Max 4 AI Wizards?

[Brenil]

I'll say upfront that I'm enjoying this game more than I thought I would prior to purchasing it. I never played the original Master of Magic, but I have played some of its more recent clones, such as the Elemental series, Planar Conquest, Age of Wonders 2 & 3, and a number of other 4X games I won't bother to list.

My opinion so far is pretty positive with a significant but:

Why can you only choose to fight against 4 AI opponents?

The obvious answer might be, "Because it was like that in the original."

Okay, well that's all well and good, I'm sure the original had its reasons for such limitations (I suspect they were technical), but what is the reason that - this - version of MoM only allows 4 AI opponents?

There is no hardware limitations here and the size of the maps (even small is quite large) positively scream for more AI. Add to this the Myrror realm and you have five people (including you) spread across a very large map AND its mirror realm on another plane. This is just quite outrageous, because it leads to the AI city spamming like no tomorrow. I won't speak on - how - the AI is able to city spam so aggressively (cheats, cough, cough), but the result is AI having 20-30+ cities a piece on a SMALL map. I cannot even fathom what tedium the game would be like on a large map.

And ultimately that is my issue with such limited AI numbers. The tedium of fighting one as they are now. You chase them around the map gobbling up their cities in hopes of - finally - eliminating them. If you had the option to have a sizable amount of AI opponents, they would fight each other and keep each other in some sort of check.

I say all that to ask this simple question. Why can't we have more than 4 opponents? The game is great right now, but this one issue is single-handedly exhausting me and I have absolutely no desire to play a game on any map larger than small at the moment; and that's a shame because I generally like playing long haul large maps in 4X games. Just not ones that have me chasing my already defeated opponent to the ends of the earth to find his 47th 5k pop hovel.

[Syrris]

"Because that's how it was in the original," is likely to be the first answer.


The second is that it has to work on any size of map, and the smallest one would get very crowded with more.

Myrror isn't exactly a solution and may actually end up being a problem: there's only one Myrran wizard by default, and getting the plane more or less to themselves is part of the advantage, so you'd not only be stuck with an increasingly-overcrowded Arcanus, but the Myrran wizard would be in a better and better position the worse Arcanus became.

These sorts of things could be addressed - more wizards, including ones with the Myrran trait; an additional plane (the manual alludes to this as a possibility) to give more real estate; etc. That's probably going to be lower on the priority list than other gameplay issues.


Another consideration would be the difficulty of managing global and city enchantments; the number of them that you could end up with active at once might be problematic, or conversely, it might become unreasonably difficult to keep any good ones going due to the number of opposing dispels being thrown around.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Syrris:

"Because that's how it was in the original," is likely to be the first answer.

It probably is the only answer.

[WadeStar]

Any update on this? This is the main reason I haven't bought the game already.

[Waterd103]

Actually even on very small 4 wizards is too little imo, becaues the planes, one wizard is on the pane and then 4 are on top, for the 4 on top the size is fine but then you have a massive plane for the myrran,
I think even on very small you can have 7 opponent ai, so you have 4 wizards on arcanus and 3 on myrran.

[eddieballgame]

For me, the best way to play this is on a Very Small map. There is plenty of room for the 5 Wizards.
I edited 2 xml files that now have 5 Wizards with the Myrran Trait, so now am getting more than 1 on the Myrror Plane quite frequently.
I will add, setting the AI Neutrals to Max is the way to go. imho

[sIg3b]

I don´t see why at least a large map couldn´t accomodate 6-8 Wizards.
That doesn´t change the spirit of the game at all, so even as a hardcore purist I am not opposed to this proposal.

[Brenil]

I've put more hours into this game and it has only solidified my opinion. There is no reason to play any map bigger than a small map unless you love grinding down the same opponent for hours on end.

Likewise, with only four AI opponents (one stuck in the Myrror realm), diplomacy (such as it is) becomes less important to the overall game and it's just a giant battle royale without pause.

[ashbery76]

Yep more Wizards please.

[Durak]

Would also like to have more wizards.

[lutten]

Originally posted by Brenil:

I'll say upfront that I'm enjoying this game more than I thought I would prior to purchasing it. I never played the original Master of Magic, but I have played some of its more recent clones, such as the Elemental series, Planar Conquest, Age of Wonders 2 & 3, and a number of other 4X games I won't bother to list.

My opinion so far is pretty positive with a significant but:

Why can you only choose to fight against 4 AI opponents?

The obvious answer might be, "Because it was like that in the original."

Okay, well that's all well and good, I'm sure the original had its reasons for such limitations (I suspect they were technical), but what is the reason that - this - version of MoM only allows 4 AI opponents?

There is no hardware limitations here and the size of the maps (even small is quite large) positively scream for more AI. Add to this the Myrror realm and you have five people (including you) spread across a very large map AND its mirror realm on another plane. This is just quite outrageous, because it leads to the AI city spamming like no tomorrow. I won't speak on - how - the AI is able to city spam so aggressively (cheats, cough, cough), but the result is AI having 20-30+ cities a piece on a SMALL map. I cannot even fathom what tedium the game would be like on a large map.

And ultimately that is my issue with such limited AI numbers. The tedium of fighting one as they are now. You chase them around the map gobbling up their cities in hopes of - finally - eliminating them. If you had the option to have a sizable amount of AI opponents, they would fight each other and keep each other in some sort of check.

I say all that to ask this simple question. Why can't we have more than 4 opponents? The game is great right now, but this one issue is single-handedly exhausting me and I have absolutely no desire to play a game on any map larger than small at the moment; and that's a shame because I generally like playing long haul large maps in 4X games. Just not ones that have me chasing my already defeated opponent to the ends of the earth to find his 47th 5k pop hovel.

This....This....This, did i say that more than once????

[WadeStar]

Is there any explanation or roadmap from the devs on this topic? That's what I want to know. If they are *never* going to increase the AI opponents I'd like to just know now and stop bothering.

[[*~MAJA~*] Mandragoron]

I guess a mod will add this feature.

[Brenil]

It's been six months since I posted this original question. Has anything changed or the devs responded to this issue?

[Heckin' computer]

Originally posted by Brenil:

It's been six months since I posted this original question. Has anything changed or the devs responded to this issue?

They've responded that it is original and therefore a canon choice which I buy.

I also think the AI workup underway now to improve their performance is front-burner.

Also, this is for a variety of reasons *not easy to do* being, paraphrasing a bit (this is not verbatim, note) that they're a bit hard-coded to operate as 4+1 at maximum at present.

I too kinda would like to see it but honestly the AIs being beefier, more cast-y, and also featuring richer and more varied diplomacy would be a greater win imo.

PS As an aside, cheaper route :practicality in implementing (probably,) let's have an option to slot in a new AI opponent when one is defeated (1:1, so 8 total opponents if each is given one replacement.) This would require certain pre-populated spells per Turn Count, taking remaining neutral cities or un-populated territories and plopping a few pre-popped/built towns down to give fighting chances to the replacement wizzes. It'd certainly spice up the dynamics of mid/late game. Of course this pre-supposed some advanced scripting support. Stuff I hope they'll be working on at some point.

The only thing more tantalizing a thought than a MoM game is the thought of playing actual MoM scenarios.

[Yuuki]

Hi, sorry for missing this thread all this time. Hecki'computer actually answered the question pretty accurately. So yes, 1. the initial decision to have 4 enemy Wizards was based purely on original MoM. And yes, a lot of the stuff related to the number of enemies is hard coded, hence the difficulty in expanding this feature. 2. Yes, in hindsight, we should have thought ahead more, in terms of the possibilities to chamge this, but MoM is an extremely complex game, so I am afraid this issue sunk under the weight of many others. 3. We do not have current plans to change this, however, such a possibility was discussed and so we will revisit this issue after our current roadmad is closer to full completion .
Sorry for any dissapointment in this regard.
And as always, thank you for all the feedback and engagement!