Forum:What MoM did right and where it failed

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List the things you like and dislike about Master of Magic. I will start with the obvious things:

What I like

• magic: Well, I am a fan of medieval fantasy, so this is a plus point for me.
• tactical combat: Well, combat is like a game in a game!
• complexity: Many people say that MoM is just a Civilization clone, but it is much more than that: wizards, over 200 spells, nearly 200 different units, heroes and mercenaries, artifacts, experience system, neutral towns, nodes and other encounter zones, 2 planes, events.
• self-explanatory: MoM is very complex, but it still manages to not confuse first-time players. There are no confusing menus and sliders you have to manage in the beginning. You learn and discover everything over time: Oh, I can change tax rate and distribute power! Oh, that's how combat works! Oh, that's what nodes are good for! Oh, different races have different units and tech trees! Oh, there are heroes and mercenaries! And if you need help, you just have to right-click (sadly the concept of hit chances isn't explained there).
• almost no micromanagement: You don't have to manage every population and every settler as in Civilization. You just have to arrange farmers and build roads. The catchment area of a town is only used to calculate the growth and prosperity of your town and the effectivity of its farmers and workers.
• replayability: You can customize your wizard and start with different races. I guess you have to play at least 3 games to discover every detail in MoM.

What I dislike

• AI: Programming an AI for such a complex game is very difficult. So it's no wonder that the AI is far from being perfect. But what really bugs me is that the AI often fails to cross the ocean. This forces me to play on large land mass, although I hate that.
• bugs: MoM is a very bugged game. I know of roughly 100 bugs.
• balance: MoM is not properly balanced. There are certain units, spells and retorts that I never use. Other units, spells and retorts are just overpowered. The same is true for certain races. Also why can you select a rare spell, if you start with 11 books in one color?
• spell skill in battles: For each battle you have your full skill to disposal. I guess everybody has exploited this by entering battles with only one unit. It would be better to have a monthly limit.
• rounding errors & ignored surplus: I wrote above that I like the fact that micromanagement is reduced to a minimum but. However there are certain things that make me micromanage: 100 research points monthly but only 10 to go for the next spell? Reduce the monthly research! 4,790 population and 100 growth per turn? Put city to housing! Building a city on a spot with 33% production bonus? Don't be silly! Manage global food production? Cycle through towns, set number of farmers to an odd number, avoid Farmers producing only 1 food! City has 30 production, but only wants to produce a unit of Spearmen? Change workers to farmers! City wants to build a Market Place, 10 production per round, 22 hammers left? Want to save a round? There's a simple solution: Put all settlers to farmers, put tax rate to 3, change production to Stable, buy Stable, change production back to Market Place, put workers and tax rate back to normal!

-- 188.103.216.172 19:01, November 4, 2014 (UTC)

They really nailed randomness in some cases and left it wider-open than Civ in others. Like Tactical combat is random, yes, but there are just so many random rolls that the ridiculous outcomes get washed-out by the Law of Large Numbers; i.e., every point of attack and defense on every figure of every unit represents a die roll every time there is a combat action— that's a lot of cushion. The old "Spearman Beats Tank" problem of Civ was solved brilliantly in this game and they still haven't gotten it out of the main francise, laff.

On the other hand, Treasure is reliant on singular die rolls. It is actually easier to exploit or get shafted by these rolls than it is to reach what you might call the "expected values."

Also ditto on overflow, that's a pet peeve of mine for sure.

--Spearman D92-R (talk) 22:15, November 4, 2014 (UTC)

Well, for the big guys combat is the opposite of random. For example, you can say for sure that a Great Wyrm will need exactly 4 attacks to finish off a Behemoth in a Nature Node; thereby the Wyrm will take 35 to 40 damage. Resistance rolls is the only thing where combat is really random. Night Stalker vs Behemoth, who lands a successful Gaze attack first? Speaking of combat, a thing that bugs me is that reaching the Elite level of normal units is just too beneficial for the small guys. Let's take Barbarian Spearmen as an example: Melee and thrown attacks are increased from 2 to 3, hit roll chances are increased from 30% to 40%, hit points per figure are increased from 1 to 2. So now they do at least the double amount of damage and are nearly twice as hard to kill.

-- 188.106.177.223 07:45, November 5, 2014 (UTC)

Er, your math on Great Wyrm vs. Basilisk is way off. It usually takes 2 or 3 hits for the Wyrm to kill the Basilisk, not 4. In the process, the Wyrm has a nonnegligible chance of suffering 0 damage, 10 damage, any value in between, and a few values not in between (but not 35-40). Mind Stormy (talk) 06:46, November 6, 2014 (UTC)

Oops, I meant Behemoth. Changed it. A Basilisk is not a big guy. -- 178.8.29.44 06:59, November 6, 2014 (UTC)

Do people still play without the 1.4 bugfix patch?  I would think that that's mandatory by now.

The balance issue is easily answered by the fact that Master of Magic was never intended to be balanced.  Neither was Magic the Gathering, which is where MoM got half of its DNA from.  

Half of the bugs I know of are still present in 1.40. Some of them are gamebreaking. AI is a bit better, but it still fails to get units to the other side (be it other islands or other plane). I don't expect perfect balance, but if some units or spells are so worthless that you will never use them, then something went wrong. -- 188.106.177.223 22:25, November 5, 2014 (UTC)

RE: First post.
Why is building a city with a 33% production bonus bad?
Why do you have to adjust the tax rate and farmers/workers when building the marketplace?

Building a city on a spot with a 33% production bonus is not bad per se. But most likely there's a spot with 34% or more nearby, and you should consider this spot instead - even if the maximum population is a bit smaller. The reason: Towns grow pretty fast to 2 population units, if you put the production to housing (50% growth bonus, no matter if farmer or worker), but then housing becomes pretty ineffective (bonus = percent of workers). Afterwards, you should begin to develop the town (granary, market place, farmer's market, shrine). Usually a town with 2 or 3 population units will have 1 worker and 1 respectively 2 farmers. That's 3 hammers prior to the bonus. So 34% will give you an extra hammer which will boost the development process immensely. Of course this scenario assumed that workers produce 2 hammers, that there is no wild game, and that you don't spend money to buy a granary early on.
About adjusting tax rate: You can only buy a building, if you can't finish it in 1 round. Increasing the number of rebels (and farmers) will lower the production and will maybe allow you to buy a "temporary" building, which you then switch over to the building you originally wanted to build. Example: You have a town with 80 production and for an unknown reason you have to build a priests unit (100 hammers) in one round. Buying it would cost 400 gold. But by switching production over to a swordsmen unit (20 hammers), buying it and then switching production back to the priests, you just have to pay 80 gold. However, you are only able to buy the swordsmen, if you lower the production to 19 or less. This should be possible by having farmers only and increasing tax rate. If this doesn't work, you try the trick with bowmen (30 hammers) instead of swordsmen. -- 188.103.79.3 08:12, December 2, 2014 (UTC)

In practice, getting 34% production or higher in a site that has a reasonable max population is pretty tough, so worrying about all of that seems marginal -- it requires 7-12 production (hill, mountain, desert, forest) terrain types that will produce 0-6 food in your area, and while in theory you could still have a max population of 24 (12 hill/forest, 9 river) it's not very likely.  Most sites that manage 34% or higher production, unless they have exploitable minerals, aren't worth building on at all. Yramrag (talk) 01:59, December 3, 2014 (UTC)

I ignore production and trade bonus(shore/river/both) when choosing a city site. These are only good with high pop and mountains/ocean reduce it.

I go for max pop and any specials (except nightshade which sux). These increase the chance to grow into hamlet.

Now I know why you raise taxes and use all farmers; it won't let you buy if it will be done next turn anyway. But if you raise taxes won't it mess up your farmer/worker settings in each town when you set it back? I don't use ladder buying (purchase something and then switch to another project) because if I wanted to micromanage that much I'd go back to Alpha Centauri.

This discussion has improved my early game:

My first town rush builds the first structures as soon as I gather enough money. After I click buy I change everyone to farmers so I get a few gold for the excess food. Now I have learned to also max the tax rate to get even more money. Next turn I change back to workers and lower tax. If I have two towns they need to purchase their thing at the same time.

75.156.80.72 06:50, December 4, 2014 (UTC)

Building towns on rivers is never a bad idea and the 20% trade bonus is nice. I also go for Specials and since they are on terrain with production bonus I often end up with towns having at least 34% production bonus. Building towns on spots with high MaxPop will result in a rebel problem (my tax rate is at least 1.5). Building towns on spots with low MaxPop will result in a food problem later on (if the town produces more food than it has MaxPop, then allocating a new farmer will result in only +1 food, resp. +1.5 food if Halfling or Animists' Guild). So the mix is important (this is not true for computer players, because they leave tax rate at 1.0 and their towns have an insane production multiplier).
The game saves the number of farmers in each town. Raising taxes and lowering it will not change the farmer/worker ratio, unless the rebels will reduce the number of farmers. This doesn't happen with my playstyle (early on, I don't have that many units because I want to go for productivity; I usually guard a town with only 2 units). -- 178.0.88.201 07:49, December 4, 2014 (UTC)