Salment

Join Date 06/2011

A few MOM features that I miss.

I just discovered that Elemental existed a few weeks ago and after having downloaded it i was very pleased that it was in fact a remake of Master of magic in many different ways. I used to play MOM quite often, even after it was 10 years out of date. And Elemental is a truely great succesor to it. There are a few very fun features that have not seemed to made the transition, and i would like to lobby for their enclusion.

1) Player designed magical items. This was a very fun feature of MOM, one that i always aimed for, (Often to exploit the mana bug, but hey) But it was allot of fun to be able to design and name magic items for your heros. As it stands now i find magical items in Elemental are too common and too Generic.

2) Spirits! When i played mom i usually hoped to be alone on an island with enough room for two cities, and then send my spirits out into the world to take over the nodes... or elemental shrines. I would then summon armies to defend those points, and even though my armies were small compared to my enemies, my magical powers were far greater. It would be cool to be able to take control of the elemental power without having a city nearby

3) Magic needs to be central. I want my evil sorceress to be able to turn a whole enemy army into piggies if she gets powerful enough. As its stands now barely spend my mana, and it often makes more sense for my wizard to make a physical attack than a magic one.

Things in glad are gone...!

A few things that drove me crazy about Master of magic..

1) failure to abide to the rules of fantasy: It drove me crazy when the good ariel would rampage around the map with her righteous orcs. While the Evil Rjak was fighting her with his halfling (hobbit) armies. I'm glad that Elemental tries a bit harder to have a coherent world.

2)The two worlds thing, that always confused me.

Anyway just some thoughts from someone who is a fan of both games

elemental

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ElanaAhova

Join Date 09/2008

+105

Salment: I agree with everything you wrote. One comment about the two worlds thing. i like it... it adds a 'wild card' of sorts in that a whole level of strategic and tactical considerations are added, that can be activated at various times and with a variety of consequences. I like the dark side graphics better, as well. One thing I would have loved to see was to actually have a number of these worlds with varied affects.

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Quoting ElanaAhova,

reply 1

I also loved Myrror. That said, I hated the underground levels in Age of Wonders (and every other game), even though both are simply another overlaid map with well-defined transition points. Maybe it was because Myrror had actual character, unique terrain features, unique races, and no movement speed penalty (that always killed me in the underground maps of other games - made the game soooo tedious). The ruins and nodes had better defenders and rewards / more mana, as well.

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Tridus

Join Date 03/2008

+110

Quoting tanafres,

reply 2

The underground maps were annoying because of the speed and sight penalties. Unless you were playing as a race with underground movement & dark sight (Dwarves/Goblins IIRC) it was just painful to set up down there. The shadow realm in SM wasn't quite as annoying.

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

I disliked the underground in aow simply because it made it very hard to quickly assess the situation, often there were too many entrances to lend it any real strategic depth. If there's one or two entrances in your kingdom, that's one thing. But at 10, it stops being something you can simply guard and starts being something you absolutely have to capture (or the enemy has free reign in your kingdom).

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Thormodr

Join Date 09/2009

+11

I loved the fights to win an elemental node from the guardians in MoM. ^^

That was one of the funnest parts about MoM I think.

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Quoting Thormodr,

reply 5

I loved the fights to win an elemental node from the guardians in MoM. ^^

That was one of the funnest parts about MoM I think.

Plus the need to guard them with either Ghosts or Spirits. The sight of an enemy spirit heading towards one of your nodes always tripped my alarm system to see if it was the more powerful version on it's way to steal my node.

A lot of people have already said it, and I'm sure Brad is also aware of it, but this game is really lacking in how Magic is used, the enemies in the old DOS MOM used magic quite well, on both the tactical and strategic levels. You could attempt to just build a primarily non magical empire in MOM as most do in E:WOM, but you would be hardpressed in the endgame and would probably lose to whichever Wizard erupted out of Myrror.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

Welcome to Elemental. I hope you enjoy your stay.

Elemental had something of a rough start. Fortunately you showing up now means you got to skip much of it. The previous set of patches was focused on stability issues so your game shouldn't have any troubles with crashing or freezing. Currently Elemental is between patches. The focus is currently to try to get tactical combat to work better (by changing balance and other factors), to get the AI to act smarter, and try to tweak how towns work.

Anyways, comments:
1) I would love to have player designed magic items. However, the current set of magic items (see Arcane Weapons under the magic tree) seems to work well enough for me. Atleast, it does for now...

2) I haven't played a whole lot of MOM. I don't have a good grasp of spirits and nodes yet.

3) I agree. I want to be able to do more with magic. Currently, the spell "spell blast" is the only spell I seem to use in most battles. I don't see much benefit in using anything else. My units tend to serve as a backup role in case my blasts miss a unit or 2.

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Quoting Tridus,

reply 3

Quoting tanafres, reply 2
I also loved Myrror. That said, I hated the underground levels in Age of Wonders (and every other game), even though both are simply another overlaid map with well-defined transition points. Maybe it was because Myrror had actual character, unique terrain features, unique races, and no movement speed penalty (that always killed me in the underground maps of other games - made the game soooo tedious). The ruins and nodes had better defenders and rewards / more mana, as well.

The underground maps were annoying because of the speed and sight penalties. Unless you were playing as a race with underground movement & dark sight (Dwarves/Goblins IIRC) it was just painful to set up down there. The shadow realm in SM wasn't quite as annoying.

All of those. Also, wasn't it set up as tunnels? Wonderfully, you have to explore tunnels as if they were linear and set up end to end. Also, not aesthetically pleasing.

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Quoting Thormodr,

reply 5

I loved the fights to win an elemental node from the guardians in MoM. ^^

That was one of the funnest parts about MoM I think.

Absolutely; also how the node itself applied an automatic countermagic to any spells not of the node's type? So you ended up with a built-in preference for ownership of wizards that align with the node. Gave it character, as well. Love the big tree in the middle of the tactical map for nature nodes.

Speaking of which, remember counter magic? Awesome stuff - every opponent spell had a opportunity to get, based on the enemy spell cost and how much you had pumped into counter magic, with the counter magic effectiveness reduced for each opponent spell attempt. Per-battle casting limits based on how much of your mana income you had pumped into spellcasting ability? Yummy.

Ah, the memories

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AlLanMandragoran

Join Date 09/2010

+63

This thread actually reminded me to buy the game off GOG - $5.99. Bought it a few days ago - forgot how damn fun it is. Hadn't touched it in 15 years or so but it all came back pretty quickly - especially the one man killing machine Torin. Nothing like putting 11 books into Life and casting Torin right out of the gate... pwnage.

Totally recommend it for anyone who likes the genre or used to play it but hasn't in years - $5.99 is a hell of a deal for this classic. The depth of the spell books, variety, etc. is just plain fantastic and so much replayability.

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Quoting tanafres,

reply 2

Quoting ElanaAhova,
reply 1
Salment: I agree with everything you wrote. One comment about the two worlds thing. i like it... it adds a 'wild card' of sorts in that a whole level of strategic and tactical considerations are added, that can be activated at various times and with a variety of consequences. I like the dark side graphics better, as well. One thing I would have loved to see was to actually have a number of these worlds with varied affects.

I also loved Myrror. That said, I hated the underground levels in Age of Wonders (and every other game), even though both are simply another overlaid map with well-defined transition points. Maybe it was because Myrror had actual character, unique terrain features, unique races, and no movement speed penalty (that always killed me in the underground maps of other games - made the game soooo tedious). The ruins and nodes had better defenders and rewards / more mana, as well.

Personally I loved the Underground in AOW and liked the Underground and Shadow Relam in AOW:SM and wish they would add the ability to create different realms/levels in Elemental with it's own rules such as the Plane of fire or Plane of Water ot several underground levels. Could even have some sort of portal to go to the other levels that would be another world.

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The things that you guys hated about the underground in AOW and AOW:SM are some of the reasons I liked them. Yes more of a challange to navigate and such. I like sight and movement limitations in terran.

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Quoting tanafres,

reply 9

Quoting Thormodr, reply 5I loved the fights to win an elemental node from the guardians in MoM. ^^

That was one of the funnest parts about MoM I think.

Absolutely; also how the node itself applied an automatic countermagic to any spells not of the node's type? So you ended up with a built-in preference for ownership of wizards that align with the node. Gave it character, as well. Love the big tree in the middle of the tactical map for nature nodes.

Speaking of which, remember counter magic? Awesome stuff - every opponent spell had a opportunity to get, based on the enemy spell cost and how much you had pumped into counter magic, with the counter magic effectiveness reduced for each opponent spell attempt. Per-battle casting limits based on how much of your mana income you had pumped into spellcasting ability? Yummy.

Ah, the memories

I bought MOM off of GoG a few months ago and I've played 15 complete games of it compared to only 1 of E:WoM in the same time.

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Quoting Scutagira,

reply 13

I bought MOM off of GoG a few months ago and I've played 15 complete games of it compared to only 1 of E:WoM in the same time.

LOL I have my AOW:SM shortcut icon right next to my E:WOM icon, take a wild guess which one gets clicked more. .....Here is a Hint it starts with 'A' and ends with 'M'

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Quoting Bellack,

reply 14

LOL I have my AOW:SM shortcut icon right next to my E:WOM icon, take a wild guess which one gets clicked more. .....Here is a Hint it starts with 'A' and ends with 'M'

This is what has always baffled me about E:WOM. Its not like they didn't have a trailblazers in the area of turn based strategy games set in a fantasy world. Or even turn based strategy games in general. They's even said flat out that MOM was the inspiration for this game, but in so many ways Elemental just failed to live up to what those older games accomplished.

If all Stardock had done was do a straight lift of all game mechanics from MOM, updated the graphics, improved the AI, and put it in a box you would have a better game than the current E:WOM. To really change things up they could have put in customization options for traditional soldiers and added a tech tree.

The graphics update is obviously the most difficult problem, and why development took so long. They built an entirely new engine, but why they did this and didn't contract it out to another company with experience building 3d engines also baffles me.

I know they didn't get the rights to MOM, but that shouldn't have stopped them from getting inspiration from some of the game mechanics.

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Quoting jpmcconnell,

reply 15

Quoting Bellack, reply 14

LOL I have my AOW:SM shortcut icon right next to my E:WOM icon, take a wild guess which one gets clicked more. .....Here is a Hint it starts with 'A' and ends with 'M'

This is what has always baffled me about E:WOM. Its not like they didn't have a trailblazers in the area of turn based strategy games set in a fantasy world. Or even turn based strategy games in general. They's even said flat out that MOM was the inspiration for this game, but in so many ways Elemental just failed to live up to what those older games accomplished.

If all Stardock had done was do a straight lift of all game mechanics from MOM, updated the graphics, improved the AI, and put it in a box you would have a better game than the current E:WOM. To really change things up they could have put in customization options for traditional soldiers and added a tech tree.

The graphics update is obviously the most difficult problem, and why development took so long. They built an entirely new engine, but why they did this and didn't contract it out to another company with experience building 3d engines also baffles me.

I know they didn't get the rights to MOM, but that shouldn't have stopped them from getting inspiration from some of the game mechanics.

They topper of it all, is that MOM had to run in a DOS environment! The size of the program even with extended/expanded memory had to start at 640Kbytes of memory. It's simply amazing what Simtex was able to produce Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Master of Orion II and the under appreciated 1830 Railroads and Robber Barons.

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Heavenfall

Join Date 07/2008

+441

Just picked up AoW:SM from gog.com, hadn't played it for years. And yeah... it's amazing how an 8 year old game can school E:wom in tactical combat like this. The first 5 units in the tutorial have more depth than the entirety of E:wom's tactical system.

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