I guess the time has come for my army of fire elemental assisted high-elf longbowmen to take over the world(s).
I prefer playing in windowed mode, and I’ve made the following changes to to dosboxMOM.conf file:
[sdl]
fullscreen=false
autolock=false
[render]
aspect=false (The game looks weirdly stretched with this turned on)
Also, if you remove the ‘exit’ from the [autoexec] and from the command line in the MOM-shortcut you can exit the game from the main menu and run the itemmake.exe to modify the magic items that are available in the game.
This is definitely one for the “Capcom MvC2” school of game balance, though. There are so many ways to break the game (alternatively, the AI is just so bad) that it comes around the other end and it becomes fun to just experiment to see what you can do. Once the allure of the halfling Slinger or Paladin insta-win wore off, the game really opened up as you tried to see what you could do with the other abilities.
My personal best memories are starting games as some of the more…maligned races, especially the Myrran ones. Kobolds (super high growth rate, IIRC?) or Klackons (Stag Beetles!)
I also still classify play styles in terms of the different AI settings (Aggressive, Perfectionist, etc). As mentioned by another poster above, this was also my defining 4x experience. I never played MOO, or even much of Civ (I guess Civ2 would’ve been its contemporary?), but I never felt the need to.
An interesting historical note about purchasing the game (hopefully an anecdote about long ago piracy isn’t off limits): I bought this when I lived in Singapore, at around the height of the ubiquity of pirated game sales (ie. when there were several entire shopping centers devoted almost entirely to pirated software). In those days, piracy was just the way of life in SE Asia, for a couple of reasons. Software companies literally just wrote off the region and didn’t even try to sell official copies of much software there. (there’s an interesting history there, including the story of Companies like Telahin, who did publishing and distribution of official software in the transitional period to selling real software in the region, but I digress…). Anyways, I bought MoM in a plastic bag,with a cheaply bound, obviously hand-photocopied manual and hand-labeled disks. It was one of the highest quality pirated products I ever purchased (the manual was an unusual luxury), and I think I still have the manual kicking around somewhere. The binding fell apart immediately, of course, but I still have a big stack of pages.
No doubt, the AI wasn’t up to the task of stopping a truly determined human player, and there were a number of features it didn’t use (properly), but I can’t say I really hold that against the game.
Sure, at some point it became a bit boring playing competively against the AI, but hey, MoM has this wonderful metagames of spellcraft, exploration, empire building etc., I just concentrated on those.
To me, it’s much better than some modern games who insist on skyrocketing the difficulty at some early level to provide a challenge.
I’d much rather have fun than be challenged, unless I specifically desire to do so (i.e. playing on hard or equivalent difficulty).
It’s a pity, similar to XCom, countless fan remakes over the years just stalled at some point. The MoM.NET one looked promising and the guy doing it was extremely determined for a while (I knew him from the HOTU forums, back when the site was still around) and vowed to finish the game, but eventually he just abandoned it nonetheless.
In a similar sense, I really liked Implode’s concept of just recreating the base game with multiplayer and modding capabilities, but he also stalled a few years back.
I remember this… But I also remember that a relatively cheap spell (cracks call?) has a straight percentage chance to kill your heroes. I remember watching my awesome heroes die horribly to a basic chaos spell.
You’re right it was Crack’s Call (someone mentioned it, if not by name, earlier in the thread). If you could get items that granted flying (or make them; I think it takes 4 air books, but it may be 3) you were safe. The AI would throw that spell at your super heroes gleefully.
The tactical AI wasn’t perfect but it was pretty good.
I remember having an awful lot of fun purposefully playing games in a sub-par fashion in order to compensate for poor AI. Such as playing the weakest race type, or purposefully not allowing myself to build an uber-hero, or going thematic by saying my race is afraid of water and won’t use boats.
Granted, they’re all there to prop up a game where the AI isn’t sufficient. However, those are sort of fun approaches I wouldn’t ever have taken if the AI was truly awesome. I’m not arguing for crippled AI, but just saying that I think we’re a bit spoiled these days in our expectations of what an AI should be able to do.
I’ve noticed this while replaying Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, actually. I’m so used to more sophisticated AI in shooters now, that playing an older one is so much easier now. Enemies were much dumber, easily flankable, with much more predictable moves.
Back on topic: I’ve now DL’ed MoM and can’t wait to relive Ye Olde Glorye Dayse!
I quite liked Age of Wonders and tempted to get MoM from GoG (so many acronyms) but wondering how well it really aged? With some objectivity, is it really that good a game and still worth playing?
As background, I still play the original X-COM from time to time (and love it). However, each time I play it is getting more and more difficult to ignore the dated gfx and clunky interface. Also play Dom3 and very much like it.
For someone that has never played this game, and has no nostalgia involved at all, would you say it objectively stands up against more modern games of the same genre? I had been considering getting this game off eBay, but this opportunity may be too good to pass up. I just worry nostalgia may be portraying it as better than it really was, like I would do to RTK2.
It can’t really deliver the AI of modern games but there’s a lot to love about the original MoM. I still prefer AoW:SM but it doesn’t have the civ feel of MoM.
I still think this has one of the best tech (magic) systems of any game; MOO2 and Dominions are only ones that come close. It’s a mixture of limiting a player’s access to a branch (I mean school) while still requiring them to adapt to changing circumstances or limited resources.
I’ve probably played this game more than any other - I still have the CD and keep installing it from time to time.
I usually try to survive through the beginning long enough to get some decent heroes and levelled mid-tier units. Then you hit a point where the AI is just no longer any kind of a threat, and at that point I start playing it as more of a freeform RPG, just kind of levelling my heroes and finding lairs to raid for cool loot. When I feel like it, I just drop my stack onto another wizard and mow through his stacks without taking a casualty. Very satisfying.
She may not be the most powerful hero, but I always like having Shuri the Huntress. Her pathfinding makes the whole stack move at double speed, and with a decent bow and a few levels she can take out sky drakes pretty well.
I used to love Warlord + the life spell Crusade. CHAMPION level units, massively awesome. (2 levels above normal max level. Really broke the balance cos they kept getting bonuses to hit :-)
Unfortunately it was hard to find temples etc with sufficiently bad ass enough units in them to get more life/death books. Chaos/nature/sorcery was easier as there was always a few nodes packed to the gills with great wyrms/sky drakes/fire drakes that would earn you 2+ of those books.
So starting Life + Myrran somewhat upset me, as you couldnt get a full shelf of life books. So I would settle for starting full Life and then save scumming a particularly hard magic node to get the extra abilities (like Warlord) I wanted. Gettting one of the Myrran races I wanted (Dwarves or Dark Elves mostly) was then pot luck and hoping sss’raa hadn’t wiped them out.
I don’t think I ever achieved my dream of adamantium weapon, champion level dwarven hammerhands! :-)
I also reloaded all the time to get the hero I wanted from summon Hero - Fang, Malleus (Flame Strike!), Marcus, Shuri (Sky Drake killer) and maybe Morgana or Yramrag. (Particularly if the casters scored arcane power on their random picks)
Strangely, the summon champion heroes were not as exciting. I think I normally settled on Warrax, Roland or Mortu
