I do realize that following one classic turn-based strategy game with another one might not be the best idea, but this is the game I had decided on when signing up for the season. We’ve already had SimTex’s Master of Orion, but for me Master of Magic is THE formative SimTex game and – even more than Sid Meier’s Civilization – turn-based strategy game.
I played it the first time when I was around 13 years old or so, and Dungeons & Dragons, The Neverending Story and The Hobbit had already made sure that I had a well-developed interest in the fantastic. It was just overwhelming. Civilization…BUT WITH MAGIC! It was just incredible how much variation there is in the game.
There is a lot of valid criticism of the game. Balance, AI, and so on. A lot of it was discussed again here on Qt3 when the game had a small resurgence after it was released on GOG six years ago: Master of Magic Rises Again
I suggest we ressurect that for this edition of the Qt3 Classic Game Club. Can anyone beat @Banzai’s 8307 high score? My entrance into that challenge resulted in this AAR about the rise and fall of Olethros the DEATHOMANCER, where you can see some screenshots of the game.
The MoM demo was the first magazine cover disk I ever got. It was on a 3 1/4 floppy and it didn’t run. :) I still bought the game and I still play it today. Great pick.
I don’t think I’ve played since the last challenge, but I’m up for more. This may be my favorite single player game of all time, and i used to know every little detail about it. The Prima guide was my bible and I was a very devoted disciple. I believe I wore off the cover eventually.
That was a long time ago, and the graphics aren’t easy on my old eyes now, but the gameplay is still so very good. I used to try to make the game harder to get a good challenge by doing things like razing every city that wasn’t my starter race. I even made it into the original comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic usenet guide with that idea about 20 years ago.
I’ll dig it out again and see if I can dust off the memory banks, but I may go with the razing option and see what sorts of scores I can get if I have to develop my cities from scratch rather than subjugating and enslaving everyone else. Can’t wait :)
Ugh, I have rolled Tlaloc and Gnolls. That’s a fantastic combo for enslaving neutrals and an early win, with the gnoll bonuses plus warlord, but it’s a recipe for disaster for razing cities that aren’t gnolls. They have one of the least developed cities, with no high end units, and Tlaloc has split spellbooks between nature and death - so I may well not have any decent summons either, or the mana to use them or the research power to get to them due to the poor city output. Going to try to scrap all of the cities on my continent, found one or two max, and take over nodes and ruins like mad with normal units. I think by the time I get to the other plane, I won’t be able to compete.
Another old strategy game I haven’t played but have in my GOG library?
Easy sell @Jorn_Weines, easy sell. Usually more for historical or sci fi myself, so wouldn’t have played without prodding. Well I am well and truly prodded now.
I play it windowed mode, and I think it looks better with the aspect ratio stretch turned off, and scaled up 3 times. The configuration file (dosboxMOM.conf) is in the folder where you install the game.
I think these are the relevant sections and they look like this for me:
High elves are my favorite due to their longbowmen unit.
I rolled Jafar and barbarians.
Almost full shelf of sorcery books means cheap phantom warriors. Won’t be fun to be a neutral city close to my empire. I don’t play barbarians that often, so that is sort of fresh.
