Is the Master of Magic Remake as Good as the Original?

[thelebk]

The 1990s DOS game Master of Magic (MoM) remains my favorite game of all time. Kudos to Muha for tackling such an iconic title where community expectations are guaranteed to be high. I have played the original MoM more than anyone I have ever met, and lovingly maintain a true 486 DOS clone to this day for the sole purpose of playing MoM. To date has Muha met the community expectations for this title? In some ways yes, in other ways no. Here is a non-exhaustive list of Pros and Cons on NORMAL difficulty (not in order of importance):

Things I love about the MoM remake (Go Muha!):

(1) Updated graphics, sound, modern monitor support
(2) Faithful recreation of the original wizards
(3) New wizards and races
(4) The trading interface is a MASSIVE improvement over the original MoM. Give that developer a raise and tell me his next Kickstarter project so I can fund it!
(5) Starting with a setter unit and new outposts get a free swordsman
(6) Making alchemy 2 picks. It was BY FAR the most powerful pick in the original MoM. Not only does it allow 1:1 conversion of plentiful gold to uncommon mana, but in the original it also gives all newly produced units enchanted weapons. This was the only way to get races like trolls access to enchanted/mithril/adamantine weapons. I have not tested alchemy with a race that cannot build the alchemists guild yet, but I am worried that Muha may have missed this subtle but key feature of the original.
(7) New events and ways to mitigate/ bolster these random events
(8) More ruins/caves etc than the original to explore
(9) Introduction of bolder damage by giants/ catapults etc. This adds more tactical depth and allows wizards to build counters to the all powerful Paladin surge
(10) Filters and empire management aids
(11) rebalance of some fantastic units which were to weak, and units like the Sky Drake which were to strong.
(12) relatively few bugs. (MoM was a much smaller game and even fully patched still had bugs)
(13) Quality of the (limited) soundtrack
(14) Range of selections to start new game such as start with a hero. (would be nice to pick any hero rather than just B'Shan)
(15) New Spell picks like fantastic warlord, stone mason etc.
(16) Getting a spellbook or at least a spell when defeating an enemy wizard. Also like the static tower defenses in the wizards tower city.

Things Muha should consider improving:

(1) I don't particularly care for the reinterpretation of SimTex's Wizards as not physically present on Arcanus and Mirror. I saw them as inhabiting their towers (remember the original MoM intro video where Merlin physically walks out of his tower when confronted by Tauron?) The wizard mirrors were only a way to talk to other Wizards like a telephone. While the reinterpretation provides an explanation for taking wizards from all over fantasy literature (Hey where is my Theleb'K'aarna from Michael Moorcock's books?!) and throwing them together, it is less dramatic and compelling as a mere "contest" where none of the Wizards are physically manifest.

(2) The Diplomacy engine in the remake is effectively non-existent. Wizard's do not offer treaties or pacts, and always refuse such even if such a treaty is clearly to their advantage. AI Wizards declare war regardless of relationships with the human player, the trigger seems to be to ensure that the human player is always at war with at least one AI throughout the game. The enemy Wizards never declare war on each other, making it clear that they only exist to defeat the human player, not to win the contest. Once the human player is at War with an AI, that AI wizard will never speak to the human player again. The AI only conducts "total war" which in history is somewhat rare. The remake has lost all of the diplomatic richness and strategies inherent in the original MoM. In the 1990s version a weaker human could play the role of opportunist to grab a city or two when more powerful AIs go to war with one another. It was also possible to have limited wars, then go to peace and change relationships and treaties going forward making for a more dynamic game experience.

(3) Mid-late game when the spellbook is large, I find myself flipping through many pages every time I want to cast a spell. Certain spells like prayer, change terrain, magic spirit, etc. are cast far more than other spells. A "favorites" Page in the spellbook with an associated tab would be most welcome.

(4) True to the original the MoM AI, even on normal, the AI cheats massively. They have access to huge off board stockpiles of food, mana, gold which allows them to build and summon enormous numbers of military units which they could not afford to produce, let alone support. As a second order effect this ensures that the Human player will be BY FAR the weakest player for the first half of the game giving AI wizards no incentive to conduct diplomacy targeting the human only for war instead. This unit spam leads to the AI using an overwhelm strategy with the human player. In the 1990's perhaps there was no better way to challenge a human player, but that is definitely not the case today. Today one of the most advanced AIs is Starcraft II. Processus's AI using knowledge based graphs can consistently beat the Starcraft II AI. I was fascinated the first time I saw this happen live, but this tech is accessible and can be applied to any rules based system.

(5) While the music in the remake is high quality, it is too limited. I kind of choke when I hear the Angelic music reminiscent of Ariel playing when I am running Rjack. In the original MoM every wizard had its own theme music which was played when you contacted them through diplomacy.

(6) The change terrain spell in the remake is inferior to that of the original MoM and unnecessarily inhibits game play. Change Terrain in the original allowed the player to reduce volcanoes to mountains, mountains to hills, forests to hills, hills to mountains. This allowed the player to customize production levels for cities and allowing the building line starting with the miners guild (requires a hill or mountain to construct) to be created. In the remake change terrain only makes plains and forests. Meh.

(7) The zombies summoning spell is missing from the game. At present the only way to get zombies is with zombie mastery. This eliminates the Dark Spellbook early game strategy of deploying units with half skeletons and half zombies.

(8) Bugs still exist that need to be addressed. For instance when a hero has the merging property from an artifact, sometimes it malfunctions and the hero cannot move at all in combat. Event quests to defeat an enemy with your "strongest army" don't select the player's strongest army, and may well select a naval fleet to attack a land based enemy on land. As another example defeated enemy heroes never drop the artifacts they are equipped with when defeated by the human player.

(9) Too many 125 mana duplicate low power items in exploration sites.
(10) No Introductory video or victory video.

[Xeth Nyrrow]

Originally posted by thelebk:

Things Muha should consider improving:

(1) I don't particularly care for the reinterpretation of SimTex's Wizards as not physically present on Arcanus and Mirror.

I'm sorry but this has got to be the most nit-picky thing ever. It's a strategy game, not a role-playing game. I actually like the concept of other realm wizards personally but it's such a minor point.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(2) The Diplomacy engine in the remake is effectively non-existent.

This is true on master difficult but on normal they will eventually come to you. You can to butter them up with gifts to speed up the process but make sure not walk around their territory which lowers their opinion of you.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(3) Mid-late game when the spellbook is large, I find myself flipping through many pages every time I want to cast a spell. Certain spells like prayer, change terrain, magic spirit, etc. are cast far more than other spells. A "favorites" Page in the spellbook with an associated tab would be most welcome.

A sorting and/or favorite feature for spells is desperately needed, I agree. There wasn't one in the original game though.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(4) True to the original the MoM AI, even on normal, the AI cheats massively.

It cheats a lot less than the old game and in different ways. The AI is much more aggressive though so it makes far better use of what it gets.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(5) While the music in the remake is high quality, it is too limited. I kind of choke when I hear the Angelic music reminiscent of Ariel playing when I am running Rjack. In the original MoM every wizard had its own theme music which was played when you contacted them through diplomacy.

Actually there were 2 tracks per wizard for displomacy. Depending upon if you were in good or bad standing with them, a certain one would play. This version doesn't have either.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(6) The change terrain spell in the remake is inferior to that of the original MoM and unnecessarily inhibits game play.

You seem to be misremembering. According to the wiki, this game works the same as the old:
Change Terrain spell[masterofmagic.fandom.com]

Originally posted by thelebk:

(7) The zombies summoning spell is missing from the game. At present the only way to get zombies is with zombie mastery.

Another misremember, there was no summon zombie spell in the old game, only skeletons and ghouls.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(8) Bugs still exist that need to be addressed.

Low hanging fruit, every game has bugs that need fixing. I wouldn't even list these as important but I would like to see them fixed though too.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(9) Too many 125 mana duplicate low power items in exploration sites.

This is the side effect of them adding a new feature to the game: randomized artifacts. There's a mod that removes them which helps a lot with this.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(10) No Introductory video or victory video.

Rumor is that they removed it because people thought it was bad when it was shown a while back but that seems like an odd reason so not sure I believe it. Considering most people skip these it's not a big loss especially since it was a remake of the old game.

[Thewizardlord]

Originally posted by thelebk:

.
(11) rebalance of some fantastic units which were to weak, and units like the Sky Drake which were to strong.

Some examples of fanastic units they rebalanced?

(16) Getting a spellbook or at least a spell when defeating an enemy wizard.

I believe in classic there was a loophole where you could banish wizards over and over (after they came back) at their fortress to get something , in this one only when you truly banish them for good, do you get the treasure

(2) The Diplomacy engine in the remake is effectively non-existent. Wizard's do not offer treaties or pacts, and always refuse such even if such a treaty is clearly to their advantage. AI Wizards declare war regardless of relationships with the human player,

Clearly untrue given you playing at normal difficulty level. Only true when playing at Master AI

(3) Mid-late game when the spellbook is large, I find myself flipping through many pages every time I want to cast a spell. Certain spells like prayer, change terrain, magic spirit, etc. are cast far more than other spells. A "favorites" Page in the spellbook with an associated tab would be most welcome.

Not a feature in classic. But the extended roadmap has a favourite spell feature included I believe

Today one of the most advanced AIs is Starcraft II. Processus's AI using knowledge based graphs can consistently beat the Starcraft II AI. I was fascinated the first time I saw this happen live, but this tech is accessible and can be applied to any rules based system.

Are you talking about DeepMind's (now Google Deepmind) work with StarCraft using multi agent Reinforcement learning?

Can you give more details on how this tech is "accessible"?

[Bif]

Thank you, thelebk, for this interesting & useful post. Sincerely.

I was particularly interested in the Alchemy differences; I had not considered using Alchemy to equip trolls with magic weapons. 20/20 hindsight. Now I have to try Alchemy on trolls and see if Muha included that feature.

Lots of great stuff in the original post, as witnessed by the interest shown by Xeth (a major modder of the game) & TheWizardLord (whose profile is private but posts a lot of good stuff).

Thanks again, looking forward to your next post.

[Xeth Nyrrow]

Originally posted by Bif:

Thank you, thelebk, for this interesting & useful post. Sincerely.

I was particularly interested in the Alchemy differences; I had not considered using Alchemy to equip trolls with magic weapons. 20/20 hindsight. Now I have to try Alchemy on trolls and see if Muha included that feature.

Lots of great stuff in the original post, as witnessed by the interest shown by Xeth (a major modder of the game) & TheWizardLord (whose profile is private but posts a lot of good stuff).

Thanks again, looking forward to your next post.

I actually skipped the first part of his post but there are a few incorrect things there such as about the alchemy trait. It only gives magical weapons, but not mithral/adamantine weapons and this did not occur in the original game either.

Alchemy is an excellent rush play style trait that is even better for races who can;t build alchemists' guilds. Those who can't tend to be rush races anyways so it goes hand in hand with them.

[thelebk]

@Xeth, thank you for the thoughtful reply. a few comments:

(1) Good writing is not limited to role-playing games. You like the reinterpretation of the wizard conflict, but I don't care for it. That doesn't make the game a bad.

(2) It seems we have different experiences with diplomacy. The other wizards have not come to me for treaties, I have not seen them make war on each other on normal, etc. My n= is low on this so I cannot be definitive, but I have seen some other online posts which seem to confirm this. Xeth how are you able to get an enemy wizard to go to peace with you after war is declared?

(3) Favorites in spellbook was not original MoM, but I added it here as a suggestion for the developers if resources permit.

(4) The AI does not need to be clever when it has 10X the number of units that the human player has as it does not pay build or upkeep costs. In my current game for instance Kali never produced more than three (orc) cities. Kali did not have an nodes on either plane. I had cities on 3/4 of Arcanus and was melded to every node on Arcanus. I had 3000 mana crystals and Kali had 500. Nevertheless, when I check "mana income" on the wizard comparison graphs Kali's line is WAY over mine. It was laughable.

(5) Confirm two sound tracks-- well said.

(6) I am actually not misremembering change terrain, I still have the original Dos version documentation. You can see the original spellbook online here: http://www.abandonia.com/files/extras/25935_game_extra_1.pdf
On page 7(5) it discusses how change terrain affects volcanoes, mountains, and hills. To get a hill or mountain to increase production for a city or build miner's guild mechnicians guild cast "raise volcano" within the radius of the target city. Then cast change terrain 1-2 times on that volcano. Viola!

(7) Confirm raise zombie was not in original MoM spellbook-- good catch.

(8) None of the bugs I listed or game breaking, but I'm not sure I would label them as unimportant. I suspect more of these will go away with time.

(9) I like the concept of randomized artifacts, perhaps the fix is to adjust the tables or to limit appearance of any one artifact to say two drops each?

(10) Concur an intro video is not critical. Many fans memorized the old one. I was just excited to see updated graphics and sounds for the confrontation between Merlin and Tauron. Nostalgia.

[thelebk]

@Thewizardlord Well said will add a few thoughts.

(11) An example is the Skydrake. Its attack/lightning was higher in the original. It would eat a Great Drake for lunch. I'd have to pull up my unit stat chart from the appendix in the MoM original manual and look for other examples.

(16) in the original you would get ~one spell for a realm you can cast each time you banished a wizard's tower city. On low levels of difficulty they do not have enough mana to cast the spell of return so its a one time bonus. On Hard+ the AI would return an average of 4 times. Each time you took their city you would get a spell for a realm you can cast, unless you had all of their spells already. I noticed in the remake if you banish a wizard who only has books you cannot get (say banish Rjack as Ariel) you get a single spell in a realm you can cast in lieu of the book. A nice touch.

(2) Same Diplomacy question to you that I posed to Xeph-- How do you make peace with an AI wizard you are at war with? Also how many times do you see the AI players fighting one another on Normal difficulty?

(3) Thanks for pointing this out, I did not see it in the 2023 plans pinned post.

(AI Comment) Nothing so exotic as Google proprietary tech. Mathematically you can build knowledge graphs of complex processes and then allow an AI to "learn" from the Knowledge Graphs. Here is a video which discusses some aspects of this tech by Processus Group: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKdVFc6vfAdAkYQZF68wiYg?app=desktop
They have a separate video of the AI enhanced knowledge graphs wiping out the Starcraft II AI.

[thelebk]

Originally posted by Bif:

Thank you, thelebk, for this interesting & useful post. Sincerely.

Thanks again, looking forward to your next post.

Much appreciated Bif! Glad you are enjoying my favorite game of all time.

[Xeth Nyrrow]

Originally posted by thelebk:

(1) Good writing is not limited to role-playing games. You like the reinterpretation of the wizard conflict, but I don't care for it. That doesn't make the game a bad.

I only mean that a story is pretty low on the priority list. I think they could have fleshed it out better but didn't want to mess with it in fear of angering fans. People don't player strategy games for stories anyways though. I wouldn't mind them making an actual campaign with a story through events and maybe they will.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(2) It seems we have different experiences with diplomacy. The other wizards have not come to me for treaties, I have not seen them make war on each other on normal, etc. My n= is low on this so I cannot be definitive, but I have seen some other online posts which seem to confirm this. Xeth how are you able to get an enemy wizard to go to peace with you after war is declared?

Important detail, if you declare war on them FIRST either via diplomacy or by attacking them, they will never sue for peace. Even on the easiest setting with 50+ castings of Aura of Majesty it still wasn't enough to persuade someone I started war with. If they declare war on you first then it's possible over time so long as you don't provoke them too much. However on master difficulty they always declare war on you the turn after you meet them and will never sue for peace even though they started the war.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(4) The AI does not need to be clever when it has 10X the number of units that the human player has as it does not pay build or upkeep costs. In my current game for instance Kali never produced more than three (orc) cities. Kali did not have an nodes on either plane. I had cities on 3/4 of Arcanus and was melded to every node on Arcanus. I had 3000 mana crystals and Kali had 500. Nevertheless, when I check "mana income" on the wizard comparison graphs Kali's line is WAY over mine. It was laughable.

We aren't going to get the level of AI we would like, the game is just too complex. However they will be improving upon it later they as have outlined in their roadmap. There are very few strategy games out there that the AI doesn't cheat by getting free resources, or other bonuses. If they didn't they would be too easy to defeat.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(6) I am actually not misremembering change terrain, I still have the original Dos version documentation. You can see the original spellbook online here: http://www.abandonia.com/files/extras/25935_game_extra_1.pdf
On page 7(5) it discusses how change terrain affects volcanoes, mountains, and hills. To get a hill or mountain to increase production for a city or build miner's guild mechnicians guild cast "raise volcano" within the radius of the target city. Then cast change terrain 1-2 times on that volcano. Viola!

Well you listed a few changes that were correct and some that weren't:
- volcanoes to mountains = yes
- mountains to hills = yes
- forests to hills = no
- hills to mountains = no

I also just tested the spell in game and it works like the list of terrain changes in the wiki link I posted. Basically you can keep, "flattening down" but never back up with the spell. The exception is making forest in the grasslands.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(9) I like the concept of randomized artifacts, perhaps the fix is to adjust the tables or to limit appearance of any one artifact to say two drops each?

Randomized artifacts is something I always wondered why it was never in the original game and thought it would be a nice addition. Unfortunately it turns out not to be the case for 2 reasons. First is the side effect of a bunch of junky low level loot. Though adjusting the treasure reward system could help, it would just end up with a lot of 200 or 250 value items (whatever the new cut off gets set to. Second is that it sometimes creates these items that have some really powerful effects but without other stat bonuses. The AI is great at getting these and allows its heroes sometimes to become crazy strong really early. There have been a few steam and reddit posts about people getting frustrated by this. Using the pre-fab list of loot doesn't have this issue because they are better balanced items (though not perfect)

[thelebk]

@Xeph more great stuff thanks for continuing the dialogue.

(1) Concur story is lower on the list than say major features or bug fixes. In modern games even the game manual tends to be lower priority than the former. Story is a "nice to have", similar to an intro video. I think there is more utility for such in a fantasy game however as it encourages suspension of disbelief which deepens the play experience.

(2) So if they declare war on you when do you get an option to speak to them again and raise the topic of peace? I have never declared war on the AI, but they will never speak to me after they declare war on me. That said when they go to war with me I aggressively seek to take their cities. My mindset is Sid Meir's Civilization where the AI is more likely to agree to peace if you have taken some of their assets and are in a position to take more. What exactly do you have to do on Normal difficulty to get an Ai to speak to you so you can propose peace?

(2 Cont) Part of a functional diplomacy system is the model it portrays among the AI players as well as the human. Many games (Master of Orion, Civilization, etc.) have a diplomacy page which should the web of relationships among all players to include treaties, war, peace etc. How often on Normal difficulty do you see the AI players declare War on each other?

(4) The new MoM AI is better than the old. In the age of constantly online games it is possible to gather strategy from the entire player base to train an AI to be better rather than just limiting the number of cycles/ time of calculation based on difficulty level. Cheating should be kept to a minimum and clearly visible to the player. New players will assume they are doing something wrong as the AIs will all be way ahead of them due to cheating. I noticed that the AI does move ranged units back each turn to increase the distance between themselves and other melee troops. That is an improvement over the original, but I suspect it is hard coded. Other improvements are possible.

(6) Thanks for setting the record straight for the community.

(9) When I think of loot tables and random drops, my mind wanders to Diablo series. They have sophisticated loot tables, but you do get a lot of junk items you have to sell. I have noticed some spell effect items with no other bonuses. I was able to purchase ~3k gold an axe of only "Haste" fairly early in the game which dramatically empowered my Gunther Hero. If the AI is going to get these items will the Devs at least change the code so that when artifact carrying heroes dies the victor gets their artifacts? That is supposed to happen according to the printed manual. If adjustments cannot be made then you have convinced me that random artifacts do more harm than good.

[brasidas2000]

One major con for me is that the tactical terrain has no combat modifiers unlike the original.

[thelebk]

I don't recall the original game adding tactical combat modifiers, only a move penalty for rough terrain.

[Xeth Nyrrow]

Originally posted by thelebk:

(2) So if they declare war on you when do you get an option to speak to them again and raise the topic of peace? I have never declared war on the AI, but they will never speak to me after they declare war on me. That said when they go to war with me I aggressively seek to take their cities. My mindset is Sid Meir's Civilization where the AI is more likely to agree to peace if you have taken some of their assets and are in a position to take more. What exactly do you have to do on Normal difficulty to get an Ai to speak to you so you can propose peace?

There are a few factors, first of which is you have to not further upset them such as hunting down their cities after they declare war on you will, LOL. I haven't looked much in to the modifiers but you being stronger (I think mostly via army size), time elapsed and distance from their territory all contribute to them asking for peace and/or treaties. As for Normal difficult vs others I only play Master except sometimes Easy to test things. I can tell you that the higher the difficulty, the more exponential the bad effects are on diplomacy are. It likely takes dozens of turns even on normal difficulty unless you have Aura of Majesty and/or the Charismatic trait.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(2 Cont) Part of a functional diplomacy system is the model it portrays among the AI players as well as the human. Many games (Master of Orion, Civilization, etc.) have a diplomacy page which should the web of relationships among all players to include treaties, war, peace etc. How often on Normal difficulty do you see the AI players declare War on each other?

Even in the original MoM game, diplomacy was mostly an after thought. I really doubt we'll see anything detailed in the way of diplomacy being added. It would be nice to add an allied victory condition (especially if multiplayer was added) but it goes against the grain of the very limited story of the game. Also diplomacy only helps the player and not the AI, making the game easier for the player.

Originally posted by thelebk:

, making the game easier for him/her.(4) The new MoM AI is better than the old. In the age of constantly online games it is possible to gather strategy from the entire player base to train an AI to be better rather than just limiting the number of cycles/ time of calculation based on difficulty level. Cheating should be kept to a minimum and clearly visible to the player. New players will assume they are doing something wrong as the AIs will all be way ahead of them due to cheating. I noticed that the AI does move ranged units back each turn to increase the distance between themselves and other melee troops. That is an improvement over the original, but I suspect it is hard coded. Other improvements are possible.

No, cheating should never be obvious to the player if possible because then it feels unfair. The, "cheating" is done in games like this via resource buffs as they are a lot less visible, giving the illusion of fairness. As for making a learning AI this is a dev team with 6 people and not a lot of money. Even a huge AAA studio doesn't have the time/money to develop a solid AI. A lot of people don't even want the AI to be that strong either, such as why are you playing on normal and not master? :)

Originally posted by thelebk:

(9) When I think of loot tables and random drops, my mind wanders to Diablo series. They have sophisticated loot tables, but you do get a lot of junk items you have to sell. I have noticed some spell effect items with no other bonuses. I was able to purchase ~3k gold an axe of only "Haste" fairly early in the game which dramatically empowered my Gunther Hero. If the AI is going to get these items will the Devs at least change the code so that when artifact carrying heroes dies the victor gets their artifacts? That is supposed to happen according to the printed manual. If adjustments cannot be made then you have convinced me that random artifacts do more harm than good.

I don't think they have commented on if they plan to allow items from defeated heroes to be obtained by the victor or not but several people have requested this change. You too can get these same items from lairs and merchants which is how the AI gets them though. It doesn't matter personally for me but I rather would just like to see the odd OP items go away which thankfully mods made possible.

[thelebk]

@ Xeph My thoughts:

(2) War is a fundamentally human endeavor which involves an irreconcilable clash of wills. By its very nature it utilizes coercion to force a desired political end state. An adversary who pays no cost for a war historically is emboldened and extends and conducts additional wars. The idea that if you don't fight back an enemy will "make peace with you" is ludicrous and largely unsupported by history even in the modern era. Nations make peace when the costs to continue a war outweigh the potential benefits. This is even true of nations which have a decisive conventional advantage versus their foes! If an AI declares a war and then loses quite a bit relative to what they can gain it should pursue peace with that party whether it is AI or human. You say it "likely" takes dozens of turns of leaving an AI at war with you alone to make peace. Is this only hypothetical or have you actually made peace with AIs in the game after they declared war on you? If the primary factor is relative Army strength then peace is effectively impossible with the AI for the first half of the game due to the AI cheating. After that is likely irrelevant as the human will steamroll the AI save on higher difficulty levels.

(2 cont) The original MoM was MUCH more diplomatically active, and the AIs used it to their advantage as much or more so than the human players. Treaties were fairly common. If you got a rival to "relaxed" relation they would usually accept a trade or research treaty. The next relationship level would start to open Wizard Pacts. In the remake the AIs have refused all treaties even on higher relationship status and even when more beneficial to them than the human player. The AIs in the original MoM frequently went to war with one another and alliances were constantly shifting. One of the most devious diplomatic tricks of the AI would be to offer the human an alliance, then declare war on another wizard placing the human player at war with said wizard, then the AI would immediately make peace with said wizard leaving the human all alone in a war they would not have chosen. AIs also often formed alliances against the human player when the Human became more dominant than other wizards. Diplomacy may have been an after thought in the Original MoM but it was much better implemented IMHO. In fairness of course MUHA is still working this aspect.

(4) MUHA has done a fantastic job with this game given their small development team and limited budget. I hope they have made use of Kickstarter to raise additional funds-- they deserve the money. I'm not sure how many players would truly care that there was a correction factor on the graphs which shows the AI levels with and without their off board bonus resources. After all, those who play on Hard and Master are looking for a challenge and don't expect the game to be fair. At normal there is an expectation of balance. Using knowledge graphs to train an AI costs ~200k. Its a lot less expensive than it needs to be. In the original MoM my favorite difficulty setting was "Hard". Godlike removed too many strategies reducing replay value for me and led to too many reloads when a single bad roll rendered the game unwinnable. I'm on my second play through of the remake so am happy at normal until I have a better sense of what to expect. That said it is far easier to dumb down an AI than to make it smart. A smart AI would not be a problem for the casual player as you can easily add incremental handicaps to bracket into difficulty levels.

(9) Unless I misread the PDF manual that come with the game it states that hero artifacts go to the victor when they are defeated. That was certainly the case in the original MoM, though of limited value due to the tiny fortress item vault. Big kudos to Muha for making more storage! Printed manuals are typically out of date though as a game evolves. Does the remake have all of the spells of the original? I don't think I saw the "guises" spell from the original MoM in the Sorcery spell list for instance.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on exploring and conquering magical worlds.

[Xeth Nyrrow]

Originally posted by thelebk:

@ Xeph My thoughts:

(2) War is a fundamentally human endeavor ...snip

This is a game not a philosophy class, LOL. About the question you asked, I cast several Aura of Majesty spells over a few turns and that was enough to change the AI's mind. I was only testing that the mechanic works, not how long it would take.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(2 cont) The original MoM was MUCH more diplomatically active, and the AIs used it to their advantage as much or more so than the human players. ...snip

I think you are grossly over stating the old AI's competence by saying it acted in a cunning manner. It was likely just evaluating if it's better to ally or not based on a few factors like the new version does and it didn't care if the wizard was human or another AI. Regardless, allying with AI benefits the player far more often with trade capabilities than any other strategic value.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(4) ... Kickstarter ... AI ... casual player

The AI is already hard enough for a lot of players. There's actually not enough variance in the AI levels right now I feel. As for funding more development, the game is paid for by a publisher (Slitherine) who holds the rights to MoM so funding would be from them.

Originally posted by thelebk:

(9) Unless I misread the PDF manual that come with the game it states that hero artifacts go to the victor when they are defeated.

Aside from manuals often containing wrong info (and the new one does have some wrong info), it's something they either planned to do but changed their mind, plan add it at a later date, or just forgot. It's another way to make the game easier for the player usually but it feels good/right to have happen.

[drake178]

Originally posted by thelebk:

Unless I misread the PDF manual that come with the game it states that hero artifacts go to the victor when they are defeated. That was certainly the case in the original MoM...

Sorry to butt in, but while that's technically correct, in the original Simtex versions of the game (v1.0 - v1.31), the only way an AI could ever get a magical item is if they took it by force from the human player's heroes, and even then, they would only be able to keep it if they had a hero of their own that could immediately equip it. It wasn't until the unofficial patches nearly 20 years later, that the AI became able to successfully cast the item crafting spells, loot items from lairs, or actually get one from The Gift event.

Originally posted by thelebk:

I don't think I saw the "guises" spell from the original MoM in the Sorcery spell list for instance.

The way I understand it, the remake is based mostly on v1.31, the last official patch from Simtex. Guises was removed in v1.2, with Guardian Wind becoming a common spell, and Blur the new uncommon replacement. That's why you won't find Blur in the printed Spellbook, while Guardian Wind is listed as uncommon.

Originally posted by thelebk:

Change Terrain ... allowed the player to customize production levels for cities and allowing the building line starting with the miners guild (requires a hill or mountain to construct) to be created.

I realise you've finished discussing this already, but you implied here that Change Terrain is enough to build a Miners' Guild where you otherwise can't, which is not true. By contrast, Raise Volcano can accomplish this on its own, without Change Terrain. At least, that is how it is in the original MoM. Volcanoes qualify for the Miners' Guild even before they revert to mountains.