the other hand, high upkeep units with 6 or 8 figures are the best targets for this spell.

Really trolls are the best targets, as they regenerate, even though they don't have many figures. Especially as they have a relatively shitty economy.
The underlying problem with Black Channels is that it's expensive with low upkeep, but best works on cheap units. But why throw BC on a swordsmen or spearmen to make a suicidal unit when you can summon 4 skellingtons for the same mana cost, and no production cost.
It would make more sense to me if it was cheap to cast with a steeper upkeep.

Not swordsmen. Slingers, longbowmen, pikemen, berserkers, hammerhands, javelineers, high men magicians and so on.

I'd never want to give up the ability to heal on the high-end units for such a proportionately small gain. Especially after getting them to elite level.
And again, it's just not worth it on the cheaper units, especially ranged. +1 ranged damage, only to be whittled down by a few trash enemies? No thanks.

Torin the Chosen is available only to Icon Life.pngLife-wielding wizards who have acquired the Incarnation spell. Casting this spell (for a cost of Icon Mana.png 500) will summon Torin to your service. The same spell can also be used to bring Torin back from the dead - with his statistics intact - if he ever falls in battle or is dismissed. Torin will never appear for hire on his own under any circumstances, and cannot be summoned nor resurrected by any other spell.

masterofmagic.wikia.com

Get it on GOG (Good Old Games) and give it a try. Very affordable and well worth the purchase.

Or you can use Armsmaster if you want to level your undead.

It is worth it for garrison units mostly.

You can have a "zero spellbook" wizard too.

Doesn't work on heroes, only normal units. If you want an undead hero you need to level him up before casting black channels or he'll never reach his full potential.

Actually you should add +2 to both attack and defense of the great wyrm due to nature node aura.

The latest fanpatch 1.50 is generally better than 1.40n, except one point:
Less strict requirements on starting location of wizard's capitals, which means that you can have even more shitty location for your starting city than in the base, unpatched game. Expect rerolling the game map more often because the place you start has the maximum population limit of 8 thousand and is in the middle of a swamp or big desert.

PLIGHT - Psyringe's Lush In-Game Help Text is outdated, covering only the changes till and including 1.40h. Still better than the initial help.lbx file.

Why can't they just set it back to 8 and have done with it?

*sub out "tiles" for "max population" and that last post is all good. I had tundra on the mind.

Learn MoM modding and do it yourself.

I understood that as with tiny landmasses there might be not enough good starting locations for every wizard and the map generation script would hang the game trying to find them over and over again.

BTW what is the meaning of that blue crosshair icon just after upkeep?

Ah, so it's unit's to-hit bonus. Why there? In unpatched game it was shown somewhere else and that only if it wasn't zero. Why fix something that isn't broken?

Out of curiosity, what's the best way to obtain Mystic X?

Any thoughts on Warlock series?

It's shit.

Where do I get the fanpatch and what are some of the other notable things it does/fixes? Lots of older games like that I didn't know had such fanpatches to them cus they weren't really massive games just yet with things you could easily miss.

Make sure to have neither Life nor Death spellbooks to disqualify their respective champions from being summoned.

Torin can only be summoned via a life spell.

I'm fairly certain the death hero/champion requires a book of death too.

seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/

Has the Caster of Magic mod, which includes the 1.5 patch, as well as a separate option for just the patch with no mod.
Unfortunately Seravy's documentation is kind of shit and despite stating that the non-mod version would stick to bugfixes, he couldn't seem to resist making game balance changes in the 1.5 version as well.

realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=3663
has the last Insecticide patch, which is about 95% pure bugfix, 5% interface improvements and gameplay options.

pet pev of patchers.

I fixed a dozen bugs but I rebalanced your favorite shit to make it shit. ta ta

That annoys the shit out of me too.

What kind of balance changes are we talking? Is it making things that were underpowered overpowered or something? Trying to change fan favorites into being a more challenging thing to use? I remember watching a let's play saying the Klackons in the game are crap.

He means that without them both, there are 4 champions less to roll a pick from, increasing the odds for MysticX in result.

It makes the AI less retarded in specific ways, making it more difficult to exploit as you are used to from the past.
There are still ways to abuse it even in 1.50. For example if your opponent has devastating spells you want to prevent him from casting in some important battle, you can drain him out of mana in several meaningless scuffles in the same turn, as long as he has a battle summoning spell in his spellbook.

For example if I fight Tauron and he casts Disintegrate on my newbie hero on the first turn of battle for one of his cities, then I attack him first with a single unit of Nightblades (which have innate Invisibility on them) as far from his fortress as possible (the other plane is the best). I initiate combat, move my unit somewhere out of the way, watch as he summons Fire Elemental three times, then press done 50 times, making my unit retreat safely. Repeat the process until he stops summoning elementals due to lack of mana, then initiate the important battle I mentioned before.

*than you are used from the past

That wouldn't work against wizard with True Sight or death realm units in his army. The variant with flying units is less effective because he can attack them with magic or ranged attacks. The variant with magic immunity is less effective unless you have a speed advantage large enough to avoid melee before exhausting his mana pool for the battle.

*with magic spells or ranged attacks

They are crap due to unrest tables imbalance. Gnolls are also crap, if less, because of their weakness to magic.

See for yourself. If for not for that, you would be able to offset their other weaknesses by settling more cities with other races you conquered.
masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Unrest

If he has Flame Strike already, that also can be a problem for that exploit.

...

Most of MoM names are actually random mythologies not lifting off other games but off of real dudes. Lodoss War certainly didn't invent dragon-people either. Just'saying

er, not 'of real dudes' but off real mythological history, same as most games and books..

Just use pentoo m80, more efficient and does not have fucking kde. I mean shit you are going to be using the terminal for 90% of the time so why you would need a full DE is beyond me.

is that a rare farage

Planar Conquest is kind of fun, but also broken in character creation. Negative traits and Positive traits aren't exclusive even when they should be (Pious and Apostate can both be taken, and taking both gives you a net gain on resources, with 0 loss in character points). And then if you take ascetic, which would normally seem bad, but also take alchemy, you get a net gain in character points whilst basically completely neutralizing the penalty from ascetic.

Actually there's a lot of interesting shit in these sketches. Wonder what all this extra content was going to be for?

So which of these two patches would be considered better? They're not compatible with each other are they to overlap their bug fixes/AI Fixes right?

Well they both fan patches fix their share of bugs from 1.31, but they also make gameplay changes that seem to be at the discretion of the author.

From a pure bugfix standpoint, 1.5 probably is the best since I believe it incorporates all of 1.4's improvements, but you might want to play a quick game with all three "in use" versions to see which one you like the best.

Just now I'm playing MoM via GoG because my older dosbox version has been lost. I was using summon champion, saved before the spell finished, get mystic X every time (with a shitty set of stats) – conclusion, GoG is using 1.5–

lol– and then I get Aerie– ok so maybe GoG isn't using 1.5 afterall–

Am I dreaming? When did Holla Forums's taste get so good?

So, I have an android phone and have tried to use it for gaming, but the lack of actual buttons (no, not going to be using a controller like an autist) makes emulating games pointless (haptic feedback is useless, and input delays/lack of buttons makes platforming etc impossible).

Are there touch screen, android ports of games like MoM or Alpha Centauri? I would kill for those.

As far as Master of Magic is concerned, there's Planar Conquest for the android. There's no spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri though. We're still on the PC classic with kyrub's fanpatch.

Are the fan patches bug fixes or AI improvements?

I dig the bug fixes, but don't really want to be turned inside out with Skynet level AI…

If you want bugfixes in Alpha Centauri there's the scient patch (and pracx for a resolution hack which also fixes some graphics fuckups). Kyrub's patch is a straight AI improvement patch working on top of scient's patch, in case you felt Alpha Centauri was too easy / AI was too exploitable. Classic only and the AI becomes much more clever. (Kyrub is also the guy who made the Insecticide patch for Master of Magic, btw.)

For Alien Crossfire there's a more extensive bugfix in the form of yitzi's patch, but I think he did a touch of rebalancing too.

Either more champions or preset Wizards, I guess.

Finished my first game of MoM in years just now. I have started a few games but it's been years since I finished one. Thanks Holla Forums for keeping me company.

No problem.

Wow'd it go?

Resistance does fuck-all against Cracks Call.

That's probably why you weren't having issues.

I played a troll, nature wizard starting with alchemy and myraan. Ended up with a couple extra nature and a book or two of sorcery and chaos. Overall my strategy is quite lazy as I just get two stacks of troll warlords until I can get 6 champions with regeneration rings. I essentially run every combat on auto.. I know that is lazy but yeah.

cracks call just doesn't seem to do shit, even if you cast it on some level1 dudes with lame magic resist not much chance of success imho. The game I just played I never lost a unit or hero to cracks call.

Cracks Call has only one in four chance of working in the first place. Therefore it's totally possible to have a game with zero losses to it.

Is there a patch that fixes bugs but keeps the AI largely the same? i dont want to play against Skynet level AI but want to be playing on Impossible…

Why would you want to play against retarded AI? For example it was much easier to start on a different landmass than other wizards, because AI was really inept with handling sea transports. Sometimes it created whole stacks of nothing but ships and never broke them into smaller ones that would be actually useful for ferrying land units. At the same time, it had huge armies that were bottled up on its initial island. Again, why would you prefer to keep the game behaving the same way forever?

*inept at

Cracks Call is a retarded little spell with a flat 25% chance of working (doesn't care about resist). If it works though, it's an insta-kill unless your creature has flight or is incorporeal (wraith form).

Dude, how about you just play on a lower difficulty instead?

it's pretty good

I didn't explain myself very well.

Minor AI tweaks are fine to prevent clearly bugged behaviour, but playing against a computer that has a resource advantage ON TOP of a massive AI upgrade is fucking ridiculous.

If the AI is good enough, then remove any resource buffs.

So play on a lower difficulty?

That's why there is a new difficulty level called Extreme. The same AI as on Impossible, half the physical advantages.

In visage only, or do they share more characteristics than that?

And it lasted for 12 days till now. Heh.

Never tried playing it. How does it stand compared to Age of Wonders 2: Shadow Magic or the total conversion mod of Civ4 called Fall from Heaven 2?

The last two sketches look like a part of the scene showing banishing/defeat of an opponent wizard. One of portraits in the first pic looks like Tauron in the diplomacy gem.

The thing is "massive AI upgrade" in this case isn't from normal to superhuman, it's from potato to normal.

One new feature is slightly unfair. Only the human player is penalized for violating Wizard Pacts with scouting units that wander to pact pal territory. AI-against-AI pacts ignore that problem now.

Don't know much about Warlock but IIRC it uses a 1 unit per tile setup like Civilization V, but not as shit.

Normal for AIs, at least. Its idea of waging war is still often just producing/summoning units and rallypointing them to one of your bases, and in-combat targeting is also sometimes retarded. It does handle water maps quite well compared to its baseline.
I'm not shittalking the AI too much here though, Hard without real cheese builds keeps me rather busy in the first place, mostly because I play too defensive.

Yeah, I meant normal for strategy AI, which still tends to mean quite exploitable.
I have yet to be impressed by AI in a 4x, maybe someone here has a recommendation.

Funnily enough Trolls are a great race to turn undead with Black Channels thanks to their regeneration.

Death is the school i have the least knowledge in as i usually play the white-knight and summon "the Chosen" if i get lucky enough to get that spell. What does black channels do?

Open your mouth:
masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Channels

Look at the bottom of this screen when the game is starting. It will tell you which version it is.