Filler

Feb 13 2008

Master of Magic - still going strong

Published by Nerdmaster at 2:42 am under Opinions, Random Shit

I’m a huge fan of Master of Magic. Have been since I bought the game over 12 years ago when it was released in a 4-pack with some other Microprose games. Since I bought it, it’s been possibly the single longest lasting game I’ve ever played. Other games have come and gone, and a few have had pretty good long- term appeal, but nothing matches the depth of Master of Magic. Even with its horrific AI and ugly graphics, the game was, for me, an instant classic, and one I have never truly put down.

The next series of articles are going to be my own personal tribute to this amazing game. From my own perspective I’m going to try and explain what makes this game so amazing. For today, I’ll just do my best to give a simple overview of the game. It’s complex enough that if I just jump right into the details, I’ll probably confuse even myself….

Master of Magic, the 4X with a twist

If you don’t know what a 4X game is, you should probably stop right here. The genre is pretty complex by itself, and trying to explain the basics of a 4X is way out of the scope of this series.

Master of Magic is a pretty early 4X game. It was released in 1993, just two years after the well-known Civilization came out. It took a lot of Civilization’s general look and feel, but built a significantly different game out of what appears at first glance to be just a Civ clone.

MoM’s big twist is that despite certain game balance issues, the developers decided to avoid the typical pitfall of 4X games: repetition. Civilization embodied the 4X genre with its random maps, large technology tree, varied military units, etc. But even so, each game was still played more or less the same. No matter how you started out, no matter your approach to winning, a game of Civilization tended to have a pretty set “roadmap” to victory. The same can be said of many turn-based strategy games, 4X or otherwise: Master of Orion, Heroes of Might and Magic, Age of Wonders, etc. I love every one of those games, but the fact is their appeal doesn’t come from being able to play a different style each game.

With MoM, you can play like it’s a normal strategy game - choose the same general startup options, and your games will indeed all feel similar, and you will likely have as much fun as you might when playing other 4X games. But the big trick that Simtex pulled out of their hats when developing it is that if you choose different startup options, your games can be so different that you feel like you’re not playing the same game!

Overview

You are a powerful wizard in control of a civilization. Your wizard’s spell choices, special abilities, and intial race are selected by you at the beginning of the game. The choices made when building a wizard determine exactly what style of play will suit you best. Choosing strong attributes instead of spellbooks generally means you need to expand and conquer quickly, before your enemies are able to research their overpowering spells. Choosing a strong focus in a single color of magic gives you excellent early-game spells, and the ability to eventually research the best spells the game has to offer, something not possible for those who choose abilities over spellbook focus.

When you start, you control a single city and two relatively weak military units. The general course of the game involves building new cities, conquering enemy (or neutral) cities, improving your cities so that they are able to support your goals better. City improvements are many and varied, depending on the race of the city’s inhabitants. Generally speaking, improvements will directly help your cause by unlocking better military units, or do more indirect things like increasing tax or magic income.

Your city is placed randomly on the randomly-generated overland map. Your units can stay and defend the city or wander around the map, looking for items of interest. They can enter various monster lairs to do battle with the many fantastic (summonable) creatures in the game, and usually can expect a worthwhile reward if they survive these encounters. They can take over neutral or enemy cities, potentially giving you new races and their associated military units. And of course, your units can die, giving you a gaping hole in your defenses that is almost certain to be filled by an enemy wizard’s forces or rampaging monsters.

Combat

Combat is one of the best parts to Master of Magic, and one that has never really been recreated in other games I’ve played. Maybe I’ve missed out on a really great game somewhere, but nothing has had the same game mechanics. Don’t get me wrong, the combat interface in Age of Wonders was much nicer, and the stack-based combat in the Heroes series was always interesting to me, but MoM’s combat was great for its approach to the “die rolls”. Or, more specifically, the lack thereof. The combat system gave weight to numbers as well as individual strength, so that a weak unit could have 8 “figures” in it (a unit is a single entity in the game, but can consist of 1-8 individual figures) and stand a chance against a stronger unit that had only two figures. I’ll go into much more detail in a later article, but sufficed to say, this approach to combat made for some really interesting strategies.

*** Go into detail about the usefulness of heavy enchantments on weak units - lionheart, for instance, cast on spearmen gave a 7-figure unit an incredible boost that’s nearly lost on a 1-figure unit, no matter its strength.

All units have four basic stats: attack, defense, resistance, and hits. Attack and defense are strictly for “normal” combat: higher attack means more chances to deal damage; higher defense means more chances to block otherwise successful attacks. Resistance is used for magical defense - a spell of strength 10 would be just like a strength 10 normal attack, but the defender would rely on its resistance for blocking damage instead of its defense. Hits told you how much damage could be taken before a single figure in the unit died. For 8-figure units, multiply the hits by 8 to determine damage that must be dealt to bring on the unit’s complete demise.

Another nice facet that MoM introduced me to was simultaneous combat. This is quite likely not the first game to do such a system, but to me it was pretty nice, and I’ve seen very few modern games that do it, which is really a shame – it really breaks the immersion to see the defender wait until it’s been attacked to fight back. In MoM, the counterattack is simultaneous in most cases, so if I send 9 weak units to attack your uber-strong paladins, I won’t get a free 9-unit bomb. Your paladins will retaliate every time (okay, so this part is unrealistic), causing my weak units to almost certainly take heavy losses. This really makes you rethink your strategies, as ganging up on a strong unit with weaker units isn’t nearly as effective. It’s a good approach, but you have to expect losses, unlike so many other games with tactical combat.

The other really cool thing about combat is the amazing variety of abilities a creature can have. If a creature has the shield ability, it takes less damage from ranged weapons. A creature with stoning can kill figures within the enemy unit before the counterattack happens, giving a tremendous advantage. A creature with illusion can make its attack as if the enemy had a defense of zero, which can be incredibly deadly.

And finally, magic within combat is really just great. Temporary creatures can be summoned, heroes can be recalled, friendly creatures can be buffed (a bonus to stats or abilities), enemies can be cursed (a penalty to stats or abilities), etc. The magic system is incredible, and is the major factor to MoM’s success, so it really needs its own section, even in this “brief” overview.

Magic

Combat, as I said, is one of the best parts of the game. But if one has to choose the best aspect, it’s gotta be the magic. Magic in Master of Magic (as the name implies) is a huge part of the game. Not just in winning battles, but in every aspect of the game. Some examples of the spell diversity: one spell allows you to view unseen terrain, one slows production in enemy cities, many call forth fantastic creatures to fight at your side, and one allows your cities to produce more gold.

Magic is broken up into 6 colors: Black (death), White (life), Green (nature), Blue (sorcery), Red (chaos), and Gray (arcane). Each school has its own trademarks, and while types of spells overlap sometimes, for the most part, a given school will have a focus of some kind that other schools have no way to reproduce.

When you start the game, you choose your spellbooks and abilities, as I stated above. Those choices determine how many spells of a given color you are able to research, as well as what spells you will start the game with. More focus in a single color means more spells of that color at the start of the game, and more (and more powerful) spells of that color will be available through research.

Spells are cast in combat or on the overland map (where you are when you look at the cities on the map). They can be instant, in that they do something (such as damage an enemy or heal a friend) and are done. They can be enchantments requiring per-turn mana upkeep, and can affect a unit, city, or just the game world as a whole. They can summon creatures for you temporarily during combat, or permanently so long as you can pay their upkeep.

Spells are the most complex aspect of the game, and will need a whole lot of time in a later article to fully discuss.

Winning the game

Though nothing groundbreaking, there are two paths to victory in Master of Magic. The obvious path is to simply destroy all your opponents by capturing their fortress (located in their starting city) so the enemy wizard is banished. In some cases the wizard will start the spell of return, but while he’s banished, he’s unable to use any magic, making the conquest of his remaining cities far easier. And in the cases the enemy sees defeat, he simply gives up once his fortress is captured and is out of the game permanently.

The other path to victory is the spell of mastery. It’s extremely expensive to research and isn’t even available to start researching until you’ve exhausted most of your other research possibilities. Then once researched you have to cast the thing, during which time all enemy wizards declare war upon you.

The nice thing about this second path is that it theoretically allows you to play a much more diplomatic game - be nice to your neighbors and just get that spell of mastery started when it’s too late for them to stop you. Unfortunately, though, the AI tends to play a game that’s largely conquest- oriented, making it rather difficult to go for the spell of mastery without doing a lot of the same stuff you’d do when pursuing a conquest victory.

Conclusion

The next series of articles will hopefully show those new to Master of Magic what an amazing game it is, even today, and maybe breathe some new life into the game for old veterans.

In the meantime, here’s where you can find Master of Magic: LINK