Let's Play: Master of Magic! (IMG heavy), Abandoned 23 February (Post 172)

[n0z3k1ll3r]

No this isn't a request for a multiplayer match. For any of you unfamiliar with the term, a Let's Play is essentially a single player playthrough of a game with pictures and commentary. It's a fun way to get a community involved in single player only games, and it's also an excellent way to show off a game that might otherwise pass people by.

In this case I've picked one of my personal favourite games, Master of Magic. For those of you young people types who weren't gaming back in 1994, Master of Magic is pretty much the granddaddy of fantasy TBS 4X games. It's not the oldest (I think some of the older Warlords games predate it, as does the original Kings Bounty) but it's had an enormous impact on the genre. As the name might suggest it is indeed made by the same people who made Master of Orion.

Every now and again I'm going to leave a few choices open to the community to help make my mind up for me, but don't feel obliged to wait for one. The more feedback the more fun!

So with that preamble out of the way let's begin.



These are the settings I'll be using. Back in the day I could generally manage Hard, but I'm a bit rusty so I'm going to stick with Normal for now. Four enemy wizards gives a nice variety of opponents, land size large stops them all dogpiling me right from day 1, and magic on normal represents a reasonably nice balance of spellcasting to troops.






And here's an assortment of wizards we can use for our avatar. Giving this literally seconds of intense thought I eventually decide not to take Sharee despite the fact she wanders around with no top on and instead pick Tauron and his epic goatee.



So here's where YOU, the readers, get your first choice to make! As you can see I have eleven "picks" or points to put into what I want. These are divided between books in the various schools of magic (granting you access to both more starting spells and more spells you can potentially research), as well as special abilities which grant you various passive bonuses. You can pretty much combine these however you want with two exceptions: Life and Death magic can't be taken together, and a lot of the special abilites have prerequisite numbers of spell books (you'll see that those ones are all greyed out in the picture).

Cribnotes version, the orders of magic are:
Life (healing obviously, but also a fairly high number of unit and global enchantments. Very few summons however)
Death (lots of undead summons as well as negative enchantments. A few damaging spells but not as many as you might think. Undead are immune to a whole heap of things but don't naturally heal, and indeed are very hard to heal even magically)
Chaos (fire, lightning and general Blowing Shit Up, as well as a wide assortment of summons, most of which breathe fire)
Nature (powerful summons and enchantments)
Sorcery (messing things up and hindering people. Think Blue from Magic the Gathering)

The special abilities are:
Alchemy (1 point): Free conversion between mana and gold, instead of losing 50%.
Warlord (2 points): All nonmagical units are one level higher. Their level cap is also raised by one.
Chaneller (2 points): Battle magic costs don't go up the further the battle is from your fortress. Spell maintainence costs halved.
Archmage (1 point, 4 picks in any one order of magic): 10 extra points of casting skill (how much mana you can use per turn to cast stuff), your spells are twice as hard to dispel, and you get a 50% bonus to mana spent on raising skill.
Artificer (1 point): Half cost for creating magic items, plus you start with the two spells that let you do so instead of needing to research them.
Conjurer (1 points): 25% less research and casting costs for summoning spells, and 25% less upkeep for magical creatures.
Sage Master (1 point, 1 pick in any two orders): 25% faster research
Myrran (3 points!): You start on an alternate magical plane where everything is more EXTREME. Plus you get to pick from 5 additional, more powerful races (more on that below).
Divine Power (2 points, 4 picks in Life): 50% more power production and unrest reduction from religious buildings.
Famous (2 points): Start with 10 Fame, and doubled chance of being offered heroes, mercenaries, or magic items.
Runemaster (1 point, 2 picks in any 3 orders): Double effectiveness dispelling, and 25% reduced research and casting for arcane (colourless) magic.
Charismatic (1 point): 50% cheaper heroes, mercenaries and bought (not created) magic items. Also supposed to boost relations with other wizards, but I'm not sure that bit works.
Chaos Mastery (1 points, 4 picks in Chaos): 15% cheaper casting and research costs for Chaos magic, Chaos magic twice as hard to dispel, and double mana income from Chaos Nodes.
Nature Mastery: As Chaos Mastery but for Nature.
Sorcery Mastery: As Chaos Mastery but for Sorcery.
Infernal Power: As Divine Power, but for Life.
Mana Focusing (1 point): 25% more mana income
Node Mastery (1 point, 1 pick each in Chaos Nature and Sorcery): Double mana income from all nodes, and your spells are immune to the dispelling effect of nodes.

So I'll let you mull over those and come up with some combinations whilst I introduce you to the races you can choose:


The top 9 Arcanian races are available to anyone, whilst the bottom 5 Myrran races (greyed out here) can only be picked if you've taken Myrran for your wizard. They kick ungodly ass though.

Rundown for the Arcanian races:
Barbarian: Big manly people. They can throw axes before they engage in melee, giving them a bit more damage on the offense but also allowing them to hurt flying troops with melee units. Fast population growth and a respectable tech tree.
Gnolls: Hands down worst race in the game. Rubbish tech tree and not many strong units. There's nothing they can do that another race can't do better, and many races can do pretty much everything better. But I'm sure there's some sadists amongst you who are going to make me play these guys anyway...
Halflings: Stronger than you might think for a bunch of midgets. Good ranged troops and an OK tech tree. Plus you can conquer other races and they generally don't mind much because the little guys are just so funny.
High Elves: Slow population growth and a fairly limited tech tree, but some quite powerful units. Also the only one of the Arcanian races who's populace produces mana just by existing.
High Men: Excellent tech tree (only one thing they can't build and they wouldn't have any use for it if they could) and two of the strongest units in the game. Probably the strongest Arcanian race all round.
Klackon: Insecty people. Poor tech tree but extremely tough with some nice high end units. That's pretty much necessary though as they have a massive penalty for subject races meaning you pretty much have to use just Klackons the whole game.
Lizardman: Fairly tough but with a poor tech tree. The entire race has Water Walking though so you can expand off your starting continent much faster than anyone else.
Nomad: Boosted trade income and some nice ranged units including horsebowmen. Nothing too stand out though.
Orc: Not your average orcs. They're bright pink for one thing, and they can build every single building type in the game. Similar playstyle to High Men.

And the Myrran races:
Beastmen: Lots of wierd but powerful units and a surprisingly good tech tree. Also produce magical power from their populace.
Dark Elves: Extremely nasty. All their units (more or less) have magical ranged attacks, and they not only produce magical power from their populace but produce twice as much thereof as any of the other races who do.
Draconian: Dragon people. They can all fly and breathe fire. Also produce power for their populace.
Dwarven: Double mining bonuses and tax income, plus some absolutely dead hard units later on. Hammerhands particularly are pretty much the nastiest thing in the game when tanked up with unit enchantments.
Trolls: Rubbish tech tree, but all their units regenerate, and regeneration is almost ridiculously powerful. Also their stats are insane.

So you now have two decisions to make: First my choice of magic and special abilities, and second my choice of race. Have fun!

Oh, also you get to choose your banner but I'm taking the red one and I'll have no arguments from you lot.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Hmmmm...

High Elves, Chaos Mastery, Conjurer, and full Chaos books

Hell Hound Spaaaaaaam

I always enjoy chaos, what with the Chaos Channels and the cheap summons and the setting things on fire.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Yeah I love the randomness of Chaos Channels. Also the way it changes your race name to "CHAOS" on whatever you cast it on.

[WingedKagouti]

My personal favourite cheese is Sss'ra (the only Myrran wizard), 8 points in Life, Myrran and with Dark Elves, hoping for early access to the plane shift preventing global enchantment, the end result being having an entire world for yourself to exploit.

For Mr. Goatee though, I'd say 8 Chaos, 1 Nature, 1 Sorcery, Node Mastery and High Men. I just can't see him not using spells that blow up stuff.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

What's 1 nature/sorcery book get ya? Spells that work in those nodes? It seems redundant with taking Node Mastery.

[WingedKagouti]

You have to take the two books to be allowed to pick Node Mastery.

[Integrity]

I LOVE THIS ISHT.

I will always say Myrran, Alchemy, Warlord, +7 Life books and pray (haw haw haw) for Crusade. Then, Halflings.

BEGIN THE PURGING.

EDIT: If you want something less cheesy, then I DOUBLE DARE YOU to go 11 Chaos and Barbarians.

[SquidDNA]

Get humans, rush to paladins, proceed to own the entire world.

[MagosMechanicus]

Interesting. Never heard of this one. Will be watching your progress, definitely.
Also, I'll cast my vote for the Klackon, because I liked them a lot in the Master of Orion games.

Also, that Lo Pan is missing his towering pillar of hat!

[Ludovsky]

Heh, that reminds me.

Stardock's upcoming Elemental was once to be called a Master of Magic sequel, but the owner of the MoM name refused.

So it'll be instead a sequel in spirits(or at least is Stardock's plan).

[TheDeadlyShoe]

So its settled then. Gnolls with 2 of each book and Runemaster.

[Elerium]

Haha, I played this again recently, only thing that annoyed me was the xenophobic AI's that had a bent to murder you for no reason at all and that the world was too small. Myrrans tended to be better off because IIRC only one enemy wizard could spawn there per game allowing you to build up.

For me though I usually went Rjak, max Death and cast Wraiths, guard the central town, make one outpost, conquer all towns after Wraiths and if you can push it eliminate one wizard (they all hate you anyway so no loss here).

Going 2 of everything will set you back imo especially when the enemy starts going Angels..

Warlord is a good pick, it allows your units to achieve Champion status if you cast Crusade (life magic?) having Ultra Elite units (given by Warlord).

Then of course Squid has a good point,

Get humans, rush to paladins, proceed to own the entire world.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

So its settled then. Gnolls with 2 of each book and Runemaster.

Can't take 2 in both Life and Death.

Nonetheless I hate you so much for that

Ludovsky: I'm very much looking forward to Elemental but from what I'm seeing of it it's going to be about as similar to MoM as say Age of Wonders is. Not saying it'll be bad but it's certainly got a lot of differences.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Ok, I'll try and get the first update up a bit later on today. Unless there's any further requests, I'll be taking High Men (who are leading at the moment in the race choices) and Chaos magic, probably with Conjurer and Chaos Mastery like Shoe suggests.

[scoiatollo]

High Elves, Chaos Mastery, Conjurer, and full Chaos books

Hell Hound Spaaaaaaam

DING!DING!DING!

That's exactly what I usually did^^

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Ok, I've made my decision and we're ready to go. We're taking TDS's magic loadout (chaos mastery, conjurer, and max chaos books) as well as High Men, who're currently tying with High Elves for racial choice. I've broken the tie in their favour because they can build almost every building in the game and so they'll show off a lot of neat stuff. The Pikemen and Paladins never entered my mind honest.

Anyway, so here's our starting location, the Hamlet of Relicnews:


In the top right hand corner you can see the surrounding lands. The big deer is Wild Game which provides a bonus to food income, and that tower is one of the game's many explorable dungeons, full of gribblies and treasure (but mostly gribblies).

To the left of that you can see that Relicnews boasts a population of 4000, and that that's going to increase by 50 a turn. That's not actually a big increase but we'll get onto helping that soon. Each 1000 population translates into 1 of those chaps underneath. The three on the left are farmers whilst the one on the right in the snazzy blue coat is a worker. Farmers produce food (bread) and a bit of production (hammers), whilst workers produce a lot of production but no food. As we have a food surplus at the moment I swap a farmer for a worker. Note that the farmers split off on the far left are necessary to feed the city and can't be reassigned.

Moving into the box down the bottom left you can see the buildings present in Relicnews. The big gray thing is my awesome pimping palace of kickass (or the Wizard's Fortress as the game more succinctly puts it). It produces a fair amount of magical power just for being there, and it'll fund our magical income pretty much singlehandedly for the early part of the game. The blue circle is our Summoning Circle. It shows that this is the city where summoned creatures will arrive. You can shift it around with magic a bit later on. In addition to that we have a Builders Hall (the long red building) which unlocks a lot of other building options, the Barracks (the big brown building with the little flag) which is required for the production of almost all military units and allows spearmen on its own, and the Smithy (the other little building with the little red blacksmith doing... something or other. Kind of hard to tell. I assume it's smithing but you never know) which allows the production of swordsmen in conjunction with the Barracks.

Speaking of spearmen and swordsmen you can see in the units section that we've got one of each. Spearmen (on the right) are sort of a militia type unit. They come in packs of 8 (not 6 like most other melee infantry) but have fairly lackluster stats. The upside is they don't need gold to upkeep, only food, and you can build them with just a barracks. Swordsmen (on the left) are more professional troops with better stats and a big shield protecting them from ranged attacks. Both those units are greyed out here because I've got them Patrolling (basically guarding the square and not being called as a unit with no orders). This isn't a bad idea as the game tends to throw annoying raiders, monsters, and occasionally angry bears at you at short notice.

The final box in the bottom right shows current production. Currently we're building Housing which boosts town growth based on production. This is actually not that great an idea early on though because there's a couple of buildings that boost town growth too, and you want to get those down early. So lets change it.



Here's the production options screen. The tabs on the left side are buildings and projects, on the right are units. We'll want pretty much all of these buildings at some point so I'll walk you through them as needed. For now, we're building a Granary, which adds food production and more importantly population growth.

Next up, we could do with some more gold income to fund our wasteful government spending highly important activities.



So I'm raising taxes by 50%. You can get away with this easily enough early on, later on though it can often lead to unrest and you might be better off with lower. Of course with sufficient unrest reduction from buildings etc the reverse is true.

Taxes out of the way, we move on to MAGIC! Here's our list of summoning spells.



Now I want to scout around but I don't really want to use my city defenders for it, so I'm going to compromise with a magical scout. Those hellhounds are really tempting (damn this setup gets them cheap, that's like 40% of normal cost) but the magic spirit is about as fast whilst ignoring terrain so it's actually more suited to what we want here. So I'm going with that. The little symbols under each spell (for those of you interested) show both which lore the spell comes from (fireballs for Chaos, little wierd grey symbolicamajigs for Arcane) as well as the estimated number of turns to finish casting it. It's high because we don't have any mana stockpiled at game start so we're going off the small amount trickling in per turn. Let's fix that.



Here's the Magic screen. Quite a lot to see here. Those gems at the top allow you to communicate with other wizards once you find them, using the arcane magic of Vid Eo Con Ferens (see what I did there?). As we've not met anyone else yet they're all dull and lifeless. The box on the right shows global enchantments currently in effect, coloured to show their owner. Global enchantments are by and large pretty powerful magic so there aren't any in play yet. Down the bottom there's some info showing an assortment of Stuff, including our current Summoning Circle location, the spell we're casting, the spell we're researching, casting skill, and so on. But the bit we're interested in now are those wands off to the left. They're sliders showing how much of our Power Base (magical income) is going into what. Mana goes straight to our mana pool. Research goes into the spell we're researching (none at the moment but we'll get to that soon enough), and Skill gradually raises Casting Skill, which determines how much mana we can spend on an overland spell per turn, as well as how much mana we can use on combat spells in a single battle. At the moment though our casting skill far exceeds our mana income so our spells are bottlenecked by that, not skill. So I take a point out of Skill and plonk it in Mana. Research is being left as is because it's rather necessary. With all that out of the way there's not much to do but end turn...



...which brings up this screen. Because we're not researching anything at the moment, we get a selection of 8 spells from which we can research. Lower tier spells get preference here (spells come in 4 tiers, Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Very Rare. The rarer, the more powerful). You're also further limited in that not every spell is available to you. The more spell books you have in a given order, the more spells of that order you can potentially research. We've got a fair number of chaos books so we've guaranteed much of that lore, but even then there'll be a few things missing. Arcane spells incidentally are always in the list. Getting back to the job at hand, I decide on Lightning Bolt because blowing up stuff is fun and I don't have the magical infrastructure needed to support a Fire Giant for any real length of time.

I've skipped ahead the next few turns because not a lot is happening. I'll be doing this fairly regularly I imagine, MoM can have long periods of Not Much To Do, especially early on.



And here we go, our Granary is done. Note that we've got a nice cheerful little demon to tell us stuff. I think you get a different companion based on your dominant magic order, but it might be tailored to each wizard avatar. With the granary done I can afford to swap another farmer to a worker, and begin work on a Marketplace.



Marketplace's provide improved tax income (always nice) but also pave the way to the Farmer's Market (like a Granary only better), so it's a good choice at this stage. In the same turn, our Magic Spirit finishes.



Note once again how epic my goatee is. This little guy is pretty rubbish in a fight but he's an excellent scout. He also has another major use but we'll get to that later. For now, scouting!



Immediately I find some nightshade. Nightshade is very handy for nearby towns if you have an Alchemists Guild (or I think if you wizard has the Alchemy ability) because they try to dispel hostile magic directed at the town. Considering just how hostile said magic can be, that's a very useful trait. Sadly this one is too far away from Relicnews to be of any help so I move on.

After a few more turns scouting I discover some ruins...



...and then blunder into an Ancient Temple.



Angels are one of the very few Life summons. They're a Rare level summon so they're pretty damn nasty. Note also that scouting only ever reports the nastiest critter in the place, so there could be a whole army of weaker life summons there. Or several Angels. In short, the answer we're looking for here is No. I'll go take a look at those ruins further back instead.



Ah. Right. Now, see, if I was forced to choose between fighting the Angel and the Colossus I'd take the Angel. Colossus (Colossi?) are Very Rare level Nature summons and as such are really, really powerful. Hopefully that tower to the northeast of Relicnews has something less formidable. I summon some Hellhounds...



...and go to check it out.



Right. Well that IS less nasty than the Colossus, but it's still about as bad as the Angel. I'll leave those three for later and go back to scouting with my two magical units.

Whilst I'm off scouting, Relicnews develops into a Village.



Hurrah! Now there's 5000 people giving me taxes. This also means more production and hence faster building. But back to the scouting action.



And it's a Mysterious Cave. At the rate we're going the most Mysterious thing about it is the complete lack of a massive level summon ready to rape my face. Still, not going to complain. Lets loot the place.



Well 10 mana isn't actually much at all but it's better than nothing and I didn't exactly have to work for it. I do some more scouting, finding some empty ruins and another Mysterious(ly empty) Cave, netting 60 mana between the two. And then...



DING DING DING! As you'll see, this is a Chaos Node. Node's are magical nexuses (nexi?) that come in three flavours: Chaos Nodes, Nature Nodes, and Sorcery Nodes. Yep, no Life or Death Nodes. Sucks to be them hey? Anyway they have a bunch of critters in them of that order, and the node itself both strengthens the appropriate creatures (on both sides) and dispels magic of a different order. Luckily I'm a Chaos mage so that's only working to my advantage. Better yet the most powerful thing that scouting has found is a hellhound, and I can make those. I'm going to send the Magic Spirit in to take a look and then plan an attack, but I'll leave that for next update. Hope to see you then!

[Paladin]

I know this is considered heresy by most... But I could never get into MoM. I like AoW2, but MoM's lack of a campaign + inability to turn off the stupid spell o' mastery made it too annoying for me.

[[Vertigo]]

Waiting for the next update with eagerness.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Pally: Strange you dislike the Spell of Mastery. It's a really difficult way to actually win compared to straight butchering the opponents. You need to research almost every other spell in the game first and then it takes ages to research and cast itself. Ah well, each to their own.

Anyway, mini update time!

So, here's the contents of the chaos node.



Yep, 6 units of Hellhounds. Obviously the Magic Spirit is outmatched here considering it probably can't even beat one Hellhound unit, but at least I know what I'm up against. This being a losing battle I opt to flee (which still has a chance of you losing some of your units, but it's better than definately losing all of them)



Oh dear. Well that's the Spirit gone. Not to worry, we can get another soon enough when we need to. The immediate problem is what to do about those Hellhounds. We're not producing enough magic to support an equivelant sized stack of them, so basically we're left with a few options.

That's right it's CHOICES TIME!

Your choices are:
a) Build up the Magical Infrastructure in Relicnews via a Shrine and Temple, then get some Hellhounds and go clean house.
b) Send a mixed assortment of Hellhounds and Swordsmen in to deal with the node. The swordsmen won't receive the stat boosts from the Chaos Node Aura but they cost gold and food rather than mana so I can afford them.
c) Leave the node for now, get some more Cities down and come back to it later.

So over to you, the viewers!

[WingedKagouti]

Could we get a look at the map as you have explored it now, without popup boxes obscuring things?

[n0z3k1ll3r]

You can indeed:





As things stand I think we're on the northern end of a central or southern continent. I can't seem to travel by land any further north, but there's none of the tundra you usually get towards the polar regions up there either. Doesn't seem to be much to the east or west either so we're going to be scouting south mostly. Could be wrong though, there's still enough black gaps in the other directions where small landbridges could be hiding.

[Etienne]

Looks like a great spot for an expansion city in the west. River mouth, gold, and coal. Yummy.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

So that's a vote for city building?

[Paladin]

noz3: It's pretty much just a visceral reaction to "i win buttons" in general... It's not that I think it's unbalanced... It's just that I like it if a game could theoretically stalemate in perpetuity with perfectly evenly matched players. I like to be able to toy with the AI for days. The addition of a spell that will be researched and cast, given enough time, is like an arbitrary timer ticking away, and it bothers me.

I'd like MoM fine if it had a campaign and a switch to turn that one spell off.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

I vote a focus on economic expansion. Melee units are useless anyway against node boosted Hell Hounds because of the breathe attack, and you'd need a hell of a lot of Bowmen all at regular status minimum. (They won't hurt enough with only one attack roll.) Not that you have a Sawmill.

I've never seen the Spell of Mastery cast myself, although how it actually works is that its the last thing in the spellbook. so if you take like mostly traits and few books you can rush to it. The AIs all have lots of books tho.

I recommend taking al your points out of skill and research and dunking them in Mana. As a Conjurer, sheer mana is your primary limitation - not skill.

I have to say the region near the chaos node looks excellent for a city. River mouth, gold, coal, ocean access... only the desert mars the perfection. It would be helpful to reveal the stuff south of it.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

I've seen Spell of Mastery cast successfully I think twice, both by me. I've seen it attempted a bit more by the AI on harder levels but even then it's fairly rare and it's more an incentive for me to stop fooling about and banish them for a bit.

Incidentally you can actually take no books and all traits allowing a very quick (comparatively) run to Spell of Mastery, but I don't think it's really worth it.

Anyway, two votes for territorial expansion so far.

[Imperial Honour]

I fancy some economic\territorial expansion, so make that three votes for that option.

[WingedKagouti]

Another vote for expansion, a city with water access seems vital.

[Integrity]

Boats suck.

But, I think we do need another city. That node'll still be there in the morning.

[TheDividedGod]

I have to get this game.

[WingedKagouti]

Boats suck.

They're kinda essential to expansion (and thus mid-late game power) if he really is stuck on an island. With his setup, he won't have much in the way of getting off that island otherwise.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Just to let you know, I've gone with the expansion idea and I've actually done the next update, but my net's being a tad flaky. I'll edit the next update into this post soon if all goes well. If not, you know why.

EDIT: On to the update!

When we left the action I'd left the question of what to do next open to you, and the responses have overwhelmingly been to expand and found another city, specifically over on that river mouth near the chaos node. So that's the plan! First a few turns of extra scouting though whilst we finish the Farmer's Market.





Goodo, with that done we head to the production screen again.



Now, Settlers are what we need to actually build the city itself. However, we can't just send them out on their own. It takes a while for a new outpost to grow enough to be able to build anything, and Murphy's Law says something WILL come along and pillage the place if you leave it unguarded for that time. So we need to send some military units out as well. Swordsmen (as mentioned above) are the better unit, but Spearmen don't cost gold to upkeep and are honestly probably good enough. As a Chaos wizard I mostly need some unit or other there just so I can throw my horrific battle magic around and win the battle that way. Moreover we can afford the food now (because of the farmer's market) and two spearman units build in the same time as one swordsman unit. Sold!

Whilst they're being done we keep scouting around...



...and HELLO! That there is a neutral settlement. You'll find these around the map here and there, they aren't controlled by a player but just sort of do their own thing. Every now and again they can spit out an attack force to go and raid someone's city. More to the point though, that's awfully near where we're building our new settlement. That means it can compete on some of the tiles, halving their benefit to both cities. Not an ideal situation. Still before we resolve to burn it to the ground for it's insolence/unfortunate location, lets have a look and make sure it's not a city of some race we might want to make use of.



Nope, it's another High Men city. We have one of those already. Burny burny burny! After a couple of turns the spearmen are done and we send them down to meet up with the Magic Spirit and the Hellhounds for an assault on the Hamlet of New Haven (given the current impending doom descending on them that was possibly an overly optimistic choice of name). With the spearmen done however it's time to build us a settler.



As you can see here settlers are literally useless on the attack. No damage whatsoever. But they're a necessary part of any game.

As our forces group for the assault the Magic Spirit gets a bit closer to New Haven so we can take a look inside.



And that's a fair few swordsmen they've got there. Against the Spearmen and the Magic Spirit they could put up rather a good fight, but the Hellhounds should still overmatch them and battle magic should make up the rest. Not to take any chances though, lets see what we can do about pumping up our spearmen.



This should do the trick. Eldritch weapon gives penalty to defense on opponents hit by the unit. This seems a good time to give a brief cribnotes version of the basics of combat. Units have a Melee stat (swords), Ranged stat (bows, rocks, or fireballs depending on what specifically they're shooting), Defense (shields), Resist (crosses), and Hits (hearts). Resist is mostly to do with overcoming hostile enchantments so we'll skip that for a bit and focus on the rest. When a unit attacks, it makes a roll for each point of Melee (or Ranged) it has, with a base success chance of 30%. The opponents then make a similar roll for their Defense (also 30%). For every success the Attack roll has over the Defense, the defender loses a hit. In melee combat, both sides make this roll simultaneously before deducting health. This is a large part of why units with lots of figures are important, because each figure gets to make a set of attacks. Eldritch weapon subtracts 10% from the defense roll, dropping it to 20% (in other words, 2/3 of it's starting value) so it's pretty fearsome.

Now like most other unit enchantments we could cast this in the battle itself and skip the upkeep cost. But that eats into our battle Casting Skill, and there's better things to do with that. We've got mana to spare for this on at least one spearmen unit.

Whilst all this is going on, our Settler completes. We dispatch him on his way (the spearmen will rendevous with him later) and begin work on something else (building settlers lowers your cities population by one step each time, so you don't want to overdo it). A shrine sounds like a nice idea. It'll decrease unrest, which will probably become a problem in the future, but more immediately it's an extra point of mana every turn and we can do with that.



So a few turns later all our units are in position, and I take another look at New Haven. Oh dear! They've built another swordsmen unit and a spearman unit. The odds are looking a little bit worse. Still, fortune favours the bold and all that!

So, onto the battle map (I should mention here that FRAPS doesn't seem to like screenshotting MoM in a window, and DosBOX won't run it properly full screen, so I'm having to use print screen and Photoshop. This is fine in the overland map but I might miss stuff in combat, particularly during the enemy turn where I can't really pause to print screen and paste. Sorry, just how it's got to be).

The defenders get the first turn and lacking any ranged troops or magic opt to just sort of plod towards me. Over to us, and I opt first thing to take a look through the spellbook for something nasty. This should do the trick:





With that done, I move forward, end turn, and they do the same. Whilst we're at it, lets take a look at our units stats.



The Hellhounds, as you can see, are pretty decent. They've got +1 to hit (so a 40% instead of a 30% roll) and although they only have 3 attacks they also have 4 figures, so it's a total of 12. Note also the Fiery Breath. You'll find this on a lot of Chaos units, as well as the Myrran Draconian race. It's a special attack that takes place before the normal roll to hit, and for that it's very powerful. Next, the Magic Spirit.



At first glance those stats look fairly promising, but they're undermined by the simple fact there's only one of him. He's actually putting out less damage than a stock standard spearman unit. Still, the defense isn't bad and he's got a fair bit of health. Onto the new Fire Elemental.



So the first thing you'll notice is that he doesn't actually have the weapon immunity his summoning spell claims he does. You'll have to get used to this sort of thing in Master of Magic. But overlooking that he's actually pretty decent, just as survivable as the Magic Spirit but with the damage output to match. As you can see here when he largely demolishes a swordsman unit.



The end result of that left one swordsman alive and the elemental basically unscathed. The Hellhounds do a decent job too, killing all but two of another unit but losing one of the doggies to the counterattack. The other, slower units move up as well. The Fire Elemental is definately working out nicely. In fact...



If one is good, two is better, ey? Flamey II dives in and destroys another Swordsman unit. Now we've done all we can so I have to sit back and wait for the inevitable counterattack.



Which works out pretty damn well actually, as you can see. At this stage I'm just about out of Casting Skill...



...but there's still enough to do that. Fire Bolt is the entry level Blow Things Up spell for Chaos. It'll be basically obsoleted before too much longer by Lightning Bolt and Fireball, so lets enjoy it while it lasts. Unfortunately with so little skill available I can't pump mana into the spell like I'd want to (Fire Bolt, along with many direct attack spells, can be charged up for extra effect) so it only kills a couple of swordsmen. Still, that's two more than if we'd not cast it.



Fire Elemental polishes off that unit.



And the Magic Spirit hits the Spearmen. Amazingly he does pretty well, leaving the unit crippled and quickly finished off by the Hellhounds. Victory!



And here's our Burn option. Which we're taking. Sorry guys, but it's your fault for building a city in a daft spot (read: somewhere not immediately fitting in with my personal goals).



There we go. We get 40 gold from our pillaging but we also lose 1 fame for burning civilisation to the ground (people tend to frown on that it seems). 1 is actually a fair bit early on but it's not a massive issue.

With the combat out of the way, our first step is to remove the costly Eldritch Weapon enchantment from the spearmen.



Shrine finishes.



Unfortunately here I forgot to set something new so we've been on Housing for a while since. Could be worse though, the population growth is handy.

I detach the spearmen to meet up with the settlers and send the Spirit and Hellhounds south for more scouting. Suddenly...



Yep, that blue banner there means that's another wizard's town. It's an expansion hamlet but even so their capital probably isn't far.

Lets look at the magic screen and see who we're dealing with...



...and it's Horus! Horus, as you can see, is a mixed Life and Sorcery wizard. Archmage gives him a pretty high amount of casting skill so he's a formidable opponent. He's Aggressive (which is redundant really as pretty much anything except Pacifist tends to declare war on you for minimal reason. Actually, come to think of it, Pacifist sometimes does this too) and a Theurgist (prioritising spell research over other areas). He's also a bit grumpy with me. This could be because he's a Master of Magic AI and they always seem to be grumpy with me, or alternatively it could be because we have a unit of hellhounds sitting outside an undefended Hamlet. On which note...

CHOICES TIME!

Do we nip in and pinch the place or do we leave it be. Grabbing it obviously will anger him and quite possibly lead to war. That said this is Master of Magic so wandering off and leaving him be will probably also lead to war (the AI diplomacy isn't EXACTLY the game's strong point), but odds are it'll come at least a little bit later. So, what do we do? YOU decide.

And I'm off to bed. I'll try and get another update in tomorrow morning (don't worry I've not forgotten about our settlement project, it's still on the agenda).

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Well, all a conjurer needs to project power is any crapheap of a town with a summoning circle. If all else fails you can Chaos channels settlers until you get wings, haha

[Integrity]

TDG: Master of Magic is freeware anymore, you can find it on the intarwebs.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

New update is a couple of posts up. Enjoy!

[TheDeadlyShoe]

OMG! That spot even has deer!

I bet you coulda conquered that neutral town. It was uncomfortably close, but it wasn't overlapping any of the good resource tiles. Oh well!

PS. Horus has cast: Just Cause!


(i cant be the only one irritated by the AIs casting that alla time.)

[Integrity]

Kill that sonofabitch. No survivors. Fuck Horus.

[TheDividedGod]

Awesome...after about an hour of work and downloading, I've finally got dosbox running this game WITH SOUND.

As for the current issue, I say take the town. No reason not to hobble the opponent if victory will cost you nothing.

[WingedKagouti]

Grab the town, Horus'll declare war sooner or later anyway.

[Paladin]

I demand that you name the new settlement "Doltville". Demand.

[Jopax]

I vote for grabbing the town aswell, then turn it into a fortress to send raids from, stab him before he stabs you
Also damn you, now i need to get this aswell, and i really have little time to spare these days

[Integrity]

I demand that you name the new settlement "Doltville". Demand.

Seconded. I also demand you name your first hero "Paladin" and your second hero "Integrity".

Actually, scratch that, you're excused if you want to get Roland. If you want to get Roland ever, save the name Paladin for him.

[Imperial Honour]

I heartily agree! Lets send this Horus a message and nab his town while it is undefended.

[Fish Of Doom]

you work with chaos

try to ally with horus, see what happens

also abandonia has the patch for the game

[n0z3k1ll3r]

I demand that you name the new settlement "Doltville". Demand.

Done.

I also demand you name your first hero "Paladin" and your second hero "Integrity".

Done, with the exception of two specific heroes I have names planned for already.

you work with chaos

try to ally with horus, see what happens

I totally never even thought of that.

Update is underway.

[Etienne]

I vote you try to crush Horus completely. Should be doable.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

So, consensus says Horus DIES! So without further ado, onto the update.

Horus says hi.



We accept his offer and start a game of "capture the undefended hamlet"



Builders hall is first priority as its a prerequisite for a ton of things, Granary among them. Note also that this one is also called Haven. Why do they keep doing that? It's asking for trouble. Incidentally on the overview insert in the top right you'll see a blue pool. That's a Sorcery Node.

Meanwhile our magic spirit keeps meandering around down south and finds this:



That's what I presume is Horus' main village there. Also some Settlers (whom we promptly set upon and kill) and the blob to the left which is a Guardian Spirit. It's the lowest tier Life summon and it's basically an uber Magic Spirit. So, shall we examine Horus' village?



Yep that's the fortress and the summoning circle. At a guess this is the only place he has left since Haven proved poorly named so if we take this he's out of the game. Even if he's got another city somewhere it'll banish him for a fair while during which he can't cast spells. The Armory seems to be the only thing he's added on top of the starting buildings (it replaces the Barracks in case you're wondering). Anyway Armory's remind me that we should probably be building one too and I get on it before ending the turn.



Well that was quick. And predictable. We ignore his empty rantings and scout off to the east.



Which finds us not one but two Nature nodes. Now we've found the whole set.

At the same time, the settlers finally reach their destination...



...and construct the mighty outpost of Doltville! As you can see this isn't the normal city screen, and that's because an outpost isn't a city (yet). The bar at the top with the houses in it shows how far it has yet to go. That bar fills up (usually) with houses over time and eventually the outpost becomes a Hamlet.

Skip forward a few turns and our Armory completes.



As mentioned before for Horus, High Men don't get anything immediately from an Armory. However it unlocks this:



Which is awesome. Not only does it allow the building of Pikemen (one of the best High Men units, and indeed of any races units) but it ups the starting level of troops built there by one. Not bad at all!

Magic spirit keeps wandering around.



These guys are engineers. You can tell from their scruffy, unkempt appearance. They're probably drunk too but the game doesn't specifically say. Anyway, they can build roads (as they're doing) which allow units to move along them much faster. Also take not of the terrain down here. The huge amount of tundra basically confirms that we're at the south of the map.

Skip forward another turn and oh dear...



Horus has sent an attack force towards Haven in a move that can only increase the irony of it's nomenclature.

We scramble a few units down there to defend. Before the enemy reach there, this happens:



Hurrah! We set a Builders Hall going and get back to the action.

As defenders we get to start first this time. The "Big Ball of Fire" approach worked last time so lets do that again!



Our troops advance. Horus responds with Resist Magic



It helps a unit resist some harmful magic. Not actually that bad a spell but it's the least of my worries here and there's a lot more annoying things he could have been casting.

Our turn, second Fire Elemental goes down and troops continue to close. Upon reaching the enemy lines our first Fire elemental kills a unit, and then it's over to their turn.

Which ends pretty well all things considered.



Basically the hellhounds got attacked by both units and whooped ass. Hellhounds ftw!

Hellhounds finish them off on our turn.

Meanwhile our magic spirit finds more settlers to kill.





That spell in the second picture is Psionic Blast, basically the Sorcery counterpart to Fire Bolt. It doesn't achieve an awful lot here.

So at the moment we're mustering forces whilst harassing Horus a bit. On that note, lets see what we have in the spell book.

This looks promising:



Quite apart from the economic damage to his city I can cause with this, it means I'm CORRUPTING HORUS with the POWER of CHAOS! Which is awesome. Here it is in action.



A bit more scouting as we wait for the Fighter's Guild to complete. Magic Spirit finds this:



That big tower is a Tower of Wizardry. They're the second most important lair after Nodes, for a couple of reasons. Firstly anyone who gets a new spell researched instantly (except spell of mastery. No exploiting that way). Secondly, they offer free travel between the tower and a counterpart tower on the opposing plane (Arcanus/Myrror). It's the easiest way to swap planes.

But enough of that, the Fighters Guild is done (good work if you've got the stones for it) so lets take a look at those pikemen:



As you can see they're pretty nasty. Negate First Strike means that certain units (mostly Cavalry) who normally attack before their opponents now strike simultaneously. Armour Piercing halves the defense of the enemy unit. Best of all though it's an 8 figure unit, rather than 6 as is standard (indeed I think it's the only 8 figure unit in the game besides spearmen). And as a final touch, they get a free level up from the Fighters Guild so they're actually a bit better than that in practice. We get to work on some of those.

Around the same time the first Pikeman unit finishes, Relicnews grows again into a Town:



There's several grades of city dependant on population. Town's about the midway point.

Our magic spirit spots another new unit:



That there is a Floating Island, a special type of summon that Sorcery wizards can get. Rather than being summoned into combat or to the wizard's Summoning Circle, the Floating Island is just cast into any sea square the Wizard can see, providing a cheap magical transport able to carry 8 units. It's useless in a fight though.

End turn and hello!



That's another new wizard! Off to the magic screen for all the hot goss!



And it's Freya. Freya is a full Nature wizard with nature mastery tacked on. She's Lawful (so she'll probably wait a few turns before declaring war for no reason) and expansionist (likes building lots of cities). Like Horus she's also a bit grumpy with me. Must be just me.

Freya introduces herself.



Yeah so you say. Lull me into a false sense of security and then BAM! Angry Bears.

Anyway, that's it for this update. I've got a fairly full on schedule for the next day or so but I'll try and squeeze another update in somewhere if possible. Till then, keep the comments flowing!

[TheDeadlyShoe]

More towns! Shoe demands more towns!

[WingedKagouti]

(indeed I think it's the only 8 figure unit in the game besides spearmen)

Aren't halfling slingers 8 figures as well?

Anyway, just ignore Freya for now. She can be taken care of once Horus is down. The real issue is that settler (if you haven't killed it), it could set up in a spot that'd inconvenience Haven. The only thing to do for now is building piles and piles of awesome High Men units to take down that blue poser.

[Integrity]

Slingers are 6 figures. Actually, I'll look that up in the strategy guide that lives on my desk.

No, fuck me, Slingers ARE 8 figures. So are Halfling Swordsmen, incidentally.