New Stardock Fantasy TBS - Inspirations

Hoping the developers read

Hi,

I am a huge MoM fan, and avid GC2 player and I had some thoughts about the new fantasy game Stardock are developing. Basically, I thought it might help us players if we set out the things we most liked about similar games like Age of Wonders, Shadow Magic and Master of Magic, and the things we disliked to help inspire the developers.

Master of Magic
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LIKES
The thing that struck me most about MoM is that it was a lot like fantasy Civilisation (for those of you who played the orginal Civilisation the engine for the world map was very similar).

I loved the long slow games, and the sheer huge variety of units and spells. For example, 'Chaos Channels' let you permanently mutate units, even boats. You could end up with a living boat with wings. You couldn't dispel 'Chaos Channels', it was a mutation. There was no spell upkeep but it changed the unit's maintenance cost by adding a point of mana cost in lieu of spell upkeep.

'Call the Void' was more or less a Civilisation style nuke complete with mushroom cloud and pollution (sorry, corruption).

It had some really cool touches. The horizon in the city screens vaguely reflected whether the city was surrounded by plains or bordered mountains, and would graphically show some spell affects like 'Chaos Rift' or 'Dark Rituals'.

The music would change depending on the overall rank of your empire. If you were a tiny nation with a couple of cities the music would be gloomy, whereas if you were near the top rank it would be more energetic. There was also a tune for the middle rank.

DISLIKES
The forced game end caused by the 'Spell of Mastery' (couldn't be turned off). With this game, I would like to be able to play indefinitely if you feel like it - as in the original Civilisation.

Really bad cheating AI.

Age of Wonders, Shadow Magic
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LIKES
Liked the city combats. The sieges worked quite well. Fighting in open terrain was less spectacular though. All the non city combat maps were quite flat.

It was suspiciously like MoM.

DISLIKES
'Quicker' slightly less epic feel than MoM. Not enough variety. Could have done with even more spells and races. Felt more like a war game than Civilisation or MoM.

Did not have the city screen features.

- Vordrak

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My favorite aspect of MoM was "finding" or hiring the heroes, and then creating artifacts for them. I loved making Gauntlets, brooches, staves, etc for them to use. The fact that it was broken and your heroes could singlehandedly wipe out entire armies and civilizations is of little concern. Windwalking and the Phantom Giant things were fun

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Yep.

Making artifacts for heroes in MoM was fun. You could do that in "Age of Wonders - Shadow Magic" as well. (The heroes were still very powerful but a lot more balanced.)

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I liked the diversity of the races in MOM, especially the ones that gave you mana. I also liked the way you created a custom wizard/leader with specific spell schools using the books and/or other bonuses.

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