OT: Master of Magic unofficial patch v1.40f

[Foodstamp]

Originally Posted by B0rsuk

Can you enlighten me what the two extra difficulty options do ? Monsters Gone Wild - is that spawning frequency ? How about the other one ?

The developer tried to make it even better, but it turned out to be harder than expected. In particular he spent 2 weeks trying to make AI understand "tiny islands with towers" are no good places to send settlers to. He also tried to make AI stop sending empty ships.

HOW have you done it ? Do you know assembly ? One thing I would love to see is bowmen having strenght 2 missile attack by default. They're so pitiful otherwise, and considering swordsmen come earlier it shouldn't cause balance problems.

Monsters gone wild make the monsters from ruins spawn more frequently and with larger stacks after the initial start of the game. Revolting rebels or whatever it is called makes the neutral cities more aggressive in how many units they send and what kinds.


I used an editor to edit the patch. I made a few other little changes too such as alchemist guild for Trolls, 4 units in war bears, first strike for Gnoll wolf riders. I gave some of the crappy heroes new abilities to make them a slight bit more useful.

The site I downloaded the editor from is now defunct, but I have a copy of it laying around here. Ah here it is, as a matter of fact here are 3 editors I am going to attach to this post.

[WraithLord]

Is there a way you can "release" your "MBM" (MOM Balance Mode) so that we could use it as well?

I for one would prefer it w/o the extra aggressive indies. I'm having enough troubles as it is with the better AI.

[NooBliss]

Btw. How do you deal with the impossible AIs?

So far, I've found four tricks that work more or less reliably.
1) Take all Death picks, rush enemy wizards with wraiths, then research death knights and get these you couldnt reach.
2) Take all Nature picks, rush with Gorgons. Not as reliable tho, but Nature gets some cool stuff later.
3) Take halflings and some Life books. Pick Warlord if you feel really mean, rest is optional. Halfling swordsmen with Heroism and some Healing conquer indie cities eaily, then you get Slingers and kill all enemy Wizards you can reach. Then research some big guns and win.
4) Take Sorcery, probably High elves (for extra mana), allocate everything to casting skill until you can cast Air elemental. Then kill everything.

Any other ideas? Other than 'start the game again and again until you spawn on a big island'?

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by NooBliss

Btw. How do you deal with the impossible AIs?

So far, I've found four tricks that work more or less reliably.
1) Take all Death picks, rush enemy wizards with wraiths, then research death knights and get these you couldnt reach.
2) Take all Nature picks, rush with Gorgons. Not as reliable tho, but Nature gets some cool stuff later.
3) Take halflings and some Life books. Pick Warlord if you feel really mean, rest is optional. Halfling swordsmen with Heroism and some Healing conquer indie cities eaily, then you get Slingers and kill all enemy Wizards you can reach. Then research some big guns and win.
4) Take Sorcery, probably High elves (for extra mana), allocate everything to casting skill until you can cast Air elemental. Then kill everything.

Any other ideas? Other than 'start the game again and again until you spawn on a big island'?

Do flying boats still work? All I remember is that eventually I just cast the permanent flying spell on a bunch of warships (the ones w/the catapults), and they were pretty Uber vs. most conventional troops.

[Finalgenesis]

Human Paladins > All, it's pretty easy to survive (or prosper even, with a little luck) until you can produce them in impossible difficulty. Throw in warlord and/or life magic if you enjoy even more overkill.

[NooBliss]

Originally Posted by Finalgenesis

Human Paladins > All, it's pretty easy to survive (or prosper even, with a little luck) until you can produce them in impossible difficulty. Throw in warlord and/or life magic if you enjoy even more overkill.

Are you sure you played it with the latest patch? When I was young, I played it the same way. Just took the High Men and turtled until I had paladins.
But with the latest patch, AI is so much more agressive. And building Paladins takes forever, so you are very likely to get rushed. Besides, paladins were nerfed since the 1.0 version; I'm not sure how exactly, but they dont insta-kill everything any longer.

Originally Posted by WraithLord

I've played MOM with the patch after years of not touching it.
I took Freya+Elves and tried summoning those bears/sprite but I'm getting stomped by the neighboring wizard (on hardest level). I don't recall MOM being so challenging...

Yeah, patches made Impossible MoM much harder than it was. Thats exactly why I posted these strategies. With these I managed to beat the impossible AIs. Everything else failed. Miserably.
Also, let me guess? Your playstyle changed over the years, as did mine. Back then, I was OK with just turtling and skipping turns until I had some imba high-tec unit. Now I want to grab something and rush somebody for good, or maybe expand really fast, etc etc.

[WraithLord]

Yes. Many years of playing all sorts of strat. games tough me to ever, scout, expand & be aggressive.
In MOM under impossible settings it's like I've too little to work with. Besides, I don't want shortcuts, I'll rework my openings until I find something that works - or discourage

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by NooBliss

Are you sure you played it with the latest patch? When I was young, I played it the same way. Just took the High Men and turtled until I had paladins.
But with the latest patch, AI is so much more agressive. And building Paladins takes forever, so you are very likely to get rushed. Besides, paladins were nerfed since the 1.0 version; I'm not sure how exactly, but they dont insta-kill everything any longer.

Yeah, patches made Impossible MoM much harder than it was. Thats exactly why I posted these strategies. With these I managed to beat the impossible AIs. Everything else failed. Miserably.
Also, let me guess? Your playstyle changed over the years, as did mine. Back then, I was OK with just turtling and skipping turns until I had some imba high-tec unit. Now I want to grab something and rush somebody for good, or maybe expand really fast, etc etc.

There are lots of really, really good strategies for mom. But my favorite cheese was always taking trolls with life. Making sure to nature. Take enough life and you are guaranteed endurance. Take web as your nature spell.

Trolls regenerate - and with endurance you can out run (circles) around most things. 50 turns and all your troops come back....

[B0rsuk]

Guarranteed spells have been removed in one of the official patches. Now you only spawn with Common spell for each book in a school beyond the first, and if you start with 11 books you get a rare and uncommon spell too. Since you're talking about Nature + Life, you must've been playing an old version.

There are interesting ways to beat paladins. In my current game Jafar was stuck on two islands linked by a tower. A turtler got his wish granted - he started with High Men. I went with Klackons and Chaos. Long story short I assaulted his islands with a stack of 8 chaos channel (wings) stag beetles and a draconian shaman (removed from each battle so he can live). I cast Warp Reality each time I fight a significant number of paladins (4+). It gives all non-chaos units -2 to hit. Wings meant beetles weren't scared of first strike, in fact with innate fire breath they were the ones doing first strike. The beetles were otherwise fairly basic: Elite with no magical weapons (Alchemy) or even Metal Fires. I'd be much more afraid of pikemen and magicians if I didn't pick Flamestrike from a myrran lair.

The game can be wonderfully surprising and epic. In the same campaign, I strayed a bit too far on my quest to raze Horus's cities. I entered Myrror and torched a city in the same turn. Two heroes with 60 casting skill each made it easy. Next turn Horus casts... Planar Seal, and I'm a bit behind in casting skill and nowhere near researching Disjunction. I had to camp in a draconian town while fighting then challenging groups of priests, bears, pikemen, catapults deprived of my most powerful heroes. By the time I got them back

[B0rsuk]

Originally Posted by Finalgenesis

Human Paladins > All, it's pretty easy to survive (or prosper even, with a little luck) until you can produce them in impossible difficulty. Throw in warlord and/or life magic if you enjoy even more overkill.

This strategy is countered easily by a moron with Cracks Call :P. And even before the unnoficial patch AI loved the spell. It doesn't care about immunity - it affects the earth below your unit. I used to hate the spell because I was fixated on trying to tech to some imba units.

And once you'll get the brilliant idea to cast Flight on them, and Spell Lock... you'll discover the Web spell :P. It also doesn't care about immunity, it's a physical web. The more life enchantments you stack on the paladins, the more AI will laugh at you.

There might be a counter to this: Wraithform. But that's a high-level Death spell so you must abandon Life to access it.

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Speaking of Impossible, I like to take some race with average units, take Mana Leak and Counter Magic. If you use a spellcasting hero you can get both out in the first turn. Most of the time AI won't be able to cast anything, and - this is wonderful - enemy shamans will only fire two volleys before going silent. AI loves shamans. And another nice little spell: Resist Elements. It adds +3 to resistance against elemental spells and magical ranged attacks.

So no, it's not just big overpowered units and spells. You can peform the above strategy with gnolls. Gnolls actually have one of best rushing units: Wolf Riders. They are pretty tough if unsophisticated, only require Stables (Granary>Stables>Wolf Rider, Wolf Rider, Wolf Rider...). But they have THREE movement points. Put them on a road or use Pathfinding spell and it's like you're on Myrror.

Barbarians are also surprisingly good. I once made a point to win by knowing as few spells as possible. I ended up with Barbarians, Warlord and some other minor stuff. And guess what ? Barbarians destroy all opposition before AI can build up. Rush with swordsmen.

Invisible flying warships: should be harder now that AI's ranged units with Illusion Immunity can shoot invisible targets. Shadow Demons.

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I wonder how would Master of Magic play like if you could research any of the 5 colors like in Dominions 3. And if the 6th "color" was Construction...