Item wish list?

[Norfleet]

I wouldn't say MOM had balance issues: There wasn't any multiplayer, and as such, it's hard to say anything is balanced or unbalanced. By that analogy, everyone would agree that Ashen Empire is way overpowered, because it steamrolls over the AI every time. Of course, Dom2 has multiplayer, and the overwhelming AI dominance of AE simply doesn't appear against humans who have any idea how to play.

Dominions 2 does a much better job overall than MOM, though: Master of Magic had a fair number of thoroughly useless spells and items, whereas in Dominions, everything does SOMETHING useful for somebody.

[PvK]

Well yes, that's what I meant. If you define balance as multiplayer human balance, well that's not what I meant by balance. As you mentioned, MOM (without 3rd party hacks) was single-player only, and the AI wasn't good enough to offer much challenge to a player who figured out what some of the more powerful techniques were, and who didn't prevent himself from using them. So yes, you could say that rather than being unbalanced, the AI just wasn't programmed to be able to compete against a human who had learned tricks. That's true of essentially any very complex game, and it becomes a matter of degree (how long it takes players to learn strategies the AI can't counter; in my case I don't think I ever actually lost any game against the MOM AI). Perhaps you could even claim MOM was balanced, because every choice of human nation could be used to wipe out the AI.

Naturally, there are different ways to define balance. (Edit: Another way to put it - there are different types of balance.) Ability to steamroller the AI using certain fairly simple techniques, and relative impotence of a large number of game features are a couple of them. Those were what I was referring to.

If you could play MOM multi-player, though (and yes a couple of 3rd party hacks allow this), there might be many interesting choices of nation and strategy which could be balanced and interesting to play against each other.

PvK

[ February 03, 2004, 23:09: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Norfleet]

A couple of third party hacks did manage to enable multiplayer capability, but I don't think they ever overcame in the inability of a defending player to actually control his forces....so basically, the attacker always won, and defense was totally worthless. It tended to strongly distort the game in favor of making sure your units were able to disappear before being attacked at all. All in all, I wouldn't say that the multiplayer hacks did anything to demonstrate balance or lack thereof. While it's true that MOM had a fair number of humorous ways to abuse the AI, the Dominions II AI is just as susceptible to various abusive techniques that fail easily against humans.

Although at least Dominions II doesn't have the 13-book Free Infinite Monster flash mob summoner. Still, for a single player game....balance, schmalance.

[ February 04, 2004, 00:50: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[sachmo]

I like variety. More magic items, please.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im still have MoM on my machine. And Im a faithful follower of the MoM2 rallying site.

The problem with most efforts at a MoM2 is that if they try to multiplayer it they do the balance like AOW:SM instead of like Dom2 does which kills the replayability. Especially any solo replay. (yes I do have AOW:SM also, and any other game that ever claimed to be a MoM2)

[ May 20, 2004, 15:10: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[sachmo]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Im still have MoM on my machine. And Im a faithful follower of the MoM2 rallying site.

The problem with most efforts at a MoM2 is that if they try to multiplayer it they do the balance like AOW:SM instead of like Dom2 does which kills the replayability. Especially any solo replay. (yes I do have AOW:SM also, and any other game that ever claimed to be a MoM2)

Linky?

Also, did you try Leylines?

[ May 20, 2004, 15:28: Message edited by: sachmo ]

[NTJedi]

What the game really needs is more Helms or other headgear ! There are so few selections.