What is the organization that wears Atari’s desiccated flesh these days anyway?
Well, according to wikipedia:
Infogrames Entertainment (IESA) bought Hasbro Interactive in 2001 and renamed it Infogrames Interactive, which intermittently published Atari branded titles. In 2003, it renamed the division Atari Interactive. Another IESA division, Infogrames Inc. (formerly GT Interactive[10]), changed its name to Atari Inc. the same year, licensing the Atari name and logo from its fellow subsidiary.[2][11][12]
In 2008, IESA completed its acquisition of Atari, Inc.'s outstanding stock, making it a wholly owned subsidiary.[13] IESA renamed itself Atari, SA in 2009. It sought bankruptcy protection under French law in January 2013.
They’re filing for the trademark. Wouldn’t it be swell if someone else owned the copyright?
It was a fun little games with a surprising amount of depth.
Wow, the sound effects and colors alone are such a heavy nostalgia hit. So great.
No, I’m talking this:
A fascinating underground, multi-level strategy game from Avalon Hill.
I am not sure I agree, or perhaps I do not get the game. I have tried several games and it just seems like I am doing turn after turn of the same thing. Even when I get like 5 cities, I am just doing the same thing I was on turn one, expcet maybe I am fielding 2 armies instead of one, just clearing out monster lairs. In 3 games I have never seen an AI city, and only twice seen an AI unit. The default maps have far too many lairs. I sometimes have to deal with walls of lairs because there are so many. I also seem to be missing the wonder / magical aspect of MoM. Leveling up your wizard is so slow. Everything is so slow. You think by turn 150 or 200 you would be somewhat advanced, but no, you are still just starting out.
Although Firaxis did well with X-Com, IMHO.
Yeah, exactly, it’s pretty much a remake of Master of Magic. It’s just, we were younger than, and didn’t know better.
I played MoM a pair of times in the last decade and that description doesn’t sound like MoM…
I remember MoM was all about putting down cities, and trying to get enough troops to take a stab at one of the Magic Nodes. Sometimes those Nodes would be unbelievable powerful, and you would really have to either get a huge army together, or, take advantage of the system by play dark elves with nature magic.
Then you could take the invisible stalkers (which would still take a long time, because they were at the end of a long build tree and dark elves grow so very slowly) and just cast Call Lightning. And just sit there as the 3-4 Great Wyrns, or Fire Dragons or whatever was attacked by lightning every turn. Either way, it was a wait.
I guess you had more interaction with the AI, which was nice.
Oh, and learning all the cheap tactics that you could, like Super Elite Slingers with magic weapons.
This is a bit of a derail but here goes.
How many AI players did you set and how big is your map? The default number of AI players is only one so you need to add at least 2 more to that. Make sure as a new player that you start on a small map (50x50 or so). You can play the bigger maps later. Make sure you customize your starting map. You can make a full land map by setting each of Continents, Large Islands and Small Islands to none on the map creation screen at game start-up. This will give you no ocean or shallows, only lakes and will make sure the AIs don’t start on islands where you can’t run into them for a long time (until after you get ships). Click on the map preview until you see a map you like and then continue to start the game.
Just set the number of lairs lower in the starting settings (Lair Density). You can also change their difficulty and how often they respawn on the same page. Lairs are where you get all your magical equipment and tons of gold and resources so they’re important. This game has extreme customization and the starting settings are just a default. You can tweak it a lot until it plays the way you like.
Yeah, I had exactly the same impression. The first two games I tried I bounced off of it hard. It seemed like all I did was hit end turn for 200 turns and was barely getting started. But you can speed up the default slow game pace a lot. There’s a starting setting called Game Speed and you can increase it from setting 3 (Normal) to 4 (Above Normal), 5 (Fast), 6 (Very Fast), or 7 (Extremely Fast). That will increase production, gold and research rates. I also didn’t understand how to grow my cities and gold/production/mana right and they really hindered me a lot (see below about tips in the DE thread).
I’ve found leveling wizards to be pretty quick. Like MOM and AoW, the units landing the killing blow get extra XP so I just blast everything from distance with my wizards and they generally get all the kills before the enemy can even reach my melee units.
I have some other recommended settings I posted over in the Deity Empires thread that will give you more loot, more starting mana and meditation. It took me a while to figure everything out so I also posted some tips for new players there so take a look at all that if you haven’t. Also ask any other questions you may have over there and I’ll do my best to answer them.
I played this just before AoW 3 came out and it was still awesome. edit: I just saw your follow up post. Yeah, I’ve seen footage of Diety Empires and it doesn’t do much for me - visually I prefer MoM and I like the way the gameplay flows in MoM better, but I’m keeping an open mind as I may want to investigate DE more down the road.
MoM even just a few years ago was an amazing 4X experience, few games have ever gotten this right since.
I’m not opposed to MoM, but seeing how few companies have been able to replicate it, I wonder how much is nostalgia.
I remember having fun, but I also remember that it took a long time to get the really run stuff. Units moved 1 space at a time, usually, unless you enchanted roads. Also, building up cities took a while, and certain races, you just couldn’t play through. Halfllings were fun, but eventually, you need to take a few human cities just to get some of the good stuff. Same with Lizardmen.
On the other hand, you had cool heroes and mercenaries to hire, based on fame. Magic was fun, and you really had to plan your leader ahead of time (although you didn’t have a ton of options). Having units composed of multiple individuals was great.
If there is a new MoM, I do how the use the Age of Wonders combat mechanic. I love the idea of being able to surround an enemy.
I get the impression you’re an extreme turtler. Yeah, don’t play an aggressive low-tech race if you don’t see the value in cheap cavalry that hit at 7 (iirc, I’m not looking at the stats for wolf riders while typing).
The genius of MoM isn’t that it’s a polished, well-engineered game in which every piece of content and each system work together in harmony. It’s that it has a giant mismatched set of toys to play with and combine in interesting ways, and it makes you feel smart for coming up with things like invisible flying spell-locked warships and alchemical warlord slingers.
Obviously at this point those depths are well-plumbed, but when we were all just figuring this shit out on our own? Brilliant.
Also, it’s still fun to execute those strategies even when you know what you’re doing. Swallowing the world under the tides of my ginger hordes (berserkers are fucking ballers!) last year was great fun.
This is how I feel as well. Why MoM grabbed me was because it really created a sense of a world. Someone should resurrect the MoM Ironman Challenge thread.
We’ll see what comes from this, but I also think an XCOM2-style reinterpretation of the concept would be the best possible outcome.
Few things could stand up to the Halfling Horde! 8 slingers at elite status were amazing and cheap.
Yes, halfling alchemical warlord life slingers are one of the basically unbeatable tier two strategies. Probably the strongest of that tier.
(Tier One would be the truly broken “win on turn 50” things, generally 11 life and Torin or 11 death and wraiths.)
Now would be a good time to resurrect that thread, yeah! We have three months until Planetfall. Hmm.
Most certainly this. On the other hand, Atari couldn’t tie its shoes without messing something up so we might be better off with them doing nothing.
Presses like button.
Visually I prefer getting wood splinters in my eye…
Firaxis’s approach ended up a little too board-gamey for my tastes, which to me kind of ruins world building.