Why talk only about MoM? At your command i'll say that it was all good and absolytely no wrath-inspiring by all of economic system which horrid twisted version was then made into Civ by evil Sid, the magic system felt as genuine and the AI that wasnt doing something more stupid than low-level waves. My only disappointment through all the game was when Werewolves spell turned out to be buggy, and i quit it only after used all spells and have succeeded with a herosteamroll "strategy" at Impossible few times a row.

But there also are:

- the Age of Wonders, which i consider being better than MoM for athmosphere and design

- the Fall from Heaven II (and its modmods with their abundance of truly great things upon the base of horrid civ4 ruleset, and outright profanities of some hamsters; i expect that... BEING shaped Demigod shall heavily influence also the Elemental)

- King Arthur the Wargame which i would have played for weeks in freemode if only such thing would have existed

- and Sacrifice, don't overlook the Sacrifice just because its not a TBS! "Souls" as a resource)))

It's coming in the upcoming expansion.

Currently my favorite game is Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, but I think a "modern" version of MoM (with a map/campaign editor, modding capabilities, multiplayer, better AI and fixed bugs, graphics is not important for me) would beat it.

  "Why talk only about MoM?"-well Rainbowsand, the reason is because thats the topic of the thread.  The OP has already stated many times that there are many great games of the past (an maybe present) that Stardock will beg, borrow or steal for Elemental to make it as great as possible.  Of that list of great games of the past, MoM, is one of the core games in which they looked at for inspiration for their own game.  Hope you played MoM post patch but it doesn't sound like it.  Especially if you think Age of Wonders was better.  I played both fairly extensively and (IMO) MoM is a superior product by far.  I enjoyed Age of Wonders don't get me wrong.  It just wasn't as good a game. 

  Now as far as AoW2, I hear that was much improved over the first and have yet to play it.

  Its funny that after all these years there are still many of us playing MoM over DosBox.  I heard(don't know if its true) GoG is going to re-release MoM.  If so, I would recommend to anybody who still hasn't seen or heard this game to get the download and patch.  Remember it's an old game now and the graphics will be very simple and dated, but the way the game is structured makes it one of the very best of all time.  There are still going to be many little annoyances when you play because even after being patched it still had some problems which have been covered by many others.  I still recommend the game highly.

Instead of AoW2 better try AoW: Shadow Magic, it's a standalone expansion to it (and install the unofficial patch, which I was involved in making :))

I've been trying to get AoW:SM for ages but can't get hold of a copy for love nor money (I tried both).

  Will be doing that _PawelS_.  I heard Shadow Magic was pretty fun.  Its just one of many really good games I haven't gotten around to yet.  Same with the Fall From Heaven 2 mod.  Don't know when, just someday..    I am trying to stay away from Dwarf Fortress also until the 'right' time for me.  These days in gaming I'm usually showin up to the party after all the other revelers are leaving out the front door.

I loved Shadow Magic, but it wasn't nearly as good as MoM.  Random things on the map have no rhyme or reason to their placement, they are just thrown wherever.  There's no immersion, either, imho.   MoM had immersion, you had a distinct empire with boundaries.  In SM, any unit from any faction can simply walk through your lands, there are no continents or ships, (I don't remember if you can build a ship or not, but there's no need to if you can.)  I do like being able to enslave good heroes and force them to fight for me (I always play an evil vampire lord).  I think I recruited 3 or 4 good heroes from inns in my current game.  Gotta be careful with 'em though, or they'll turn.

The tactical battle is the shit though.  Being able to use 4 full stacks of units in a single tact. battle, hitting a city from all 4 sides, using cannons & catapults & whatever else you can get your hands on.

The diversity of untis & abilities, and the tactical battle are what make that game good.  Everything else about it is just mediocre, imo.  And the item creation system is downright terrible.

FYI.

MoM was just released at Gog.com!!!

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/master_of_magic/

Yes they did. Had to get it, it'll be nice to play alongside Elemental beta while waiting for the finished game

So does this version from GoG:

1) Include the latet patched version

2) not require DOSBOX to run?

How is this good news? Something that was once free to the public is getting sold again.

I think it is good news since it costs peanuts, is ready patched and bundled with dosbox so that you have to do no fiddling whatsoever to play it Just install, click shortcut, and vóila. This at least on my WinXP machine, no idea about Vista/7...

Works fine on Vista x64. It does run under DosBox but is already configured.

• Heroes with RPG-like abilities, equipment, advancement
• Customizable items for those heroes
• Random maps with rich strategic terrain
• Customizable 'side' (combination of self and starting side)
• Complex unpredictable combat (but see below)
• Wide variety of units, spells, etc.
• All this led to HUGE REPLAY VALUE

Stand-out problems:

• Weak tactical AI
• Poor difficulty scaling (basically a huge effect on the early game and all the same if you survived the early game)
• Happiness vs. unrest, food supply systems a little too simple.
• "One true build order" for cities most of the game. Should be more situational.
• Related: Balance issues - heroes, especially 'hero stacks' and a few summoned units became vastly overpowered compared to anything the AI could come up with - you rarely if ever saw an enemy hero with even two items, for example.
• Limited terrain variety/effects in tactical combat
• No diplomatic continuity (allies would break and go to war apparently suddenly)
• No modeling of chain of supply/national boundaries/etc. - there was no drawback to scry-and-die on an enemy capital if they became a threat. You (and moreso the AI) had to defend each city against a fast-moving army independently.
  • Magic roads exacerbated this.
• No multi-player (out of the box, at least)
• Some things encouraged reload syndrome - e.g. trying a battle out hoping you'd win, avoiding it if not, in the early game. Reloading after a hero or critical city fell or an alliance broke. Not saying that won't be the reaction, but making these things somewhat easier to anticipate and either avoid or react to reduces it.

I just got this gem of a game from gog and it still rocks.

Good stuff:

• Wizard customization
• Exciting Exploration with dangerous encounters and worthwile rewards
• Global spells give an epic feel
• Heroes and units level up which rewards keeping them alive
• City building and management includes meaningful choices but isn't overly complicated
• Power distributed into mana, research and skill which gives you even more wizard customization
• Item creation for heroes

Good old Master of Magic, probably my favorite strategy game of all times.  It's actually how I heard about Stardock back in 2004ish.  There was a rumor of a sequal in the works by stardock.  To bad it never came to be .

Elemental is looking like it has the potential to dethrone MoM as my favorite strategy game, let's see if it happens

AoW: SM is a much better game overall imo, but needless to say, MoM is still is on my HDD.

I have made an unofficial v1.40 patch for The Master of Magic (still in development), if anyone's interested:

http://www.dragonsword.com/forum/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=116


Download, report or discuss on the webpage, enjoy.

Nice thread.

Wow - how much mana did that resurrection cost you?

zero. There is no resurrection in EWOM

You can't resurrect MoM. It's been alive for the last 15 years because there hasn't been a MoM-killer game, yet.
WoM is the first game I believe has a chance to finish it off once it's completed. =P

Same reason why Diablo 2 is still out and about. There have been... let's say more than a few attempts to release "the Diablo 2 killer" but not a single one succeeded. They had HiRes, HyperRes, TrueColour, BetterThanLifeColour... bzzzzt. Fail. Fail. Fail.

And the graphics aren't that bad really. A big mistake is to run old games in true full screen. Today's monitors are a lot bigger (and the display often sharper!) than back yonder so I suggest to tweak DosBox to display it centered on the monitor with a fat black border. Then you can't see every single pixel any more and the graphics become at least 2x as good. =P

My list

• wizard customization--risk reward for specializing in one school
• unique races--had to play each race different differently
• world changing magic--global enchantments could alter the game completely
• battlefield enchantments--battle field enchantments could salvage a no win situation
• really like how the nodes effected spells and creatures.  helped the same school and hurt others
• Heroes--customizing with items (with a limit on it) plus they gained experience by guarding cities.  Some were better at traveling and some were better at protect cities.  However, if I had a hero for a long time and made special items for them, it really sucked when they were killed.
• easy city management, but also had a big affect on the game.  Gnolls were so hard to play because their cities were worthless
• not worried about balance--this was probably the most unbalanced game in history and it was great because of it.  I think today's games worry to much about balance because of multiplayer.  Hurts single player gaming.
• Completely random starting--your starting position could be absolutely awful.  made it fun