Master of Magic remake, created by Thea devs, published by Slitherine

Caster of Magic for Windows is the current iteration. The other “Caster of Magic” there, sans “for Windows,” is, I believe, the old DOS mod that is no longer being updated and is quite a ways behind the “for Windows” version, which I wish they had just released as a standalone CoM2 or something because you don’t (I think?) really need MoM at all to run it, although it is licensed and installed as a DLC. I personally would (and did) get it on GOG.

CoMW is the vastly superior version, so definitely play that.

I got master of magic in a bundle for 1 dollar earlier this year. I am just waiting for a sale before buying the rest

Thanks!

Finally, Master of Magic bundle is on sale! And I have Master of Magic, so the bundle is a decent price.

I have MoM classic on GoG, but decided to grab the bundle on Steam. With some earnings from selling Steam items automatically it came to a couple of bucks.

Ran across a mod for Caster of Magic for Windows: “Caster of Magic for Windows: Warlord”
Manual

Caster of Magic Warlord mod’s main goal is to improve immersion and reduce repetition when using normal military units. Normal units have been redesigned and several dozen new stock and racial unique units (with complete new animated sprites) have been added across the board.

The units recruited from Armorer’s Guild and Fantastic Stable buildings typically cost more and are far more advanced than their Caster of Magic counterparts. These units are not part of the Caster of Magic design of being disposable and inferior to summons and spammed all over the world to the point of clutter.

The mod also considers asymmetric game balance to be a key factor to game enjoyment to stay true to the spirit of Master of Magic. There will be moments where you might wonder an individual element is unusually strong – for the most part that is intentional though minor balancing tweaks will continue with future versions.

There have been spell and summon modifications, including entirely new summon units. Realms have been re-balanced accordingly.

Besides magic realms, races and building mechanics have also been redesigned to fit the modder vision, then heavily play-tested with balance taken into consideration. Some of these updates reverse changes from Caster of Magic to something closer to the original Master of Magic, albeit not completely.

Most recent version (1/22/22) 1.3.7
Download
Installation directions are near the top of the manual.

I have not had a chance to try it yet, but it looks interesting.

Forum thread about this mod

Very interesting. My concern is if the AI, which I understand is one of the big draws if not the big draw of CoM, will know how to play with these changes or if it will tilt the game back towards its roots of being a “comp stomp”.

Yes, that remains to be seen. His comment here is a bit ambiguous

Could be it means he likes the human player having overpowered strategies unavailable to the AI, but I am not sure.

For me, the draw here could be a bit more emphasis on “regular” troops. But only if the AI remains strongly competitive.

After a brief lookaround, I see that one of the subtle little changes turrns out to really make a difference: You (and AI wizards) get the chance to research one random common spell from each of the spell colors you do not have books for.

That is quite an RNG roll! So a pure Sorcery wizard could, by chance, pick up Flame Strike, Web, Ghouls, and Heroism! By mid or late game, this would make less of a difference, but it certainly makes the early game less predictable all around.

Yeah, that thread you linked talks a bit about that and also about wasps being super annoying in the mod.

A mod to a mod that became a full-fledged game… balancing strategy games is so exhausting…

Spent a fair amount of time on this the past couple days, playing High Elves at Fair difficulty.

Two things I like a lot:

  1. Tree of Knowledge is a much bigger deal to research and cast, which means that it is not a simple stop sign to halt high level troops until a certain (fairly early) date. It’s now a substantial investment and thus a decision, especially since your race might have access to mid-level troops that can already do a lot of damage. Furthermore, this design decision distinguishes races from each other more, in that it matters more how good your troops are at each development level. Gnolls, for example, are a bigger deal. And not just as a player choice – as an independent neighbor, they can cause trouble.

  2. Nature now has a common level spell Nature’s Witness which not only scouts the area around a city, but also gives a bonus to troops trained in that city, depending on resources available around the city. Fun!

I also found the AI wizards did less crowding into my area, although that might just have been circumstances.

Slitherine doing their Home of Wargamers thing this morning. First bit of the presentation is about the new Master of Magic:

Are you able to watch it? If so would you be so kind as to share some highlights? I’m curious about the game, but I’m at the office and it’s not something I can watch at the moment.

Just for you <3




Just started watching it myself.

Starts at 21:00 of the video

Thanks, man!

It seems pretty close to the original, the bigger difference is the view on the normal strategy map



You can zoom in/out both in the strategic and in the battle map. They talk of some QoL tweaks and additions here and there, but it’s mostly a faithful remake.