I like this game, but it runs very slow. A turn takes over 10 seconds to process. Sometimes longer than 15, and this is early in the game.

I don't have a lot of time with the remake, since I didn't want to exceed the 2 hour return limit. I do have a lot of time with the original, though I don't necessarily remember everything since it was decades ago.

It's a faithful remake of a game from 29 years ago. That's the problem. Design in Civ-like games has come a *long* way since then. Master of Magic is an old, old design, and it shows. It was released before Civilization 2, and the economic aspects are not really as good as Civ 1, let alone something like Civ 5 or 6.

City-building is simple, the economic impact terrain is mostly minor bonuses (except for the special resources like Mithril), and citizen management is just number of farmers vs number of workers. Even that is uninteresting micromanagement, since most of the time you want to just barely produce as much food as you need, since surplus food nets you very little. You still have to fiddle with that occasionally since food demand changes.

I no longer much care for the economic balance, which makes building up very, very slow. It's a combination of unit upkeep being very high compared to production, which means you can barely afford 4 units in the early game, and production times for city improvements being very expensive compared to early production, so that goes slowly too.

Combat is far better and more complex than those early games, but it hasn't aged well either. There are problems like every unit getting an unlimited number of counter attacks, which means a single high-value unit can slaughter any number of weaker melee units. Other games with similar combat systems switched to 1 retaliation per turn a long, long time ago.

Master of Magic's combat rules for attack strength, armor, resistance, and actual damage done aren't all that obvious, and this update doesn't bother to provide any kind of tooltip telling you what is likely to happen, or why. You really have to look at all the stats and do the math yourself, by hand, if you want to predict the likely outcome of an attack.

Master of Magic's strength was always the wide variety of fantasy units and the spells, but it's no longer the only Civ-like game with those features. Frankly, Age of Wonders 4 feels a LOT like a seriously updated version of the original Master of Magic, much more so than any other game in that series. It does most of what this game attempts to do, but does it much better.

It's a nice game, and very close to the original. That said, there has been so many advancements in the 4X genre in the 30+ years of game making since MoM first came out, and I did miss much of those. Many times, I felt like I was bored and the game has become a chore -- which was my signal to delete it.

In one example: I was by far the strongest player, printing money, generating mana, pumping out mithril halflings etc. and I'm trying to take down one of the players, who have built a very nice tall stronghold. I can't really take it down, it can't do anything else, we stood there watching one another for 20 turns, during which I took all other cities of the player. The only possible way to end that stalemate was me sending maybe 5 full stacks to death before clearing the remaining enemy with my hero, and preparing for that would have been another 20-40 turns at the least. Games like Civilization (or HoMM) have much more elegant solutions that simulate a real siege like this, e.g. in Civ, you can't gain any production from enemy occupied tiles, which starve you out over time, e.g. in HoMM, if you're stripped down to your single castle, you can't have sufficient resources to even build your weekly production, and an enemy can take you out much easier. What's the purpose of me spending several hours to formally win a game that I clearly am winning?!

I have played MoM for many years. One of the first games I ever played. I have bought many copies over the years of the OG game. Payed full price to support this game franchise. Thank you for the many years of game play. I love the much needed upgrades to the artwork, AI, game mechanics and what I haven't discovered yet. I have been surprised by how much you have listened to the fans/feedback to make improvements to the game. THANK YOU! My rating of this game is 10/10. In my opinion pricing is too steep. If you are new to franchise. Worth it. I will continue to play this game FOREVER. That's how good the replay ability is. (30+ years of playing)

the A.I in this game doesnt feel right