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Master of Magic: not that great

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Master of Magic: not that great

...oh no you didn't

from Elemental Forums

We all know these forums need some more spice, so here it is: Master of Magic is good, but not great. There, I said it.

Ground rules:

  1. This is (obviously) just my opinion.
  2. I'm not trying to start a flame fest, so let's not get out the gasoline, ok?
  3. There are facts about the game, such as mechanics and units.
  4. There are opinions about the game, which are not to be stated (or interpreted) as facts.
  5. Opinions should be supported as much as possible, but--since they are not facts--do not have to be supported.
  6. Don't talk about FE unless it's to contrast facts between the two (i.e. in FE (or AoW) they did X, MoM is Y, Y is better/worse because...).
  7. MoM of course gets major credit for being the first to do its thing. Please differentiate "XYZ was great when MoM did it" from "XYZ in MoM is still better than anything else we've seen."

Why start the discussion? [1] Fun. [2] It has a major effect on how people perceive FE, and other games in this genre.

So, without further ado, here is my opinion on MoM, in very general terms:

The system that MoM set up was great: cities, troops, heroes, spells, items, etc. Building the next level X to get the better unit was fun. Finding the great hero was fun. Creating that sword you really need was particularly awesome IMHO. In addition, I found that the subsystems all worked together very well.

Furthermore, the variety was also great. You certainly could play differently with different spellbooks and races and whatnot.

The lore and feel of the game, such as it was, was also pretty good, but I hold that it benefited from the grainy little graphics (that were, of course, the only option at the time). Hear me out: the races were pretty standard fantasy/D&D fare, and the icons were just enough that you could tell what things were and they were suggestive of what they represented. The paladins, for example, were essentially a colored stick figure on a horse, and since every nerd worth her salt knows what a paladin is, we all had a picture in our heads of grand knights in shining armor. The graphics as a whole were very colorful and did well to enhance this. This also allowed the setting to be standard fantasy, as it invited the player to fill it in with imagination. (I would argue the same is true for Dwarf Fortress, but that's a tangent.)

The above all make MoM a good game, but the reason it is not a great game, (again, IMHO) is simple: the AI. I don't remember what difficulty I played it on, but the difficulty of the game (to me) was overcoming tough monsters, not the AI. Sometimes those monsters would be wandering/lair protecting, sometimes they would be controlled by a rival, but the AI never used the excellent system the game had to make a fun game. The AI could build stag beetles and throw them at me, but once I figured out how to defeat a stag beetle that was it.

Now I'm not saying I could have done better; I think that the wonderful complexity of the whole system (cities + heroes + spells + items + troops + summons) doomed the AI from the get-go. But for me, once I had explored the system to its fullest, there was nothing left to do. So I put the game down, disappointed that I couldn't test out the best hero + summon or troop + spell or strategic spell + tactical mischief that I could come up with on a deserving opponent.

To fix it, you could either: [1] simplify, streamline, or dumb down the system; [2] add, and then play, multiplayer; or [3] invest heavily in making the AI better. Personally, of course, I am not in a position to do any of them. (Fun question: is the source code out there? If so, is it even worth looking at?)

For a modern game to be successful in the same vein, it's going to have to be very careful with the lore/graphics issue (assuming, of course, it can get the underlying system right). Perhaps using sprites is palatable to a modern audience, perhaps not. Are people tired of the same old fantasy setting? I'd wager not, but I could be wrong. Multiplayer is, of course, possible, but not my preferred solution. The trick of making a system complex enough to be fascinating and replayable (over and over again) yet still manageable by an AI is certainly a difficult one.

So, to summarize: Master of Magic is a good game because it has an excellent underlying system and just the right setting and graphics to capture the imagination. For me, it is not a great game because once I explored it, I had no reason to go back.

OK: now everyone jump in and disagree! It's just, like, my opinion, man.

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Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Viperswhip, reply 23
So, I don't sit here and compare the technical or AI aspects of FE to MoM because that's not the point.
End of Viperswhip's quote

That's more or less my whole point. But it certainly doesn't stop everyone else on the forum from doing so (or so it seems, sometimes). (Though I guess Stardock brought that on themselves to some extent by mentioning "spiritual successor to MoM" at some point regarding Elemental.)

Quoting rahal, reply 25
Seems a bit unfair critiquing MoM re the AI given it's hard to find examples of respectable AI despite 20 years of exponential growth in computing power.
End of rahal's quote

Yes, but I would argue that it would be impossible to write a good AI for MoM (or similar games) even today without as much effort as goes into Chess AI's because the game is so much more complicated.

Quoting rahal, reply 25

Games like those from Paradox, and Dwarf Fortress, don't really have AI as part of their design. They are the Sims for nerds.
 
End of rahal's quote

Yup. It's a different style of game. IMHO, more suited to long-term single player use because they don't depend on an AI that nobody has the time or budget to write well.

Quoting Kamamura_CZ, reply 26
AI of complex games is poor, because it just can't be done on current computers. I have translated a few contributions of my friend who does AI research on academic level, so I have read quite a bit on the subject.

However, there are things that MoM still does better than FE, namely:

UI - the UI is much more consistent and ergonomic, especially with the latest unofficial patches that allow you to right-click almost anything. FE has a terrible mess of UI, every screen follows different conventions, the information is scattered illogically over multiple screens.

Unit stats - non-corporeal, weapon immunity, weapon materials, node affinities, magic type/poison and other immunities, all that is more diverse and interesting in Mom

Magic system - still much more diverse in MoM, expecially the globals. Magic in FE, despite being "war of magic", is uninspiring.

Tactical combat - while it looks horrible, it's better in MoM. At least, when the city has walls, they present a tactical challenge in combat. FE tactical combat is the same, bland map type all the time.

City building - the overcomplicated, strangely designed resource system of FE does not really bring anything more interesting than the civ-style building in MoM.

Artifacts - yep, you can create your own in MoM.

End of Kamamura_CZ's quote

I would agree about UI and artifacts (I found artifact creation really fun). I think the unit stats in FE have the potential to be better than MoM but are still a work in progress (cf the thread in the forums right now about how bows and special abilities are treated as magic for the purposes of magic immunity, etc). I disagree about city building--I think the city leveling idea is great as is and will be fantastic in an expansion or two. I also strongly disagree that tactical combat is better in MoM. I don't recall ever noticing city walls until afterwards or thinking that the AI did something particularly intelligent. However, I do think it has a ways to go in MoM. I think the Heroes series did tactical much better. (But it was more of a focus there.)

Regarding the magic system, it goes back to my main point about MoM. There may have been cool globals, but after trying them out once I was never excited to use them, because they were never necessary. The AI would occasionally poison land (or whatever that spell was) and would always do those positive globals (increased reputation or something), but really, by the time any serious spells came into play it didn't matter because it was always a waiting game of getting my army there. And occasionally spells sped it up.

It was just really hard for me to get excited about a cool magic system (or cool unit stats, etc) after the first time because I never *needed* to use them.

But everything was certainly cool enough to leave an impression. On me and everyone else.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

I think the Heroes series did tactical much better.

What? You consider a system that allows you to have 3543123 skeletons occupying the same hex, moving at once and striking at once... better? 

 

Once again, I was talking about concept, not the actual implementation. The magic system as a concept was better in MoM - and you said it yourself. The fact that the whole game was half finished/broken is another thing, but please game design != implementation.

 

As far as implementation goes, FE is miles ahead of MoM. Game desight wise, not so much.

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

HOMM 3 and Age of Wonders 2 Shadow Magic are the crown jewels of the genre.  Fallen Enchantress could potentially match or exceed them in time.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting verwandlung, reply 28
HOMM 3 and Age of Wonders 2 Shadow Magic are the crown jewels of the genre.  Fallen Enchantress could potentially match or exceed them in time.
End of verwandlung's quote

 

Says who? The International TBS Commission? Age of Wonders is nice, I agree, but Homm3 contains some really very strange concepts, basically the fact that you spend all the game pampering your killer stack hero with experience while heavily using save/load - because frankly, once you lose it, it's game over. We tried it in multiplayer, and it's an absolute disaster. It's not a "strategy", it's riding around collecting exp game. 

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Kamamura_CZ, reply 27
I think the Heroes series did tactical much better.

What? You consider a system that allows you to have 3543123 skeletons occupying the same hex, moving at once and striking at once... better? 

End of Kamamura_CZ's quote

Yes, I do consider it better. I found the tactical choices much more engaging. There is always some realism sacrifices to be made, and the other option is to say that once you have more than six dudes on horses, you can't fit anything more in the army. (Or whatever the unit limit was.) I don't consider one or the other better, but overall the flow of a Heroes 3 battle I found to be more fun.

Quoting Kamamura_CZ, reply 27

Once again, I was talking about concept, not the actual implementation. The magic system as a concept was better in MoM - and you said it yourself. The fact that the whole game was half finished/broken is another thing, but please game design != implementation.

 

As far as implementation goes, FE is miles ahead of MoM. Game desight wise, not so much.
End of Kamamura_CZ's quote

I apologize if I missed an earlier distinction you made about design vs implementation, but quite frankly it's somewhat meaningless from my perspective because I'm playing the implementation, not the design. In fact, one of my main complaints is that MoM's design is so complex that any implementation is going to suffer because an AI can't handle it. So while it is certainly important to distinguish good from bad designs and good from bad implementations, only their interaction--the final product--is meaningful to the end user.

Quoting verwandlung, reply 28
HOMM 3 and Age of Wonders 2 Shadow Magic are the crown jewels of the genre.  Fallen Enchantress could potentially match or exceed them in time.
End of verwandlung's quote

Apparently I really need to check out this "Age of Wonderes" thing. ;-)

Quoting Kamamura_CZ, reply 30

Says who? The International TBS Commission? Age of Wonders is nice, I agree, but Homm3 contains some really very strange concepts, basically the fact that you spend all the game pampering your killer stack hero with experience while heavily using save/load - because frankly, once you lose it, it's game over. We tried it in multiplayer, and it's an absolute disaster. It's not a "strategy", it's riding around collecting exp game. 
End of Kamamura_CZ's quote

Yes, I'm declaring the formation of the International TBS Commission right here! But seriously, this is a thread about what we liked and didn't like from MoM and related games. Did you not expect to see people's opinions?

I actually really liked HoMM3. It was certainly different and I agree that the lack of ability to come back from the loss of your main stack is a serious flaw (woah... this thread just crossed with the other one I have in the FE section of the forum), I thought it was a great game. I wouldn't go so far as to slander it for not being "strategy"--complete with scare quotes and everything. You still have to make decisions about what to do with limited resources (in the early game) and where to attack, and if you can risk an attack on this castle vs. that monster group, etc. And I certainly was able to turn battles around with different tactics (again admitting to reloading, because it was somewhat necessary if you lost big).

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

HoMM is kings bounty with cities. It's not really a "4x".

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting rahal, reply 32
HoMM is kings bounty with cities. It's not really a "4x".
End of rahal's quote

I'm unfamiliar with Kings Bounty. But since you can't build cities I would probably agree that it's not a 4X. It does have enough similarities with MoM, though, that I think it warrants discussion.

Reply #33 from Elemental Forums Top

MoM (and Elemental) start with 4x and adds RPG. MoM is a more complex game than Civ.

HoMM starts with tactical rpg (Kings Bounty) and adds a very simple strategic layer. 

 

- As an aside. I don't think Elemental needs grandmaster AI. These are not 'fair' games. A huge part of their appeal is the roguelike element of exploration,discovery,random events, starting position etc. The AI just needs to be good enough to be believable and present appropriate challenge.

 

 

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting rahal, reply 34
MoM (and Elemental) start with 4x and adds RPG. MoM is a more complex game than Civ.

HoMM starts with tactical rpg (Kings Bounty) and adds a very simple strategic layer. 
 
End of rahal's quote

I think that's a pretty good way of breaking it down. That also probably explains why I like the tactical battles in HoMM more. (But obviously not the building part of it.) I would probably agree that MoM is more complex, but I think that is because it has a number of simple-to-moderate systems interwoven (cities + spells + heroes, etc). Civ, on the other hand, has a more complex system for cities and empires, but doesn't have any heroes or spells and whatnot.

Quoting rahal, reply 34

- As an aside. I don't think Elemental needs grandmaster AI. These are not 'fair' games. A huge part of their appeal is the roguelike element of exploration,discovery,random events, starting position etc. The AI just needs to be good enough to be believable and present appropriate challenge.
End of rahal's quote

Completely agree. I think that what's great about these sorts of games is the ability to build up a powerful empire + hero + army + etc and then use it to conquer stuff. I think where MoM falls down is that it's no fun to conquer stuff because the AI never puts any pressure on you. I never remember having a battle where I thought that it actually stress-tested my (best) army, nor a war that stress-tested my empire. So I would define "appropriate challenge" as "requiring you to have a decent army and a decent spell and a decent hero (and whatnot)". This, of course, is going to vary for different players. You can see Tuidjy on the FE forums working out every nook and cranny of the system, and I don't think he's ever going to be challenged. But I'm not a min-maxer, and if I can have a game where I get the Champion Plate or "that key tactical spell that complements my dodge-focused armies" *just in time* then I'll be happy.

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Lord, reply 2
Nostalgia's a bitch.
End of Lord's quote

I never even heard of MoM until... i think it was 2010 and I still loved it without any nostalgia.

I had played and loved AoW... I found MoM to be one of the best games made. I preferred AoW2: the wizard's throne to MoM, but though MoM was better then AoW1 and AoW2: Shadow Magic.

I recently replayed Master of Orion 2... that there was nostalgia colored memories... still a better game then so much of the shovelware we have today.

Reply #36 from Elemental Forums Top

Says who? The International TBS Commission? Age of Wonders is nice, I agree, but Homm3 contains some really very strange concepts, basically the fact that you spend all the game pampering your killer stack hero with experience while heavily using save/load - because frankly, once you lose it, it's game over. We tried it in multiplayer, and it's an absolute disaster. It's not a "strategy", it's riding around collecting exp game.
End of quote

 

Says me. Just my opinion obviously. :)

 

Almost all games can be save/reloaded, and the player can make the choice to not do that if he likes.  So that isn't a drawback for me.

I am fond of modding these games heavily (AOW2:SM and HOMM 3), though.  I think the openness for modders of these games, as well as map designers, were high points in their favor, and in Fallen Enchantress's as well.  The quality is one that can make the game last for the ages.

 

I failed to mention the newer King's Bounty games, which I don't put in the same class as the others -- particularly since it lacked multiplayer and only released a poor map editor with Crossworlds -- but I had a lot of fun with it.  Lots of personality, fun battles, pretty difficult with the right settings, and graphically beautiful.

 

Not a big fan of the Disciples games.  MOM wasn't to my taste, but I didn't play it much.

 

I liked HOMM 4 a lot more than most people seemed to, and HOMM 5 was fine but basically like HOMM 3 except it run more clunkily and was hard to mod, and was just a little less compelling for some reason, in all kinds of ways.  HOMM 2 or 1 or the original King's Bounty I have not played.  Might & Magic 6 Heroes (i.e. Ubisoft's HOMM 6) ... heh.  I found that pretty bad.

 

Hmm, what else is there, of fantasy turn-based strategy ...? (Keeping it to fantasy since most people would give the grand prizes to Civilization if we counted them.)

Reply #37 from Elemental Forums Top

Says who? The International TBS Commission? Age of Wonders is nice, I agree, but Homm3 contains some really very strange concepts, basically the fact that you spend all the game pampering your killer stack hero with experience while heavily using save/load - because frankly, once you lose it, it's game over. We tried it in multiplayer, and it's an absolute disaster. It's not a "strategy", it's riding around collecting exp game.
End of quote

That is a very accurate description of HoMM... I enjoyed those games but I agree it was not a strategy game.

Reply #38 from Elemental Forums Top

Master of Magic is good, but not great.
End of quote

Agreed.  MoM is good.  MoM was great in it's day.  That day is long past.

The system that MoM set up was great: cities, troops, heroes, spells, items, etc. Building the next level X to get the better unit was fun. Finding the great hero was fun. Creating that sword you really need was particularly awesome IMHO. In addition, I found that the subsystems all worked together very well.

Furthermore, the variety was also great. You certainly could play differently with different spellbooks and races and whatnot.

The lore and feel of the game, such as it was, was also pretty good *snip*

The above all make MoM a good game, but the reason it is not a great game, (again, IMHO) is simple: the AI. I don't remember what difficulty I played it on, but the difficulty of the game (to me) was overcoming tough monsters, not the AI. Sometimes those monsters would be wandering/lair protecting, sometimes they would be controlled by a rival, but the AI never used the excellent system the game had to make a fun game. The AI could build stag beetles and throw them at me, but once I figured out how to defeat a stag beetle that was it.
End of quote


Agreed.  The AI, bugs, and ballance issues kept this game from it's full potential.  There were some multi-player mods that were fun but they take forever.

For a modern game to be successful in the same vein, it's going to have to be very careful with the lore/graphics issue (assuming, of course, it can get the underlying system right). Perhaps using sprites is palatable to a modern audience, perhaps not. Are people tired of the same old fantasy setting? I'd wager not, but I could be wrong. Multiplayer is, of course, possible, but not my preferred solution. The trick of making a system complex enough to be fascinating and replayable (over and over again) yet still manageable by an AI is certainly a difficult one.

So, to summarize: Master of Magic is a good game because it has an excellent underlying system and just the right setting and graphics to capture the imagination. For me, it is not a great game because once I explored it, I had no reason to go back.
End of quote

The fun for me was to find the most broken combos I could and get the highest score I could.  Once I could not get a higher score then it was time to play the weakest starting wizards and see if you can beat the game with them.  Untold hours of fun with that as well.  After that got old I found the multi-player mods and started playing me vs a few friends where they get to customize my wizard.  That was some of the best gameing ever.

The only games I have put more time into then MoM were Everquest and WoW.  Looking back on it I wish I could take back everything other then the first 100 hours or so of Everquest and most of the WoW time but I don't regret any MoM time (Other then the Econ 304 midterm I played through by mistake).

Sammual

Reply #39 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Ben, reply 11
I don't think you can sweep the opinions of the majority under the rug and argue that it's all just "nostalgia". Yes it had horrible AI and many bugs. But it certainly got a lot of other things right that FE can learn from so it's certainly reasonable to compare.

Some truths to consider:

1. The game despite the issues had fans who bothered to set up tribute pages that can be seen to this day and who bothered to make fan made patches to correct the flaws and improve the AI (with no source code or documentation or support) long after the developers had given up.

2. There's even someone who actually made a multiplayer version of MoM from scratch!

3. It's still held up as THE inspiration for similar fantasy 4X titles to this day, including FE and Age of Wonders.

4. It's included in several mainstream game review sites' "Top 100 best games" and "Hall of Fame" categories for good reason.

5. Still has people who are playing it two decades on.

How many other games can claim such a legacy?

Anyway why do I even bother... I suppose I just want to encourage Stardock to take some justified lessons from MoM, especially for the heroes and spells.
End of Ben's quote

Agreed.

Today MoM is good.  In it's day it was Great.

Reply #40 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting pomalley, reply 31

Apparently I really need to check out this "Age of Wonderes" thing.
End of pomalley's quote

Make sure you try Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.  It is much better then AoW1 or AoW2.

 

Reply #41 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sammual, reply 41
ake sure you try Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.  It is much better then AoW1 or AoW2.
End of Sammual's quote

AoW Shadow magic is the worst AoW ever made. It was actually bad. AoW2 is best followed by AoW1

Reply #42 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting taltamir, reply 42


AoW Shadow magic is the worst AoW ever made. It was actually bad. AoW2 is best followed by AoW1
End of taltamir's quote

Correct me if I'm wrong but AoW:SM was a stand alone sequel to AoW2 that was just AoW2 with bug fixes, a third plane, new units, and a new campain. 

Why did you dislike AoW:SM and think AoW was better?

Sammual

 

Reply #43 from JoeUser Forums Top

Quoting Sammual, reply 42
Correct me if I'm wrong but AoW:SM was a stand alone sequel to AoW2 that was just AoW2 with bug fixes, a third plane, new units, and a new campain. 

Why did you dislike AoW:SM and think AoW was better?

Sammual
End of Sammual's quote

It is a standalone expansion. Same game, a smidgen of new units, and a new campaign.

I didn't notice any bug fixes. There aren't that many new units.

The meat and potatoes of this game is the new campaign (maps, story, etc), which is simply awful, especially compared to AoW2.

IIRC that is. Its been some time since I last gave it a try and came back disappointed

I played AoW in its entirety twice (a few years apart). I tried to play SM 3 times already (with breaks between them) and each time I quit fairly early in the game.

 

Reply #44 from Elemental Forums Top

Me too.

 

I played AoW quite a bit, played 2 a bit more, then when I got SM...  Pretty much killed it for me.  Don't really know why, just know that that's what happened.

 

Edit:  part of it was the demons or shadow faction or whatever the hell they were.  That was one of the worst and stupidest factions I have even encountered in any game ever.  I think they may have simply tried to add too much to the game, and the overall bloat just made me not want to deal with it anymore.

Reply #45 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Sammual, reply 40

Today MoM is good.  In it's day it was Great.
End of Sammual's quote

 

I think that's pretty fair on a features comparison.  But when it also comes to a matter of integration, interface, and gameplay balance for me, then MoM remains very competitive.  It just plays extremely well, giving that feeling of JOMT (just one more turn).  Disclaimer: I'm referring to the version that has one of the player-produced patches.  Microsoft in its later days produced a lot of games that were conceptually great but had problematic AI implementation, and MoM was certainly among these right to the end.

Reply #46 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting Glazunov1, reply 46
Microsoft in its later days produced a lot of games that were conceptually great but had problematic AI implementation, and MoM was certainly among these right to the end.
End of Glazunov1's quote

Microsoft has nothing to do with MoM. I believe you are confusing them with Microprose.

 

 

Reply #47 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 47

Microsoft has nothing to do with MoM. I believe you are confusing them with Microprose.
End of Gaunathor's quote


Of course, but that's kind of obvious, isn't it?

Reply #48 from Elemental Forums Top

Sorry for joining the party late, but somebody attacking MOM is worth defending. First you have to place MOM in it's historical context.

Your main argument is that the game design is OK but the Graphics and the AI are bad. Well guess what, that's completely normal. Because game design can stand the test of time ( ex: chess) but graphics and AI will always get better.

So the graphics and AI are actually what they could be allowed to be done. Like chess in the middle age was made of wooden pieces because that was what's available to make the game. Now we can do online match, but the game design of chess remains.

MOM game design is not perfect, it could probably be improved or streamlined (like CIV revolution). But I think that if somebody took the MOM design as it is and implemented it with better graphics and AI, it would still be popular. Which means that the game design is good even if it has a few flaws.

What makes MOM unique is the feeling of being a powerful wizard which brings it almost like a god game where you have control on everything. No other game allows to do that even now because there is a general fear of wizards that makes all game designer (Board, Video and RPG) power down the wizards because they fear they will be too strong.

Reply #49 from Elemental Forums Top

In regards to the OP, Master of Magic was designed to capitalize on the amazing success of Magic the Gathering redesigned as an Empire game.  So all the things you say it harkens to, is because those are all the tropes that Magic:TG borrowed from.

Reply #50 from Elemental Forums Top

MoM is among my favorites games, and I have it installed on my netbook and I still play it sometimes.

I agree that the AI was and still is awful to the point of being almost inexistant *but* the fact is that for me what make the game great is not playing against the AI, but playing against the map itself, exploring dungeons, surviving random monsters, and the occasionnal AI stack coming near my cities.

With the map exploration and empire building part being where the fun is for me, the absence of a good strategic AI become at worst a minor flaw.

From my point of view, in a new MoM game where you could have the option of playing without any other AI wizards (there could still be independant town or minor factions), and have the game become a game of survival against the map until you could reach one of the victory conditions (casting the spell of mastery, having a hero complete some sort of ultimate quest survive until some predetermined turn like in civilization, etc ...), and the fun would still be there for me.