I’m a huge fan of Stardock. They kick ass hands down. Galactic Civilizations II, especially with the expansions Dark Avatar and the still-in-beta Twilight of the Arnor, blows away other 4x games that exist today. Civ 4 is so far behind in terms of AI and economic complexity (while still having way too much micromanagement anyway), it’s just amazing.
Then Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock, has to post this incredible claim that piracy isn’t the root cause for everything bad that happens to us today. Here’s an excerpt of this poor, deluded fool’s insanity:
Blaming piracy is easy. But it hides other underlying causes. When Sins popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue.
Now many of you out there may fall for this kind of pro-terrorist propaganda, but not me. I’ve seen the DVD commercials that tell me how piracy is just like stealing a car and how it supports terrorism and kills babies and causes hurricanes and the apocalypse is coming early because of torrents. I’m no fool. You morons can go on believing that Hollywood is going to hell because of poor quality movies that nobody wants to pay to see. You can keep convincing yourselves that the record industry is going to be okay and Amazon.com’s DRM-free MP3 sales are proof. And you can say that a game can sell well even if it has no copy protection.
I’ll pray for your souls. I can only hope the very intelligent entertainment companies find a way to not only jail all the pirates (victimless crime my ass!), but also those who spread these filthy, disgusting, dirty dirty lies.
Brad Wardell, you’re now on my “list”. Watch your back, buddy. Watch your fucking back.
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
It seems that the once-monopolistic domain registrar, Network Solutions, has decided they need more power again. Domain Name Wire’s article reads like a bizarre April Fool’s joke at first glance, but it’s true. I tried it out with sweettemplatesforphp.com just for kicks, and those bastards really did park the domain.
Their motives almost seem genuine: “This is a customer protection measure to protect customers from frontrunners. After four days, we release the domain.†says Network Solution’s spin doctor PR spokeswoman, Susan Wade.
But if this is truly their goal, why is there no mention of it when you do a search? Why is there no option to skip it? Why the hell isn’t there a giant blinking warning? “IF YOU SEARCH FOR A DOMAIN WE’LL F*CKING SNAG IT FOR FOUR DAYS SO YOU CAN’T SHOP AROUND!”
I get it that they aren’t forcing you to pay a premium to register the domain from them. They’re just “safeguarding” it from the real front runners. But the thing is, they’re guaranteeing that if I do a search for a domain, I can not shop around for prices without going through this BS waiting period. A much more elegant solution (if they really want one, which I suspect they do not) would be a little checkbox:
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