The one thing I find about simtex and a lesser extent Civ & smac is that the AI has personality.

It is one thing lacking in stardock games.

While it is better technically it lacks the feel of the older games.

I find the mom ai more fun to play against while they might make some stupid mistakes they have character!

Please add some personality to your ais!

Hrrm... Wish I would have noticed that conversations about basic game design were still going on 6 months before release. Would have saved me a tough choice of only getting 75% value back with a refund, or waiting to see if it gets better.

Master of Magic is my favorite game of all time. Nothing has ever surpassed it as far as I'm concerned. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is a good game with newer graphics, but it doesn't compare with MoM.

I haven't purchased MoM from Good Old Games yet. I still play the original DOS version I purchased back in 1994 on my Vista PC using DOSBox.

The reason I got interested in Elemental: War of Magic in the first place was that it was to have been Master of Magic 2. Maybe someday...

Another thing about Age of Wonders vs Master of Magic is it took away too much of the army feel of the game and made it more of an RPG romp than a fantasy stragety wargame. Nary a unit is a regiment they are all individuals and playing a stack in AOW felt more like playing a Gold Box RPG game.

Fortunately Elemental brings the army stacks back again. 10 units with 10+ members per unit.  A regiment of fighting units that feels like a regiment of fighting units instead of "Frodo goes to Mt. Doom w/friends" like AOW did it.

Of course the other thing is AOW ai was terrible just pitiful and no challenge whatsoever. At least MOM challenged me and sometimes sent me into the abyss on higher difficulties and major magic. AOW:SM is also TOO DARK I can hardly see my units and stacks and just plain ole stuff on the maps. I don't know why they think playing in the BLACK is fun? The Shadow Realm was the worst. Plus the ai in AOW never used Pioneers/settler types like MOM does. Hell even Lords of Magic is better than AOW:SM

The AI in Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic can be a challenge, though it requires work on the part of the map maker to optimize the map so the AI will play it well. A number of its other problems are caused by the AI not calculating the value of spell/units correctly (such as pioneers) and there are mods that fix this (such as giving pioneers some minor combat value). Really the only thing that cannot be fixed that makes it suck is it fails in tactical combat.

And what is this about too dark? I never had trouble finding things that were not hidden.