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Originally Posted by Pex

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.

_Usually heroes, although some longbowmen and a boat have done it too. It's a glitch that seems to happen after the unit has two or three pages of effects (natural, artifact, enchanted). The names and modifiers of said effects may become scrambled; such as the experience box being replaced with "Legendary (345)" or "Lion Heart +[about 36k]", or just the pictures being switched around. Right clicking on these, or right clicking on the unit in battle, will crash the game. It tends to go away if I ignore it, oddly enough, but very occasionally it will crash bringing the unit into battle.

Originally Posted by Pex

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.

_Perhaps, but it is a glitch for it to show the banishment animation again. Like they get to finish the spell of return instantly just for the sake of getting banished again.

_Mostly what I've been trying to figure out is if the treasure reward increases if you use a much smaller army (1Hero vs. 5SkyDrakes VS. 4Heroes vs. 5SkyDrakes). I know the fame does, but sometimes it seems like loot does as well. As you can guess, I've been trying to figure out what I can do to increase my chances.
_I have this rather far goal of trying to acquire everything I could have if there was infinite picks at start. I can't seem to get more than four spell books in every school, and half the abilities. On Hard of course, but I don't think the treasure is better on easy.

Originally Posted by Pex

Hmm, what's that?

_It's an enchantment that prevents your other enchantments on a unit from being dispelled. I was casting a stone-skin spell on top of four other spells to get that bit of extra advantage in a node fight, and then when I re-checked statuses I noticed Mana Lock had appeared right below the rest. No idea where it came from.

Originally Posted by Pex

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.

The moment I'm thinking of is when I was using my 6 move Air Mage as a ferry for a Pathfinding 2 move army. Moving the army on to the Air Mage's tile should have left them all with 1 movement point (took two moves to get there) yet my Air Mage was still able to take the entire army with his 6 move points (without Pathfinding of course). Although, next turn the entire group was reduced to 2 movement points out on the ocean.

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

That's what I assumed at the first large nature node, but at the second there were no spiders, yet my three Flying heroes were killed all the same (1 colossus and 5 Great Wyrms). I assumed Great Wyrms had a long reach, they look like they should.

_The Bay12 forums and one other always keep indents, and I spend most of my internet time at the former. So I'm always surprised when it doesn't work. I use spaces for topic change.

_I'll make sure to remember to grab a save file next time I have the problems.
Is your patch going to prevent the floating roads?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by Nivm

_The Bay12 forums and one other always keep indents, and I spend most of my internet time at the former. So I'm always surprised when it doesn't work. I use spaces for topic change.

Use linebreaks to denote separate paragraphs. To indent whole paragraphs, use the [indent] and [/indent] BBCode tags. Like this:

This text is indented

and this is another indentation nested in the first one.

You can also use the [LIST] BBcode to add lists and bullet points.

Originally Posted by Nivm

yet my three Flying heroes were killed all the same (1 colossus and 5 Great Wyrms). I assumed Great Wyrms had a long reach

Which type of flying were using your heroes? Chaos channeled, natural, spell or item? All the same, or were there differences?

[Oso]

Originally Posted by Nivm

I can't wait for the patch!
..
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.
..

You are absolutely right. It is influenced by many things.

NOTE: The following facts and figures are shamelessly lifted from Prima's Official Master of Magic Strategy Guide.

Each Node, Lair and Tower of Wizardry is generated at the start of each game. 25 normal lairs and 32 weak lairs are randomly distributed between Arcanus and Myrror. In addition, Arcanus gets 16 nodes, Myrror gets 14 nodes and 6 Towers of Wizardry are generated. Please note, no lair/node/tower will ever be stocked with more than 2 types of creatures so while you might see (for example) Wyrms and Sprites or Wyrms and Spiders in a lair/node/tower you will never see Wyrms, Sprites AND Spiders in the same place.

All of the above are stocked with monsters at games start and the monsters do not change during the game as opposed to treasure which is dynamically generated at the time the of the guardians of the lair/node/tower's defeat. That makes it possible to save the game beforehand and “farm” for certain types of treasures by using a save game/fight/reload game cycle until you get something acceptable (the “budget” of the lair/node/tower determining the relative worth/value/rarity of any spells and items present. There is no way to get a certain rarity of spell if that spell doesn't fit into the “budget” but if you are looking to get say, the Green Spell Change Terrain and the lair you just conquered gave up any uncommon spell, then there is an excellent chance you can make the Change Terrain Spell show up as loot by using a save/fight/reload cycle, your spellbook choices and conscience permitting).

The “budget” referred to above is how much mana the computer will spend on stocking the lair/node/tower with monsters/treasure. It is random within certain ranges.

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The following is laid out in difficulty level:Intro/Easy/Normal/Hard/Impossible.

Towers of Wizardry (Both Planes)
Creatures:175-300/350-600/575-900/700-1200/875-1500
Treasure:350-1500/350-1500/350-1500/350-1500/437-1875

Normal Lairs (Arcanus)
Creatures:25-325/50-750/75-1075/100-1500/125-1825
Treasure:50-1625/50-1791/50-1875/50-1875/62-2281

Normal Lairs (Myrror)
Creatures:50-625/100-1250/150-1875/200-2500/250-3125
Treasure:150-4375/150-4375/150-4375/150-4375/187-5468

Weak Lairs (Arcanus)
Creatures:2-25/5-50/7-75/10-100/12-125
Treasures:50-125/50-125/50-125/50-125/50-156

Weak Lairs (Myrror)
Creatures:2-50/5-100/7-150/10-200/12-250
Treasures:50-350/50-350/50-350/50-350/50-437

Nodes (Weak Magic Setting)
Arcanus
Creatures:15-187/31-375/46-562/62-750/78-937
Treasures:50-935/50-936/50-937/50-937/50-1171

Myrror
Creatures:62-750/125-1500/187-2250/250-300/312-3750
Treasure:187-5250/187-5250/187-5250/187-5250/234-6562

Nodes-Normal Magic Setting:2x Weak Magic numbers for both Planes.
Nodes-Strong Magic Setting:3x Weak Magic numbers for both Planes.
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Within the various ranges, the computer will pick a random number and that will be the “mana budget” for that particular build.

Example: The computer is stocking a Tower of Wizardry at the Hard Difficulty level (mana range 700-1200) and it randomly picks 1038. That is the maximum amount of mana the computer will use to stock the tower with. Further, it will also generate a random number between 1 and 4 (rolls a d4) and divide the budget by that number. In this case the computer rolls a 3. 1038/3=346 so the computer will NOT spend more than 346 mana on any single summoned creature. Before actually buying the creatures, the color is determined by the following:

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Tower Of Wizardry:
Black(2 in 6 chance)-White/Red/Green/Blue(1 in 6 chance each).

Ancient Temple/Ancient Ruins/Fallen Temple:
White(1 in 4 chance)-Black(3 in 4 chance)-Red/Green/Blue(no chance).

Mysterious Cave/Dungeon/Abandoned Keep/Monster Lair:
Black/Red/Green(1 in 3 chance each)-White/Blue(no chance).

Chaos Node:Red only.
Nature Node:Green only.
Sorcery Node:Blue only.
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In this case, the computer rolls Red(Chaos). To continue with the above example: The most expensive Red summoned creature at or below 346 mana is a Doom Bat (300 mana casting cost). The computer will buy as many of it's top end creatures as it can within its budget up to a maximum of 8 creatures. In this case it can buy 3. 3x300=900, 1038-900=138. Not enough mana left over to buy a 4th Doom Bat. Also, if more than one top end monster is purchased there is a 50% chance the computer will “throw” one back. In this case that is what happens, the computer gives one Doom Bat back and recoups the mana. So we stand at 2 Doom Bats, 600 mana spent, 438 mana remaining.

Now the computer determines the maximum price for any secondary or minor monsters it will buy buy using a random number between 1 and X (X being 10 minus the number of monsters already purchased) and dividing the remaining mana by that number. In this case the computer rolls a d8 (10-[2 Doom Bats already purchased]=8) and gets a 5. 438/5=87.6. The most expensive Red creature that can be summoned for 87.6 mana or less is the Hell Hound(40 mana casting cost). With the remaining 438 mana the computer can buy 10 Hell Hounds but since we already have 2 Doom Bats and the stacking limit is 9 units, only 7 Hell Hounds can be used and the unspent mana is simply not used.

So in the example above, this particular Tower of Wizardry is guarded by a full stack of 9 Chaos creatures:2-Doom Bats/7-Hell Hounds for a total strength of 880. 2x300(Doom Bats) + 7x40(Hell Hounds) OR 600+280=880 mana spent. This becomes a modifier for use when treasure is generated.

So, we kicked the stuffing out of this Tower, what happens next? Looking at the Treasure Values for a Tower at the hard level we get a range of 350-1500. This is where the strength modifier from the creature shopping comes in. The harder the creatures and the more of the total mana budget spent, the more the computer is going to modify towards the top end of the scale as far as the treasure roll goes. It won't save you from a bad luck random number on treasure but the computer will adjust it up (or down) a ways for a completely out of whack roll to bring it closer be being comparable with the monsters that you defeated.

In this case, the computer gets a value of 1050 for the Raw Treasure roll.

A few caveats before I get into the nuts and bolts here.

The Myrran Ability will never be awarded as loot. Obvious maybe but it is a retort and they do get awarded as loot.

Infernal Power will never be awarded to players with White Spells books and vice versa with Divine Power. Neither can you be awarded a White Spell Book if you already have a Black one. The reverse is true here as well.

Artifacts (from the ITEMDAT.LBX file) that cost more than 3000 mana to make will NEVER be awarded as loot for an Artifact pick. The only was to get an unlimited power Artifact as loot is to be awarded a Special Ability(skill retort) or a Spell Book and be maxed out on Wizards Abilities or Spell Books for whatever reason. (Each player is limited to 6 abilities and 13 spell books).

Prisoners will not be awarded if you have a full stack and prisoners are limited to the ones that can be summoned by the “Summon Hero” Spell.

When conquering a Tower of Wizardry, the first item rolled is automatically a spell.

No more than 1 spell will ever be awarded as loot.

Anytime a Special is rolled, all other loot is discarded(the Strategy Guide is unclear here, whether it discards all loot for that instance or simply stops rolling on the loot table once you get a special is something I can't figure out. I think I can recall games where I got a special and something else in addition to it but am not positive about that-Oso)

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Format
Chance:Treasure(Qualifying Amount/Spend Amount/Limit)

33.3%:Artifact(300/400-3000/3)

20.0%:Spell
-----:Common(50/50/1)
-----:Uncommon(200/200/1)
-----:Rare(450/450/1)
-----:Very Rare(800/800/1)

13.3%:10-200 Gold(50/200/NA)
13.3%:10-200 Mana(50/200/NA)

13.3%:1 Special(1000/3000/1)
-----:2 Special(2000/3000/2)

06.7%:Prisoner(400/1000/1)
------

Ok, we have 1050 raw points for treasure in this example and since it was a Tower of Wizardry, the first item is always a spell. A roll of 1 to 4 (1=Common,4=Very Rare) gets us a 2. An Uncommon Spell. So the Qualifying amount is 200, we have 1050 so no problem. We get the spell. That brings us down to a point value of 950 (normally an uncommon spell would cost 200 as a spend amount but as we just conquered a Tower there is a 100 point spend amount discount for the first spell roll).

Ok we have 950 points left which is more than 50 points (the computer will stop rolling for loot once less than 50 points of the original raw treasure points remain) so the loot rolls continue. And this roll is also a spell and what's more, it is also an uncommon spell so 200 points are deducted leaving us with 750. But since we can't have more than 1 spell in a pile of loot, the original Uncommon Spell is upgraded to a Very Rare Spell (2+2=4=Very Rare Spell). At this point, any further spell rolls will be ignored. (Again, the Strategy Guide is unclear here. It does not say if another spell roll will be re-rolled or if that becomes a lost roll. It may very well deduct the price of the spell it rolled but you have nothing to show for it. For proof I offer my experience that I have conquered some very tough nodes/lairs late in a game and gotten nothing for it. So if you get something as loot that your points qualify you for but that you cannot use, it may very well just poof away-Oso)

750 points left. More than 50 so we continue. The next roll is a special but the qualifying amount of points is 1000 and we only have 750 so it is re-rolled (<-The Strategy guide seems very clear here. Not enough points to qualify so no points deducted and rolling continues). The next roll Mana Crystals are rolled. The Qualifying Amount of 50 for Mana Crystals is well below 750 so we get some. 90 Crystals are rolled and 200 spend points are taken away from our total leaving 550 usable points.

The next roll gives use a prisoner. Note that to qualify for a prisoner, you need only have 400 usable points but that it costs 1000 to get one. We only have 550 points left but we get the prisoner because we qualify for him/her but it takes our points total to below 50 (well below 50 and into negative numbers actually) so we are done.

To recap:A tower of Wizardry was staffed with 2 Doom Bats and 7 Hell Hounds. For defeating it we received 1 Very Rare Spell, 90 Mana Crystals and a Prisoner.

As stated at the beginning, the monsters will remain the same throughout the game but the treasure isn't generated until the monsters are defeated. So if you saved the game, defeated the monsters and then reloaded that same game and fought again, the treasures might be similar (or not) but they probably won't be exactly the same on the second try.

Some of my own thoughts.

I have noticed there are some things in the Official Strategy Guide that don't quite follow my game experience. One of them is how the treasure is supposed to be generated anew whenever a lair/node/tower is conquered. By the way the book says it, with the exception of Towers of Wizardry which guarantees you a spell, you shouldn't be able to conquer a node or lair that gives you a spell and then reload and expect to get a spell again. Yet it happens all the time. I suspect the “random” part of the treasure generation isn't truly random. In the above example, I suspect that at the time the monsters are purchased for the Tower of Wizardry at least part of the loot is as well. In that it says that TOW#1 will have a very rare spell, some mana and a prisoner when conquered. The dynamic allocation at defeat is limited to what spell it is, the amount of mana and which particular prisoner is granted based on the players setting at start time and what heroes and spells the player already has in his/her possession.

I also suspect that conquering a Tower of Wizardry is the ONLY way to get a spell beyond your spell book ability. Being that you are guaranteed a spell, you may be able to get a rare or very rare spell you shouldn't simply because you may already be in possession of all the spells your spell books will let you have through other lairs/nodes/towers or player trades.

Also, I suspect that if you get a result that says you get a rare or very rare spell as loot and you don't qualify for it you may very well get a lower level spell that you do qualify for providing you don't know them all already. Aside from the Towers of Wizardry, I'm thinking that if you get a spell you don't qualify for by having enough spell books and have no unlearned spells in lower categories, you lose that part of the loot completely. Which may explain why you sometimes come across lairs that you would think should give you loot but you find nothing.

[Pex]

Originally Posted by Nivm

_Usually heroes, although some longbowmen and a boat have done it too. It's a glitch that seems to happen after the unit has two or three pages of effects (natural, artifact, enchanted). The names and modifiers of said effects may become scrambled; such as the experience box being replaced with "Legendary (345)" or "Lion Heart +[about 36k]", or just the pictures being switched around. Right clicking on these, or right clicking on the unit in battle, will crash the game. It tends to go away if I ignore it, oddly enough, but very occasionally it will crash bringing the unit into battle.

Ok, I understand now. It never happened to me, but like I told you, never before I used so many enchantments. I'll keep in mind not to go clicking on them if I use too many

_Mostly what I've been trying to figure out is if the treasure reward increases if you use a much smaller army (1Hero vs. 5SkyDrakes VS. 4Heroes vs. 5SkyDrakes). I know the fame does, but sometimes it seems like loot does as well. As you can guess, I've been trying to figure out what I can do to increase my chances.

Well, Oso put quite a detailed guide on treasure generating, but it seems to be different to my own experiances. I'll comment on it later in this post, so you can see as well.

_I have this rather far goal of trying to acquire everything I could have if there was infinite picks at start. I can't seem to get more than four spell books in every school, and half the abilities. On Hard of course, but I don't think the treasure is better on easy.

According to the Guide you can have maximum of 13 spell books and 6 abilities. I didn't know that. I never go exploring too much - I 'blitzkrieg' enemy capitals as soon as I find them (and have enough troops to do it) and poor AI allows me that. Maybe when those patches come out and the game becomes more balanced, I'll need to focus more on exploring.

_It's an enchantment that prevents your other enchantments on a unit from being dispelled. I was casting a stone-skin spell on top of four other spells to get that bit of extra advantage in a node fight, and then when I re-checked statuses I noticed Mana Lock had appeared right below the rest. No idea where it came from.

Either it's some rule we're not aware of, or just another bug

The moment I'm thinking of is when I was using my 6 move Air Mage as a ferry for a Pathfinding 2 move army. Moving the army on to the Air Mage's tile should have left them all with 1 movement point (took two moves to get there) yet my Air Mage was still able to take the entire army with his 6 move points (without Pathfinding of course). Although, next turn the entire group was reduced to 2 movement points out on the ocean.

lol definitely a bug

And now to Oso's post:

Originally Posted by Oso

NOTE: The following facts and figures are shamelessly lifted from Prima's Official Master of Magic Strategy Guide.

Very detailed. I have one question regarding it, but a few observations regarding your own.

Each Node, Lair and Tower of Wizardry is generated at the start of each game. 25 normal lairs and 32 weak lairs are randomly distributed between Arcanus and Myrror. In addition, Arcanus gets 16 nodes, Myrror gets 14 nodes and 6 Towers of Wizardry are generated.

Does this change depending on the size of the land you choose? It's not a hard thing to check, but I thought you may already know the answer.

Some of my own thoughts.

I have noticed there are some things in the Official Strategy Guide that don't quite follow my game experience. One of them is how the treasure is supposed to be generated anew whenever a lair/node/tower is conquered. By the way the book says it, with the exception of Towers of Wizardry which guarantees you a spell, you shouldn't be able to conquer a node or lair that gives you a spell and then reload and expect to get a spell again. Yet it happens all the time. I suspect the “random” part of the treasure generation isn't truly random. In the above example, I suspect that at the time the monsters are purchased for the Tower of Wizardry at least part of the loot is as well. In that it says that TOW#1 will have a very rare spell, some mana and a prisoner when conquered. The dynamic allocation at defeat is limited to what spell it is, the amount of mana and which particular prisoner is granted based on the players setting at start time and what heroes and spells the player already has in his/her possession.

I agree with this. In my experience, the nature of the treasure doesn't change (whether it's an item and/or prisoner and/or spell) only the type of the specific treasure (different item and/or prisoner and/or spell. That's why I suggested in the earlier post that you can 'legally cheat' by saving the game before attacking the node/lair/tower and then loading and reconquering it to get different type of treasure. It never happened to me that the place gives a prisoner but when I reload the game it gives me an item or a spell (or any different combo for that matter).

I also suspect that conquering a Tower of Wizardry is the ONLY way to get a spell beyond your spell book ability. Being that you are guaranteed a spell, you may be able to get a rare or very rare spell you shouldn't simply because you may already be in possession of all the spells your spell books will let you have through other lairs/nodes/towers or player trades.

I've came to this conclusion as well. That's why I used to conquer only one Tower (just to get the access to different plane) and leave the rest until I progress with my researches.

Also, I suspect that if you get a result that says you get a rare or very rare spell as loot and you don't qualify for it you may very well get a lower level spell that you do qualify for providing you don't know them all already. Aside from the Towers of Wizardry, I'm thinking that if you get a spell you don't qualify for by having enough spell books and have no unlearned spells in lower categories, you lose that part of the loot completely. Which may explain why you sometimes come across lairs that you would think should give you loot but you find nothing.

I agree with this. I've noticed that I was getting 'You find absolutely nothing' result only near the end of the game, so it made me believe that it was either a spell of the rarity level that I've already fully researched or a prisoner when I already had 6 heroes. Maybe next time I find a prisoner I may test this and leave that lair for the time I have 6 heroes already.

Another thing that I've noticed was that a particular undefended lair (it has to be a lair cause nodes and towers are always defended) always give you the same amount of gold pieces or mana crystals, even if you keep reloading the game. It never changes the type of treasure either - if it gave you 50 gp first time, it will keep giving you 50gp every time, it will never give you mana instead. That made me believe that the amount of gp or mc you get from lairs/nodes/towers remains the same even when you get other treasure as well, but I never remembered to check it. I might do it at some point. To be honest, I got bored with MoM and decided to give it a break

[Oso]

Originally Posted by Pex

.
.
Does this change depending on the size of the land you choose? It's not a hard thing to check, but I thought you may already know the answer.
.
.

It has never occurred to me to check on my own but, according to the section in the strategy guide, there is no mention made on land mass size. Until I get motivated enough to check on my own I am going to assume that it doesn't matter.

The only difference would be in relative density and then only when talking about the generic sites other than Towers and Nodes. Towers and Nodes have no problem appearing as one square islands in the middle of the Oceans (I have never seen a non-Node or non-Tower lair on its own 1 square island in the ocean at any rate). So the remaining 57 sites would be spread over the land masses on both planes, even at the small land mass setting, I can't see any overcrowding happening.

[R P]

Hello

Does anyone know how I can get rid of Chaos rift cast on my cities?

Thanks!

[Pex]

I believe you can remove it with Disenchant Area or Disenchant True. The second one is a Sorcery spell so you need a few sorcery books in orther to be able to research it, but the first one is Arcane and I belive widely available (can't remember if it's one of those you get right at the beginning).

Hello guys,

just giving you some feedback on how things went since I last posted. Quite a few other discussions since then now (Pex really started some interesting topics). This MoM forum is quite alive!! So just as a reminder, I was the one having soundproblems.

Regarding the game itself I have gone up to normal difficulty - was playing "zoogames" on easy - leaving the weakest wizard alive at the end to explore more dungeons and nodes in order to find out more about the game mechanics. That worked. I'm doing fine on normal difficulty now - even though I still haven't met all of the creatures in the game and there are still a lot of things I haven't learned. Thanks for the info about the dragonsword page - and hearing that they are working on mods and patches for MoM over there is just great news!

As for the soundproblems it is time to give up on running the game with sound on the machine I'm using. I have done a LOT of fiddling and thanks to what Smiling Skeleton said I got the sounddriver working on native DOS (for other games - but still not for MoM). I also discovered there was still one file missing in my standalone DOS-7 partition and that file is called EAPCI2M.ECW.
The Soundblaster 128 PCI DOS driver is relying on that file and the installer places it in the Windows System directory. Now, since I was running a standalone DOS-7 partition I did not have a Windows System directory any more - so I created one - just for that file - and copied the file there. That worked. There is a sound test amongst the files of the Soundblaster driver and I ran the test successfully.

As for MoM the issue has boiled down to a mainboard problem. I found out that my Gigabyte BX 2000 has trouble with the emm386. Other DOS-extenders such as the 4GW protectected mode runtime or the DPMI DOS extender run fine - just emm386 does not. And it's the dual BIOS of that mainboard that is to blame. I now realized that the previous owner of the mainboard must have flashed the BIOS and there are two BIOS-versions present since flashing the BIOS only updates one of the two BIOSes on that mainboard. So my machine is sometimes booting with BIOS version f5 and sometimes with version f7 and the wide-range-errors that are happening in certain intervals occur because the two BIOSes don't match.

Please note - this is just for giving you feedback. I'm happily playing the game without sound - and given what I found out about that mainboard now I consider myself lucky that the game is running at all. It actually runs very well without sound.

I will still keep that BX 2000 mainboard, for apart from those limited bugs it is running very well.

I gave it a try to run the game in Dosbox on my faster machine. Unfortunately the mainboard on that other machine is having even bigger issues. It causes crackling noises in many applications (not just games) and these noises are especially nasty in Dosbox. So I kinda know what the sound is like but with those noises it's too annoying. I will replace the mainboard on the faster machine some time in the future (with a used model from another company) since it also has other issues. The Gigabyte BX 2000 is actually giving me much less issues (I know how to fix the wide-range errors when they occur). So I will keep that one but replace the one in the faster machine - some time end of this year I think... - not keen on doing it fast since it requires reinstalling everything from scrap....

Just a few more details on the fiddling I did - not a complete rundown here. I tried to load the game high as 5th Horseman said but then the game doesn't find the config.mom file anymore - even though the file is there. Odd thing but that's how it is. So loading the whole game high won't work - at least not on this machine. Might work with other games though - so the information was not useless.

I tried installing the DOS sounddriver in my DOS-6.0 partition that also exists on that machine - but no go. The machine hangs on boot when trying to load the sounddriver. Also MoM won't run under DOS 6.0 even though I got up to 595 KB of free conventional memory using memmaker. But since the sounddriver won't load either it's no good to pursue trying to get it to work on DOS 6.0 anyways. Plays fine without sound under DOS-7.

Now, my standalone DOS-7 partition was derived from Windows 98 SE. I also have Windows 98 First edition (which is running in a separate partition on it's own). And that has an earlier version of DOS-7. But memmaker won't run at all (even with the added files that were missing in that DOS-version). Trying to run memmaker on that earlier DOS-7-version immediately crashes the system before the first memmaker screen comes up. I was lucky it did even run on the later version of DOS-7 on this mainboard.

So it's time to give up on trying to run MoM with sound on that system. Maybe when I get a different mainboard for my faster system later I will have better sound in Dosbox then. Til then I'll just play without sound. Fiddling around was not in vain though. I learned some things in the process.

[Smiling Spectre]

Originally Posted by kyrubb

1. Immediately after the beginning set the tax to 2.0 gold per population and put it down only if the unrest is unsupportable.

Not exactly right. Actually, income rises only for workers, BUT rising tax automatically rise revolting, and they are not paying anything. But farmers that needed for city's life never revolts. And garrison helps too. So it is "dynamic" question - I personally gradually rise taxes until my income start falling (it is visible immediately).

555. Diplomacy - Use spell gifts if you need to maintain good relations (works until turn 100, than useless due to a bug).

Wrong. My experiences (v1.31) says that computer never break any pacts by it's initiative. It is only your fault.

Avoid nearing cities for 3 turns = war.

You receive warning and slight decrease in relations if you'll end your turn close than 2 squares away of cities (the same zone that visible in city map, I presume). If you simply pass this zone, it is safe. And war, if this state remained more than 2 turns in row.

Originally Posted by Pex

Haven't been much of a diplomat really. I like exchaning spells (especially if I have a useless spell to offer ), but turns out that enemy will attack me sooner or later anyway, if I'm in their way (litterally, like in that example I used). And even then they won't consider being at war.

It is bug in pathfinding - enchanted roads and settlers often generate it. But if computer can reconsider, it is usually do it.

And diplomacy extremely useful, BTW. You can trade away almost any "your" spell, even if your spellbooks don't allow to research it.

Originally Posted by Nivm

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.

Check race, actually. There is no much good for farming, if you try to farm with dwarf, and there is little use of halfling-miner. Remember: farmer gave you more money as tax, but workers gave much more income when making "Trade Goods". My empire usually ends with ten halfling's capitals that feed all this remained 50 cities of working men, elves and trolls.

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!

Looks like you are forgot something. Planar towers ALWAYS interconnected - there is not possible to built road in tower on one plane and simultaneously on water on other.

And I believe (v1.31 again) that Engineers cannot build over water - even with swimming or flying. I tried - but I can be wrong, of course.

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?

If Mage have Wind Walking ability, every unit with him travelling on clouds, so stack always will have Mage speed (even if stack almost finish it's movement, but Mage is not). But if he is simply flying, you will not receive this bonus. I used it many times, so it is strange to hear... Is your version 1.31?

Originally Posted by Oso

I have noticed there are some things in the Official Strategy Guide that don't quite follow my game experience.

Yes, guide is very strange. I checked it, and it is totally different in many aspects.

1. There could be fixed population in dungeons for start - but it is increased over time! (At least on last difficulty level - Impossible, I think?). When lair reached full capacity, it began to spawn it's habitants into outer world, upgrading simultaneously population inside lair. So in first 100 turns in Sorcery nodes you will meed one-two Phantom beasts with five Illusion Warriors, but after, say, 500 turns it will be full set of 8 Sky Drakes.

2. There is always question of relative strength. Computer takes into account all "innate" abilities and number of units, but, it seems, don't count hero/unit enchantments and items. So heroes always receive better rewards, and better when they are in small numbers. Also only current opponent's strength counts. If you killed 7 Wyrms and retreated from one single bear, than returned and kill the bear - you will receive only reward for this bear, and this is all.