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Master of Magic – Caster of Magic Mod (PC, GOG Galaxy)
Master of Magic is one of the early 4X games (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate; a genre of turn-based strategy games) along with Civilization and Master of Orion. I was introduced to it in high school and have periodically replayed it over the years. 25 years after the original game came out, there’s an enhancement mod that redoes the enemy AI, adds quality-of-life improvements, changes some of the buildings and racial modifiers, removes some of the broken bits and generally makes it a better game. And GOG just happened to advertise it to me.
I played a couple of hours of the new game as Horus, ran into trouble a bunch of times, and then went back and I actually played a quick game of the original on Easy to refresh myself. Then I used the same setup (an all-Death custom wizard) to play the new mod. Among noteworthy changes: You can’t take a full suite of a single color (and the high-level spells it imparts); which means I couldn’t just cast Wraiths and use that to streamroller every town in my path. Classic MoM included a lot of empty caves, dungeons and ruins that you could just snag some gold or mana from. In CoM, everything has monsters in it, though your scouts are better at reporting “a few” or “many” monsters. I also felt like my units (especially heroes) were weaker and enemy units (especially fantastic beasts) were stronger, which meant clearing out those ruins (and towers and nodes) was not an early- or even mid-game task.
The enemy wizard AI is dramatically improved, but then again, so is in-battle AI of all enemies. Wizard Pacts and alliances actually seem to mean something, though how close your units can get to their towns (accidentally or otherwise) seems to be highly variable. Also, they’ll happily march their troops into your territory without regard for treaties and then complain that you have too many armies. Wandering/rampaging monsters seem to come in much bigger stacks and aim for poorly-defended towns. (If I did a save/restart after they destroyed a town, then summoned troops to defend that town, they’d veer off and attack somewhere else.) You need to build and maintain bigger armies than in Classic MoM. For that matter, troops seem to get less XP for just existing, which means that the early troops parked in your capital won’t slowly become Elite just by existing.
I did appreciate that though the enemy heroes had items (and used them), I got to claim those items after killing the heroes. I also really liked that the Colosseum building that was added to the tech tree gives you Fame and also quells unrest. It seems like there are more buildings that give you power, but money bonuses were clearly also boosted, as I ended up with a ton of cash with very little to spend it on. (Admittedly, I was turning most defeated enemies into undead to guard my towns, so I wasn’t paying to build or maintain troops. I suspect too much money wouldn’t be a problem for most other strategies.)
Overall: This was a lovely use of $4.50 to get a fresh take on an old favorite. As a side bonus, this was the first time I set up the “GOG Galaxy” front-end, and while its cloud sync is having issues, I love that I can maintain my GOG library as easily as my Steam library.
I played a couple of hours of the new game as Horus, ran into trouble a bunch of times, and then went back and I actually played a quick game of the original on Easy to refresh myself. Then I used the same setup (an all-Death custom wizard) to play the new mod. Among noteworthy changes: You can’t take a full suite of a single color (and the high-level spells it imparts); which means I couldn’t just cast Wraiths and use that to streamroller every town in my path. Classic MoM included a lot of empty caves, dungeons and ruins that you could just snag some gold or mana from. In CoM, everything has monsters in it, though your scouts are better at reporting “a few” or “many” monsters. I also felt like my units (especially heroes) were weaker and enemy units (especially fantastic beasts) were stronger, which meant clearing out those ruins (and towers and nodes) was not an early- or even mid-game task.
The enemy wizard AI is dramatically improved, but then again, so is in-battle AI of all enemies. Wizard Pacts and alliances actually seem to mean something, though how close your units can get to their towns (accidentally or otherwise) seems to be highly variable. Also, they’ll happily march their troops into your territory without regard for treaties and then complain that you have too many armies. Wandering/rampaging monsters seem to come in much bigger stacks and aim for poorly-defended towns. (If I did a save/restart after they destroyed a town, then summoned troops to defend that town, they’d veer off and attack somewhere else.) You need to build and maintain bigger armies than in Classic MoM. For that matter, troops seem to get less XP for just existing, which means that the early troops parked in your capital won’t slowly become Elite just by existing.
I did appreciate that though the enemy heroes had items (and used them), I got to claim those items after killing the heroes. I also really liked that the Colosseum building that was added to the tech tree gives you Fame and also quells unrest. It seems like there are more buildings that give you power, but money bonuses were clearly also boosted, as I ended up with a ton of cash with very little to spend it on. (Admittedly, I was turning most defeated enemies into undead to guard my towns, so I wasn’t paying to build or maintain troops. I suspect too much money wouldn’t be a problem for most other strategies.)
Overall: This was a lovely use of $4.50 to get a fresh take on an old favorite. As a side bonus, this was the first time I set up the “GOG Galaxy” front-end, and while its cloud sync is having issues, I love that I can maintain my GOG library as easily as my Steam library.