From Fantasy General to Master of Magic!

Started by jomni, August 05, 2019, 09:07:29 AM

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Rayfer

Cool...it will be interesting to see what they do with it.

solops

Well, Deity Empires has already raised that bar. Matrix has their work cut out for them.
"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." - King Henry II of England
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly. - Winston Churchill
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Rayfer

Quote from: solops on August 05, 2019, 10:59:29 AM
Well, Deity Empires has already raised that bar. Matrix has their work cut out for them.

Well put...DE was an unexpected breath of fresh air in the fantasy 4X genre.

JasonPratt

In other news, MoM has a "franchise" apparently.  :o  ???
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

DennisS

Quote from: JasonPratt on August 05, 2019, 12:43:07 PM
In other news, MoM has a "franchise" apparently.  :o  ???

Update the graphics, and re-release. The gameplay was perfection....IS perfection, as I still play it.

CJReich46

Quote from: DennisS on August 05, 2019, 12:48:35 PM
Quote from: JasonPratt on August 05, 2019, 12:43:07 PM
In other news, MoM has a "franchise" apparently.  :o  ???

Update the graphics, and re-release. The gameplay was perfection....IS perfection, as I still play it.

:o  So...would it be bad now to say I've never played the original? 
" He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all."  - James Graham 1st Marquis of Montrose

al_infierno

The original is $6 on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/master_of_magic

Pretty dated but still very fun and replayable to this day!
A War of a Madman's Making - a text-based war planning and political survival RPG

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge.  War endures.  As well ask men what they think of stone.  War was always here.  Before man was, war waited for him.  The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.  That is the way it was and will be.  That way and not some other way.
- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian


If they made nothing but WWII games, I'd be perfectly content.  Hypothetical matchups from alternate history 1980s, asymmetrical US-bashes-some-3rd world guerillas, or minor wars between Upper Bumblescum and outer Kaboomistan hold no appeal for me.
- Silent Disapproval Robot


I guess it's sort of nice that the word "tactical" seems to refer to some kind of seriousness during your moments of mental clarity.
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JasonPratt

#9
As much as I played MoM to death once upon a time...? I could probably play it again, and enjoy it, but I don't know why I would bother. (Which hasn't stopped me from owning it of course. ;) )

Once upon a time MoM-successors suffered from buggy low quality. There was literally nothing else that worked, and even what didn't work tended to suffer from lack of features (although aesthetics were usually improved).

Then, arguably at the time of Age of Wonders 1, a few had much higher quality but missed significant gameplay elements of the original, while the others were still buggy and/or low-quality messes.

Then, by the time of Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, a solid handful had practically everything from the original and even more features (like AoW:SM), or took the genre in new gameplay directions (like Dominions 3 which by then had a random map generator like MoM and AoW:SM).

Now we still have those, but upgraded a little more (Dom 5) or a lot more again (AoW:3 plus 2 dlc, which also finally reintroduces multiple figures in a unit for combat effects), plus things from the previous generation which still have their own extras (like AoW:SM's mods and the vanilla ability for three map layers instead of only 2 as in AoW3). And then lapping around we have retro entries like Deity Empires; not even counting slowly improving MoM successors like the Fallen Enchantress series and Eador and Masters of a Broken World Warlock, as well as quirky successors like Thea: The Awakening etc., or conceptual ports like WH40K:Gladius. [Edited to add: I was thinking of Warlock: Masters of the Arcane and its sequel; the first Eador was Masters of a Broken World, and I got the names confused.]

The solid gameplay will always be solid. But I don't really need MoM anymore. And I have a little trouble wondering what Matrixlitherine will even be able to bring to the table to upgrade it, to stand it out among its successors.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Boggit

I started looking at the Preview version of Fantasy General, and so far it looks quite pretty. Combat mechanics have some interesting aspects, like wounds and kills, charge bonuses etc. It played quite nicely, until I got to the end of the first scenario when it crashed into a locked screen stasis.

Still, it remains under development and I expect any crash issues will be sorted long before release.

Anyway, a couple of pics I took before the game crashed...
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley

Foul Temptress! (Mirth replying to Gus) ;)

On a good day, our legislature has the prestige of a drunk urinating on a wall at 4am and getting most of it on his shoe. On a good day  ::) Steelgrave

It's kind of silly to investigate whether or not a Clinton is lying. That's sort of like investigating why the sky is blue. Banzai_Cat

Boggit

I should add that I since reloaded from an auto save, and so far the game has been stable.

I like what I've seen so far. There is a story driven element to it that can have a longer term impact on decisions. Gameplay mechanics is otherwise very similar to Panzer Gerneral, Order of Battle etc, and easy to get into.
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley

Foul Temptress! (Mirth replying to Gus) ;)

On a good day, our legislature has the prestige of a drunk urinating on a wall at 4am and getting most of it on his shoe. On a good day  ::) Steelgrave

It's kind of silly to investigate whether or not a Clinton is lying. That's sort of like investigating why the sky is blue. Banzai_Cat

Gusington

^Looks really slick, thanks for posting. Will definitely be getting this. I have played a couple of campaigns of Warhammer TW and for me it is too 'out there.' I like it, but don't love it.

I get the impression that I could get into Fantasy General 2 more. I love the look so of the unit cards too.

I also have not played the original Master of Magic...


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We can't live under the threat of a c*nt because he's threatening nuclear Armageddon.

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FarAway Sooner

Master of Magic is definitely one of my three favorite all-time titles.  But, for me at least, it needs more than just modernized graphics to make a splash.

Eador really raised the bar with the New Horizons mod to Eador: Genesis, which is still under development.  That mod blows away the prettier but buggy Eador: Masters of the Broken World title, featuring better unit development, an improved and expanded magic system, far more types of monsters (and a better combination of battles against a mix of missile & infantry troops), more artifacts, numerous additional quests and events, and an improved AI.  New Horizons also didn't come out in English until about 3 years after it came out in Russian, which seriously hamstrung sales of the original game to an English-language audience.

If anybody's interested in the Lost Horizons English language mod, I can dig it up without too much exploration.

Stardock's efforts absorbed a lot of my time, but I just never ended up buying into the flavor of their worlds.  They felt very generic to me.  Age of Wonders 3 consumed a lot more playing time for me, but also ended up feeling the same way.  Both offered some nice wrinkles and feature upgrades to the original, but neither captivated me like the original MoM.

Deity Empires has been a great addition to the genre.  Certainly the best since Eador: New Horizons.  It is deep, intricate, and offers a ton of nuanced game play features.  Content is still being released for that sleeper title, and they still have some work to do on the "flavor" front to flesh out different styles of game play for different schools of magic.  But I LOVE what I have seen so far!

JasonPratt

What about Eador: Imperium? I haven't played it yet, but does it incorporate the New Horizons material? It's supposed to be an upgrade from MoaBW.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!