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Old 15-04-2010, 09:27 PM   #721
esgmaster
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Don't forget Shadow Demons.

I think death is mostly a "swarm the enemy with zombies/skeletons until he dies" approach.
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Old 16-04-2010, 03:32 AM   #722
Pex
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I think I mentioned before that this is one of those games where the beginning is the hardest part of the game. I'm sure some of you will agree with me. Once you conquer a few cities and get yourself a decent army (including some heroes), you can overcame the advantage the computer players have due to increased difficulty level. Because, once you do that, the average AI kicks in. So, imo, the difficult part in playing with different magic realms is what spells you'd have available at the beginning. After 200 turns you'd be equally strong no matter what your choices at the beginning were - you'll only need to vary approach at winning the game a bit.

I'm playing with life now, but with a couple of books in chaos. I've already defeated Sharee (she had strong Death magic and some chaos in this game) and Jaffar (almost exclusively sorcery). Sharee's ghouls were no match for my hell hounds supported by some swordsmen and pikemen, while although Jaffar had 3 storm giants in his capital, a mix of archery units (longbowmen, javelinners, shamans) with Heroism spell on them was enough to bring him down. Both wizards were stronger than me at the beginning, but kept wasting their troops sending them in small waves against a well defended (and otherwise quite unimportant) cities of mine. To be honest, now that I've cleared the main land mass that I'm on of enemy wizards, I don't feel continuing to play anymore - it's just a matter of time before I find and destroy the other two.

Btw, a couple of things that annoy me - enemy wizards can have their troops flee from combat even during my turn. For example, I bait their hero with a single unit of spearmen, but then I cast phantom warriors and they flee. The other thing is that although their ability screen says that they don't have any mana left, they're still able to cast spells in combat.
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Old 16-04-2010, 11:31 AM   #723
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Pex, as kyrub hinted at earlier there is a new active MoM site at dragonsword.com

Among other things, we're host to two large scale MoM projects. kyrub is making an ambitious patch that improves AI + interface and fixes most bugs. I'm working on a mod that rebalances the game for more interesting gameplay (the balance is crazy broken in the vanilla version). We're also starting up various other features, and have active discussions about strategies.

It's definitely a flaw in the game that it's only difficult in the beginning. I think a lot of this is to do with the stack cap of 9 units, the human player can work around this limitation far better than the AI, who keeps using random sub-optimal units. Also, costs are generally low so you can get killer stacks fairly quickly. Heroes also work out much better for the human player, AI rarely uses them in an effective manner. One boring implication of this (as you correctly noted) is that early spells matter far more than late spells.

I'm planning on remedying these problems and more through rebalancing, and kyrub is working on remedying the poor AI. Combined, I think these two projects will make MoM a blast to play once more. And if you're a purist who prefers the original settings, kyrub's patch will function independently of mine.
                       
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Old 16-04-2010, 01:29 PM   #724
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kyrubb View Post
Wraiths are rare spell, they come later in the game (or immediately if you have 11 death books, as I hinted). Until you can cast wraiths, you have almost nothing to live with. No cheapy good spell a la Heroism, Confusion... No good summons.

That is why I find Death hard.
Good catch, I meant shadow demons (it's been 2-3 years since I played the game, so my memories are a bit rusty)
They're not cheap either but it doesn't take that terribly long to save up some 325 mana points (of course depending on your picks, this is the figure I remember) and pay for the maintenance. I've found even single units to be really useful, potentially helped by a few non-magical ground troops. Especially with their regeneration skills... :thumbs:
But it's true that until that time you only have very mediocre skeletons and zombies.
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Old 16-04-2010, 02:36 PM   #725
Pex
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Originally Posted by -Catwalk- View Post
Pex, as kyrub hinted at earlier there is a new active MoM site at dragonsword.com
...
I'm planning on remedying these problems and more through rebalancing, and kyrub is working on remedying the poor AI. Combined, I think these two projects will make MoM a blast to play once more. And if you're a purist who prefers the original settings, kyrub's patch will function independently of mine.
Sounds like a good plan. I'll keep an eye on your site for the patches. It's a great game in so many aspects and it could only become better with some of those issues fixed.
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Old 16-04-2010, 05:43 PM   #726
yoga
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Nice dialog for nice game..

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Old 20-04-2010, 04:22 AM   #727
Nivm
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I can't wait for the patch!

Observations and Questions:
It gets tedious after a while, but I've noticed that most of the time, 1-3 figures in towns can be taken of the current project to farm without changing the time until it's finished. Also, don't forget your refund after buying any building! When the bar is full, or near full, you can put everyone on farming for that last month.
I begin the game with books in all but death, Warlord, Alchemy, and Node Mastery. My military is never larger than my number of towns, but I use Warlord because it allows elven archers or halfling slingers to match up to the power of heroes. Oh, and Node Mastery doubles the amount of power you get from nodes, not adds 15%. Thus turning a 5 magic node into a 10 magic node. And that my mana pool is around 800 by end game, and only need to take one or two nodes in early game.
+To Hit bonuses, and other percent bonuses, are very effective on unit groups, and not so effective on heroes. Holy Weapon and Eldritch Weapon can be used together, and I often do.
Do not examine a character who has a whole load of different abilities. Pulling up the information for any mislabeled or misnumbered powers results in a crash. Would be a good thing to put on that patch.
By placing Engineers on a Planar Tower, setting a road to be built from it, then changing the Engineers' plane, will allow that road to be built over water or anything at the time cost of what you first selected. Maga project bridges! (So yes, they work.)
I noticed that if you take an opponents fortress, then defeat their last town before they cast the Spell of Return, you will get the treasure and graphic for banishing them like they had returned.

What determines the value of the treasure you get from a creep camp or node? It seems to be influenced by too many things to count, and my testing has been inconclusive.
How does one get "mana lock"? It seems to randomly happen sometimes.
Why does visiting Sorcery nodes occasionally dispel enchantments? I get no message about it, and note nothing of else of interest.
When placing units with an Air Mage, sometimes the air mage's movement speed is used, sometimes he is as slow as the slowest unit. Why determines this?
It was stated here that flying units will not be attacked by Great Wyrms. I have relied on this twice, and both time regretted it. Is there some other qualifier required?
                       
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Old 20-04-2010, 04:23 AM   #728
Nivm
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Default Apology.

_For some reason, the forum removed my indentations, making the above post much harder to read.
                       
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Old 21-04-2010, 01:56 AM   #729
Pex
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nivm View Post
I can't wait for the patch!
Observations and Questions:
It gets tedious after a while, but I've noticed that most of the time, 1-3 figures in towns can be taken of the current project to farm without changing the time until it's finished. Also, don't forget your refund after buying any building! When the bar is full, or near full, you can put everyone on farming for that last month.
I was doing this, but after a while (especially when you have enough food and gold) it becomes a bother to keep changine back and forth. Usually after I conquer several towns a few only work on trading goods while the rest produce buildings and units. So if I need more food, I turn workers from those trading towns into farmers.
Quote:
I begin the game with books in all but death, Warlord, Alchemy, and Node Mastery. My military is never larger than my number of towns, but I use Warlord because it allows elven archers or halfling slingers to match up to the power of heroes. Oh, and Node Mastery doubles the amount of power you get from nodes, not adds 15%. Thus turning a 5 magic node into a 10 magic node. And that my mana pool is around 800 by end game, and only need to take one or two nodes in early game.
Haven't tried being a Warlord yet. On Hard level (which I'm playing now) some other abilities seem more useful. I might give it a go, though. Although longbowmen and slingers ar quite good even without it. In this last game my tactic was to cast Heroism on longbowmen. They're qame winners.
Quote:
+To Hit bonuses, and other percent bonuses, are very effective on unit groups, and not so effective on heroes. Holy Weapon and Eldritch Weapon can be used together, and I often do.
Agreed.
Quote:
Do not examine a character who has a whole load of different abilities. Pulling up the information for any mislabeled or misnumbered powers results in a crash. Would be a good thing to put on that patch.
I'm not sure what do you mean here. What character? A hero? Or another wizard? Never happened to me, so I don't get it.
Quote:
By placing Engineers on a Planar Tower, setting a road to be built from it, then changing the Engineers' plane, will allow that road to be built over water or anything at the time cost of what you first selected. Maga project bridges! (So yes, they work.)
lol didn't know that But it's obviously a bug rather than something programmers intended to happen.
Quote:
I noticed that if you take an opponents fortress, then defeat their last town before they cast the Spell of Return, you will get the treasure and graphic for banishing them like they had returned.
Both times enemy wizards managed to cast that spell, they also returned before I got to their last city so I had to defeat them again anyway But it seems fair that you get more treasure even if they don't return.
Quote:
What determines the value of the treasure you get from a creep camp or node? It seems to be influenced by too many things to count, and my testing has been inconclusive.
Well, only certain thing is that you always get a spell from an Arcane Tower, though sometimes you get gold or mana crystals or item as well. It's always a spell your wizard is able to learn (as in having enough spell books of that realm), but it doesn't have to be one from the spell book. That makes it useful to attack towers once you did all researches, cause you'll get some spell you couldn't have normally researched.

As for nodes and different lairs, you get better rewards if the node/lair is better defended (cases when you get some fame as well). From what I could see, treasure of every node/lair is predetermined at the beginning of the game, but I think this works only for gold and mana crystals. Items, prisoners and books (as in extra spell books and some trait books that give you additional traits) are still there (predetermined), but it could be any item, any prisoner (not already controled by you or other wizard) and (almost) any book. So, if you like doing some 'legitimate cheating' save your game before attacking place that gives you one of those three and keep attacking it untill you get the exact thing your want

Btw, that (almost) any book is put there cause you can get chaos spell books or book of chaos mastery only from chaos node, and it's similar to sorcery and nature.
Quote:
How does one get "mana lock"? It seems to randomly happen sometimes.
Hmm, what's that?
Quote:
Why does visiting Sorcery nodes occasionally dispel enchantments? I get no message about it, and note nothing of else of interest.
Haven't noticed that. To be honest, I only started using heaps of enchantments now that I'm playing with Life Magic, so I wasn't paying attention.
Quote:
When placing units with an Air Mage, sometimes the air mage's movement speed is used, sometimes he is as slow as the slowest unit. Why determines this?
It's always the speed of the slowest unit. So, I guess in cases when Wind Mage's speed is used, he's the slowest unit. It tends to be a drawback sometimes, especially when your unit of heroes + cavalry and/or rangers can move 4 moves (with pathfinding) and then suddenly with Wind Mage it drops down to 2. Then you give your mage some item to increase his speed, but movement remains 2, cause pathfinding doesn't count for flying and now your rangers are the slowest unit.
Quote:
It was stated here that flying units will not be attacked by Great Wyrms. I have relied on this twice, and both time regretted it. Is there some other qualifier required?
I'm pretty certain they can't attack fliers, but they will retaliate if attacked by a flier in melee. One thing that crosses my mind is that there were some spiders with the wyrm - in which case they cast nets on your fliers and make them ground unit. The other option is that I was wrong in assuming they couldn't attack flying units, in which case I apologise

Btw, indents don't work well on any forum I saw so far, which is why leaving a blank row between paragraphs is recommendend. I learned that hard way myself
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Last edited by Pex; 21-04-2010 at 01:58 AM. Reason: minor fixes
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Old 21-04-2010, 08:58 AM   #730
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pex View Post
As for nodes and different lairs, you get better rewards if the node/lair is better defended (cases when you get some fame as well).

...

So, I guess in cases when Wind Mage's speed is used, he's the slowest unit.

...

[wyrms] I'm pretty certain they can't attack fliers, but they will retaliate if attacked by a flier in melee.
All three things have been already reported as bugs, although I can confirm only the existence of the first one (items from lairs are not correctly weighed as it should be). You often receive a very good gift from a crap lair which spoils the game development.

I have problems with identifying of both other issues, wyrms contra fliers is mentioned in the FAQ, the other windwalking_sometimes_not_working problem was reported by someone else. If you, Nivm (or anybody else), happen to have a SAVEGAME file with the situations you mentioned, it would help me incredibly in fixing the thing.

(There is no such nuisance as an inconsistently happening bug.)
                       
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