Using Hex... and other things

[Suule]

I might be in the minority here but I feel that adopting Master of Magic to a hex grid looks very 'off'. I know it is to capture the potential Civ crowd (just like the original did to me), but if we are to get a proper remake, please consider it being squares instead of hexes.

Plus the way it looked (cause how hard it was to distinguish the tactical mode from strategic mode), like your usual unit stacks were not present (or at least not telegraphed correctly), making me think that in effort to remove Doomstacks like in Civ5/6.

I'd rather the devs not stray from the original far - keep the squares instead of hexes, keep some of the micro management in regards to your towns etc. I'm already seeing familiar entries in the spellbooks in the provided screenshots so I'm at least happy there's that.

But please - the main draw of Master of Magic was that chaotic mess with spellbooks brimming with unbalanced spells that made creative minds explore newer and newer combos. Balancing the game towards MP or the "Casual Civ player" will kill its charm.

[hernang.ortiz]

I dont care about hexes and im happy it is not meant for multiplayer (to keep asymmetric rough balance with powerful conbos)That being said, purposely leaving things horribly unbalanced with half the spells being useless, 3/4 or summons being trash, and a few auto-win strategies would be horrible for gameplay

[drake178]

Originally posted by Suule:

... please consider it being squares instead of hexes.

I'm afraid you're a year too late[www.realmsbeyond.net] to that party.

[Kikker]

Hexes because of Civ fans? Doesn't Civ have square grid? Anyway, I doubt that Civ is target auditory at all considering Civ players are casual players who would not play any games with tactical battles, not mentioning fantasy, that common people hate. Also, it's Slitherine and MuHa, their games are products of love they don't seek cheap popularity.

[Troy]

The hex grid is just standard nowadays. And also they've added a build queue to the city screen. I think both of these changes are great for the game. If you want to be that strict of a purist, you can just buy the original and play that.

[Jean-Luc]

Hexes are simply better. They don't have the diagonal movement issues of squares and look more organic. They've become the norm with good reason.

[Kruyurk]

Originally posted by Jean-Luc:

Hexes are simply better. They don't have the diagonal movement issues of squares and look more organic. They've become the norm with good reason.

I don't have any issues with hexes, but square cells can also work pretty well if diagonal movement is allowed. The Fields of Glory 2 games use a square grid where diagonal moves cost a bit more "action points" than non-diagonal moves. I agree that hexes are simpler to implement because it solves the problem just because of the shape of the cells, but I think reducing the issue to "hex = good, square = bad" or "hexes are always preferable" will only reduce the diversity of games.

A parallel could be drawn with turn-based games versus real-time with pause. Some people despise RTwP (in RPGs for example) because some games implemented it poorly. I fully agree that some RTwP games would have easily been better if the creators went for TB, for example with the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale). But that doesn't mean any game that attempts RTwP will be inferior, even if it is harder to make a good one than to make a TB game.

I hope that developers will not be scared in the future to try to make squared cells based or RTwP games because of people automatically assuming that they chose the wrong option.

[Troy]

If you really want squares, you can get Planar Conquest. It's an adequate MoM clone.

[drake178]

Originally posted by Troy_Costisick:

If you really want squares, you can get Planar Conquest. It's an adequate MoM clone.

That's a subjective opinion with which I strongly disagree. It is also my experience reading this and other forums that only a small minority of MoM players actually consider Planar Conquest to be an "adequate" clone.