Why MoM? » Forum Post by Tiberonmagnus

Quoting Istari,

Stardock's ongoing goal with Elemental is to continue to integrate concepts from great games, particularly, MOM.

One of the challenges I've heard discussed is that MOM was able to get away with low resolution sprite graphics. By contrast, today, people expect high resolution 3D models for everything which drives up the cost a great deal.

My understanding is that the team wants to bring in more and more concepts from MOM while maintaining some of the things that make Elemental special such as unit customization, on map city building, quests.

The funny thing is, these days when people mention MOM on the forum they intend to add.. "I'm sure the developers must be sick to hear this by now... but they should add .... like in MOM" or "I know this is EWOM and not MOM but..."

I also got the impression some how SD isn't particularly found that MOM is constantly being mentioned...

The thing is right now, EWOM does have the basic framework of MOM.. Particularly after the promised patch that will bring global mana pool/ spell upkeeps and removing 1DN rolls...

Things that MOM has that EWOM doesn't include

1. Craft magical artifacts. Very fun to equip their heroes with custom artifacts (I suspect this is planned for expansion)

2. ability to turn the tide of each battle with magic alone as your "soverign" can cast spells overland..

I think this is a brilliant concept that made every TC battle in MOM fun.. because no matter how outnumbered.. creative use of Magic overland might save the day but if you did it too many times you couldn't cast other spells.

And if 2 wizards squared off, the battle would almost always be interesting because of the inherent uncertainly of magic duels..

Personally I think #2 is the only major thing EWOM should include. AOW 2 had the same concept and even extended it to being able to cast overland spells only withinyour domain if you were in a wizard's tower, and it added a strategic concept as it was important to fight battles or extend your domain just to get this advantage..

EWOM already has a similar concept of prestige, would be really great if this could be similar to AOW's domain idea..

As for the rest I would argue EWOM has the framework to be similar to MOM , but EWOM is let down in terms of execution. In particulaR MOM went nuts with the following

1. Race diversity - Playing a high elf was quite different from playing barbarians. In EWOM all the races look too similar and have too similar abilities

2. Unit diversity - MOM had units with tons of different special abilities, ewom was dismal here..

3. spell diversity- same as #2 but here we talking about spells..

4. Custom wizard/diversity - In MOM choosing spellsbooks and retort actually makes a huge difference in the way you played. Warlord in MOM gave ALL your units a one level boost.. In EWOM all it gave is 2 units which quickly become useless, while in MOM the ability had a big impact. Ditto comparing spellbooks chosen.

EWOM has all the elements to make the game as fun as MOM, it's just let down by poor design of specifics.. Designer went for the I'm going to try to make everything has balanced as possible, and the easiest way to do this is to make all your choices fail to matter, because all if not most choices are equally viable.

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Quoting luketan,

reply 51

EWOM has all the elements to make the game as fun as MOM, it's just let down by poor design of specifics.. Designer went for the I'm going to try to make everything has balanced as possible, and the easiest way to do this is to make all your choices fail to matter, because all if not most choices are equally viable.

The current design in Elemental allows the strongest player to become stronger and stronger without any chance for an underdog to strategically take him down. It's merely a race for the most cities and most resources. Just having lots of cities any player can win any game simply spamming squads of peasants. At this point I have to start playing Elemental maps with islands and a house rule of not leaving my island until turn_75... just to make the game interesting.

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I suspect that part of the problem plaguing EWOM is that SD released it with an eye toward coming out with more feature rich expansion packs. Therefore some game features, such as creating custom weapons/items, while made sense to have, were intentionally held back until the next expansion.

In games back in 90s, each game was its own game. If there's further development in game ideas, then that becomes a sequel, not just merely an expansion based on the same game. You have to go all out or nothing. That's also the drive which gave MoM its creative charm and feature rich game content.

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Well, the thing is ... if its a global magic pool ... and EVERYONE uses it ... then all you need is to have a Hero in the army and BOOM! Access to overland spells.

I mean seriously ... there is like 0% reason to risk your sovereign now (and I'm ok with that).

I guess we will still have Intelligence (how powerful your spells will be) and Wisdom (how many spells you can cast per round), so that'll still be cool. But yea, at least in their weakest incarnations ... all you need is a hero to be present to cast ur spellz (because I assume imbuing a hero will cost, what ... like 1 mana per turn enchantment cost?)

Seems like a good system actually. Probably 1 mana upkeep is best, but no upkeep is fine too ... just don't make it too expensive or people will really start asking for Overland magic.

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Well, the thing is ... if its a global magic pool ... and EVERYONE uses it ... then all you need is to have a Hero in the army and BOOM! Access to overland spells.

Good point, assuming it worked with no restrictions ie hero could cast everything the wizard could.

In fact that was part of the AOW2 system. Your wizard could cast spells to affect the battle if (a) within domain ( a hero was present as the hero carried the wizard's domain with him.

I still like the idea of being able to cast spells even if the hero was not present, because it increases strategic choice and decision making..You got to decide EVERY BATTLE whether to use your spells and mana reserves to either win a unwinnable fight, increase chances of losing less units etc..

I love the fact that you could keep casting spells in TC after TC.. but oops.. you don't have enough mana to cast this super summoning spell you were planning to..

You can win the battle(s) and lose the war.. Granted mana was easy to get in the original MOM (except in the early game, gold was so plentiful you just converted it to mana) but that's another issue..

In EWOM mana is scarce.. i think.. and assuming regeneration isn't instant, so this dilemma about whether to intervene or not would be fun...

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I recently purchased the Prima strategy guide for Master of Magic... might I add for the 3rd time, due to injudicious lending of previous copies =D

The ridiculous DEPTH to the game struck me as both a huge part of what Elemental strove for and is ultimately completely missing, with magic being the biggest culprit.

Previous posters have pointed out about such niceties as the great customization options for your wizard (aka sovereign, but completely detached since you never control him/her in anything but the abstract) but have missed a couple of very interesting points. For example, did you know that number of spellbooks you pick not only determines what spells you'll know to start and if you can get to rare and very rare ones, but once you get past 7 books you get research and casting discounts in that school? At 11 books, you get a 40% discount and know all common, 2 uncommon and one rare spell at the start! In addition, certain retorts were only available depending on your books (divine power if you have life, infernal power for death) or your combinations of said (runemaster requires 2 books from 3 schools). Talk about synergy.

There are retorts to make research faster, empower a certain school (and nodes of the same), increase the power of pacifying buildings, make stronger troops, etc. The sheer diversity and potential setups is mindboggling at times.

Even more interesting is how completely different each spell school behaves.

Life is almost entirely buffs and a handful of summons. There are a few damage spells but they're entirely focused on undead and demons. The retributive overland spells that make casting chaos or death spells are especially fun.
Nature is heavy on summons, but also some awesome buffs and excellent terrain modifiers (Transmute, Change Terrain and to a lesser extent Gaia's Blessing).
Chaos is pretty straightforward insofar as being heavy on the kablammo with some very interesting unit buffs and truly nasty overland debuffs (Great Wasting and Armageddon are particularly sucky to have used against you).
Sorcery has some of the most truly interesting spells like Floating Island (want to make that entire troop stack basically into fliers?) and the absolutely best spell breakers (the "true" versions of Dispel Magic, Disenchant Area and Disjunctions that were three times as powerful as normal), as well as some very nice summons and damage spells.
I personally never play death since I just don't "get" playing evil, but it's chock full of nasty crap... including the ability to make ALL enemies you kill (in combats you ultimately win) join your armies as free zombies with the overland spell Zombie Mastery!

There's much more to the game than just magic, but it's a huge party of the flavor and pizzaz that makes MoM remain a huge fan favorite to this day and inspires me to launch DOSBox for "just one more game".

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luketan:

I think "only able to cast spells outside your domain if there's a hero" was a smart decision by AoW design team. I think it's a flaw of Master of Magic that you can cast spells anytime*. I think so because in MOM, as long as you had enough mana and skill left, you could DEVASTATE enemies with spells. So you attack enemy settlers or spearmen, he casts Psionic Blast and you potentially take a lot of damage. It really gets out of hand at Impossible, to the point where my two favourite spells are Counter Magic and Mana Leak. Now back to AoW and its heroes. Heroes aren't all that rare, so you can have a few places to cast spells outside your domain. Not just any peasant will torch your army. It's nice to be able to summon an Earth Elemental to defend some backwater city against ambush, but I'd prefer if there were some limits in MOM. Like, you'd need at least presence of Shamans or Shrine at the battlefield to cast any spells. They wouldn't cast themselves, merely serve as a channel. Of course, there could be a perk which removes the requirement.

See, the funny thing is sometimes additional limitations can make the game more interesting. Sometimes less options is better. You can then add an ability to remove the limit and players are excited over it .

* there's channeling penalty for distance, up to 3x the mana cost. Channeler perk worth 2 points eliminates the penalty.

As fair as magic being completely different... to be fair, they've ripped off Magic: The Gathering... See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_the_gathering#Colors_of_Magic

...but they did it right. Heroes of Might and Magic 4 did the same thing, they mostly changed names.

Moral of the story: Magic system is much more interesting if there's a plan behind it. Not just "we can justify X mechanic in Y school if we do Z". M:TG did that in its early days and that's why it was so unbalanced and all over the place.

----------

Speaking of MOM's quirks and secrets, did you know that

- the number of spellbooks you start with determines your fortress's mana income ?

- you pay 0.5x the normal mana for spells when defending your fortress ?

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Quoting Istari,

reply 34

My understanding is that the team wants to bring in more and more concepts from MOM while maintaining some of the things that make Elemental special such as unit customization, on map city building, quests.

I am very excited and happy to hear this!

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I think "only able to cast spells outside your domain if there's a hero" was a smart decision by AoW design team. I think it's a flaw of Master of Magic that you can cast spells anytime*. I think so because in MOM, as long as you had enough mana and skill left, you could DEVASTATE enemies with spells. So you attack enemy settlers or spearmen, he casts Psionic Blast and you potentially take a lot of damage. It really gets out of hand at Impossible, to the point where my two favourite spells are Counter Magic and Mana Leak.

I could see it being fun either way.. One would be a magic heavy game where magic is dominant. Besides I'm thinking increasing the value of counter magic is really cool don't you think, as it goes to the whole "duel in magic" thing... Of course in MOM impossible , the AI was cheating like crazy to the extent it didnt pay upkeep iirc, thats why you had problems.. A "normal" cheating AI would eventually pay the price for casting spells like crazy ...

domain + hero model also has its points, where the hero and growth of domain is a nice restriction you can play around..

See, the funny thing is sometimes additional limitations can make the game more interesting. Sometimes less options is better. You can then add an ability to remove the limit and players are excited over it .

Agree, like the diff wizard's towers in AOW.. I think given that the wizard/soverign actually exists as a unit , EWOM should follow the AOW model here..

AOW2 tried to balance between the wizard/soverign running around kiilling stuff.. and being in the city with wizard's tower so he could cast overland spells within domain..

I don't think it worked that well in AOW2 , i forgot why, but EWOM should have a similar balancing strategy...

Complete the following sentence..

The soverign could run around killing units and raising levels but would lose out because _____________________________________

a)Spell research is slowed or stopped

You couldn't cast overland spells (within domain?)

A "homebody" wizard/sovereign would also need some way to gain exp and levels.. i think..besides combat..

Also there should be a similar balance between a melee specialized sovereign and a more magical based soverign...

In traditional RPG melee vs magic is balanced by allowing the former to have more staying power.. they could bash over and over again without losing much effectively over time. While magic based characters could do a crazy amount of damage in a short amount of time, but would then be depleted and useless for a while..

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Quoting Eiralin,

reply 56

I recently purchased the Prima strategy guide for Master of Magic... might I add for the 3rd time, due to injudicious lending of previous copies =D

The ridiculous DEPTH to the game struck me as both a huge part of what Elemental strove for and is ultimately completely missing, with magic being the biggest culprit.

Previous posters have pointed out about such niceties as the great customization options for your wizard (aka sovereign, but completely detached since you never control him/her in anything but the abstract) but have missed a couple of very interesting points. For example, did you know that number of spellbooks you pick not only determines what spells you'll know to start and if you can get to rare and very rare ones, but once you get past 7 books you get research and casting discounts in that school? At 11 books, you get a 40% discount and know all common, 2 uncommon and one rare spell at the start! In addition, certain retorts were only available depending on your books (divine power if you have life, infernal power for death) or your combinations of said (runemaster requires 2 books from 3 schools).

All this is well known to old school MOM players, most of us just didnt feel the need to type it all out cos for sure it would not apply to EWOM so why bother?

I personally never play death since I just don't "get" playing evil, but it's chock full of nasty crap... including the ability to make ALL enemies you kill (in combats you ultimately win) join your armies as free zombies with the overland spell Zombie Mastery!

Actually death spells is usually acknowledged to be the weakest (except the 11 book wraith strategy is not bad), basically because a lot of spells are resistance based and too easy to resist. I would say chaos is next weakest but some disagree..

There's much more to the game than just magic, but it's a huge party of the flavor and pizzaz that makes MoM remain a huge fan favorite to this day and inspires me to launch DOSBox for "just one more game".

correct.. i just downloaded the latest 1.4 unofficial patch it's tempting me to play again..

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Quoting Eiralin,

reply 56

Even more interesting is how completely different each spell school behaves.

Sadly, I think SD once posted in response to this.. that he didn't think it would be "fun" if say all spell schools didn't have direct damage spells.. I suspect it's the same philosophy for other spells.. Basically create spell x for school A, then alter it slightly for all other schools so all schools have a equalvant. Occasionally add one or two "Special" unique spells...

In fact, MOM is quite unique in this. I think all other games like HOMM, AOW didn't specialize to such extent.. In general you had the same direct damage spells just slightly altered for diff schools..

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MoM is very, very great. I played it 9 years, because the game is very good designed: Its a run to the spell of mastery and even in the last rounds you can loose, if the enemy speaks the word of death, armageddon, meteor storm, great wasting and so on. So you are motivated up to the victory, if the land change the form, units are died without combat and vulcanos occurs on the map suddenly. Its the beginning of the end of world, an apocalypse like ragnarök, and only one can survive it, the new Master of Magic: You!

Very cool and dramatically gameplay!

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While 1.4 fixes a truckload of bugs, it also breaks the "W" hotkey and I happen to use that quite a bit. *grumble*

It also fixes me being able to build my transcontinental bridges. LOL

I played a uhh... quick game on Sunday. Alas, work totally sucked today. Gawd I need sleep. =P

Balance can still go a long way if say Life gets very weak damage spells.
Water could be low damage over time but multiply the unit's combat speed by 0,9 every turn, eventually freezing it solid.
Air, being the softest element and all, could do indirect damage like causing damage by throwing units into each other where one would take damage based on the mass (armor + HP) of the other.
No problem at all with every school of magic having "a" damage spell. But that they are all work by doing INT * n physical damage is a crying shame.

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Can anyone let me know where I can find out more about:

1) Setting up dosbox to work properly with MoM? (I can only get it playing in a small window with no sounds atm).

2) Any detailed info on tips for how to play MoM?

Thanks in advance.

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Quoting Admiral Rom,

reply 64

Can anyone let me know where I can find out more about:

1) Setting up dosbox to work properly with MoM? (I can only get it playing in a small window with no sounds atm).

2) Any detailed info on tips for how to play MoM?

Thanks in advance.

Re: 1) Hit alt-enter to force dosbox to use your whole screen. Can't help you with the sound, that was always complicatd to get working with MoM even in 1994.

Re: 2) A google search should turn up the manuals and strategy guide for the game without much trouble.

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Quoting Admiral Rom,

reply 64

Can anyone let me know where I can find out more about:

1) Setting up dosbox to work properly with MoM? (I can only get it playing in a small window with no sounds atm).

DOS familiarity helps. Once you get the DOS window, first thing you need is to assign a directory to a separate drive. I do it like this:

Code: css
mount c: /home/b0rsuk/Gry/dosbox/MOM

Then you switch from drive z: to drive c:

Code: css
c:

Since I'm already in the game's directory, I just type magic and press enter. To get the sound working, you probably need to configure your sound card in the setup program first. While in Master of Magic directory, type install. I select Sound Blaster Pro (later).

Alt-enter to toggle fullscreen. CTRL-F10 to capture/release mouse pointer. CTRL-F12 to increase CPU cycles (runs faster up to a point, there's an optimum for each processor), CTRL-F11 to decrease CPU cycles.

If you are annoyed by setting this up manually each time, edit the config file. This would be different for you because I use Linux.

2) Any detailed info on tips for how to play MoM?

Once you start a game, go to Game->Settings and enable tactical combat. (Strategic combat on/off). You'd be missing a lot of fun.

Manual:

www.abandonia.com/files/extras/25934_game_extra_1.pdf

Spellbook:

http://www.machinations.org/mom/downloads/Master%20of%20Magic%20-%20Spellbook.pdf

If you end up liking the game at all, check earlier posts in this thread for the unnoficial patch. It offers almost exclusively bugfixes and AI improvements, so there's nothing controversial in there.

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Obviously - download the latest version of DosBox. The one that comes with MoM may work but *shrug*

I then copied dosbox-0.74.conf from wherever DosBox installed it on my computer to the MoM folder. Let the explorer find it.

In the config file I didn't change much. Mostly for a better display because 640x480 (or whatever DosBox scales it to) looks crappy on a 19" screen.

So for settings only:

fullscreen=true
fullresolution=800x600
windowresolution=800x600

cycles=17000

...and for the [autoexec] in there:

mount C D:\Game\MoM
c:
magic

Then created a windows link to start the thing. C:\Programme\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe -conf "D:\Game\MoM\dosbox-0.74.conf"

Now I get a fat black border around the "game" but the pixels aren't magnified to huge proportions. And they aren't stretched. Works for me.

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Quoting luketan,

reply 61

Quoting Eiralin, reply 56

Even more interesting is how completely different each spell school behaves.

Sadly, I think SD once posted in response to this.. that he didn't think it would be "fun" if say all spell schools didn't have direct damage spells.. I suspect it's the same philosophy for other spells.. Basically create spell x for school A, then alter it slightly for all other schools so all schools have a equalvant. Occasionally add one or two "Special" unique spells...

In fact, MOM is quite unique in this. I think all other games like HOMM, AOW didn't specialize to such extent.. In general you had the same direct damage spells just slightly altered for diff schools..

I'm sorry to hear that, because it's one of my few big dislikes about Elemental. The spells are largely uninteresting and are full of duplicates. Single target INT * n damage, 3x3 INT * n damage. Would you like the air, fire, or water version?

The differences in Life and Death magic are particularly underwhelming... Summon Spy is way better than Summon Familiar, and Life gets Teleport/Spirit Dance earlier in the tree. What are the other differences again...?

There are a few good summons, and some nice city buffs like Brilliance, but apart from that small handful I find myself skipping 90% of the spells that are available and just researching the next level over and over until something useful shows up. That's a big contrast to MoM where half of the spells in any branch of magic feel like "must-haves" and some games are scrapped and restarted because I only had 5 books of Nature and didn't get both Pathfinding and Water Walking.

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Well, the unresearched spells are just written in a different font.
Back when I was going nuts with MoM I would simply read the list of unresearched spells and decide if I had gotten the right ones.
It's actually not that hard because you already know the number of letters in each word and say "Invisibility" must have 3 lower case "i" in it.
(and there is barely any difference between upper/lower case)
So if a spell has that combination of symbols in the right places... you got a lot of the alphabet figured out.
And knowing these you can use them to decipher others. That's your rosetta stone.

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Quoting PyroMancer2k,

reply 36

The thing is MoM was full of so many great ideas that you'd be hard press to find any fantasy strategy game that doesn't borrow elements from it. The problem with pretty much all others when comparing it to MoM is that they choose to simplify curtain aspects of the game and develop/improve upon others. And sadly this is why so many people long for a true, spiritual or otherwise, sequal to the series. Because thus far every game has fallen short becuase it doesn't include all of the elements that made MoM so great. They choose to keep maybe 50% of them at best.

Spot on.

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If makes me think that people who like MoM also may like Dom3, which is the same or similar crowd that wanted EWoM to be like those in depth as well.

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NO TC.. Any real successor to MOM must have TC.. What's the point of having so many fun spells if you can control in TC?

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Quoting luketan,

reply 60

All this is well known to old school MOM players, most of us just didnt feel the need to type it all out cos for sure it would not apply to EWOM so why bother?

The point is this Mr. Cranky Pants... that sort of depth in wizard creation SHOULD be in Elemental! There are so many freaking options and sub-options and it pains me to see how one dimensional sovereign creation is.

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Thanks for the tips guys! I managed to get sound working in the end, and increasing the cycles and making the game full screen made it much more playable. I just need to set up a config file now so i dont have to tweak those settings every time I play! I also hadnt enabled tactical battles, so I was a bit confused as to why my units kept getting owned when investigating caves/ruins etc without me being able to control the action!

Its strange the conflicting emotions that are stirred up playing this game. Its amazing how much it draws you in, and theres so much depth and interesting things to play with. The dated graphics have a lovable charm that makes them endearing rather than annoying, and the gameplay is just so much fun! The only sad part is realising what a truly inspired publisher Microprose was and how much of a loss it was them no longer being around. X-com, Moo2, MoM, Civ, Pirates, Mechwarrior, F-19, its like a catalogue of my favorite ever PC games!

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You guys that don't understand DOS or DOSBOX should get D-FEND RELOADED http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/. It is so easy to use you just direct it to the DOS game you want to play and it sets everything up for you. MOM will run great through it for those that have old disks or cds of MOM.

Also if you've ever bought a game through GoG you can copy and paste the DOSBOX setup and just change the name of the file and the exe name at the bottom of the game you want to setup. Basically once you have a good DOSBOX config.ini file setup it will work for most all the dos games. I have 20-30 dos games setup on my Vista 64 system now using an ATI 5770 HD video card as well. But, I'm a geek so things setup and come easier for me to understand.

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