OT: Master of Magic unofficial patch v1.40f

[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

[NooBliss]

Hehe. Please post here if you find something that works.

I am still trying new strategies time after time as well. So far, just four victories. Problem is, impossible AI simply cheats, so in order to beat him you've got to find something broken (as in imbalanced) and cheat him back.
For that reason, I'm very happy with this patch as it FINALLY fixes cloak of fear. That's one more decent pick in starting death spells. The more good stuff to work with, the more chances to find some new strategy.
Heroism is still way better, tho.

Too bad they didnt fix the way area dispel works. I was very disappointed to find out that Archmage + Nature mastery does not prevent mass dispel from ruining all your hard-woven unit enchantments, though in theory it should've made them 3x times as hard to dispel.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by NooBliss

Hehe. Please post here if you find something that works.

I am still trying new strategies time after time as well. So far, just four victories. Problem is, impossible AI simply cheats, so in order to beat him you've got to find something broken (as in imbalanced) and cheat him back.

Yes. I think I already found a way to cheat - the AI will stupidly trade spells when you first encounter an enemy wizard. So, make sure to grab some juicy spells.

I think I'm on to a good opening now. Steps are roughly:
- summon 4 bears and add to starting units
- take closest indep. town
- Churn out swordman & summon more bears.
- move a stack of 9 units and hit enemy wizards towns
So far working well.

Originally Posted by NooBliss

For that reason, I'm very happy with this patch as it FINALLY fixes cloak of fear. That's one more decent pick in starting death spells. The more good stuff to work with, the more chances to find some new strategy.
Heroism is still way better, tho.

Too bad they didnt fix the way area dispel works. I was very disappointed to find out that Archmage + Nature mastery does not prevent mass dispel from ruining all your hard-woven unit enchantments, though in theory it should've made them 3x times as hard to dispel.

Too bad they don't release the source code

[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.

[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.

------------

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...

[WraithLord]

I was just kindly tipped that war bears are a bad (as in not cost effective) summons.

Well yeah, but how do you build a starting army when all you get is nature picks + nature master (Freya) and a race with weak starting units (High elves)

[NooBliss]

If you manage to get both invisibility AND warships on Impossible, then yes, you have a good chance to win. Problem is, AI will find you much earlier and it's only so long before it gets agressive.

Gnolls, yes. I've read your original post and tried these wolf riders - impressive given how early you can get these. I have yet to see if they are good enough to rush impossible AIs, for its a race against the clock; it gets stuff like storm giants and chaos spawn surprisingly fast.
Not to mention that it builds huge hordes of low-lvl units.. for starters. AI cities grow much faster than player's.

Originally Posted by WraithLord

I was just kindly tipped that war bears are a bad (as in not cost effective) summons.

Well yeah, but how do you build a starting army when all you get is nature picks + nature master (Freya) and a race with weak starting units (High elves)

Nah, bears are actually good. They allow you to beat an indie city or two early. And... thats more or less about it.
High elves have these longbowmen. Quite a good unit, not as strong as in version 1.0, but still good enough. Then they also get the Elven lords, but good luck surviving that long and getting them in sufficient numbers... hehe.

Btw, about the rush with barbarian swordsmen - you may rush one impossible AI, yes. I find that quite hard, too, but it may be possible. Next AI is gonna cast a wall of fire on his capitol, for example, and you're toast (I play with 5 AIs). Soon, AI will have these doom bats, fireballs and chaos spawns. (replace it with something just as nasty for other paths).
For me, it didnt work.

[lch]

Nice, thanks for the info, I wasn't aware that somebody dabbled with this.

Originally Posted by B0rsuk

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.

Dunno if that's how Foodstamp does it, but there are a couple of game editors for MoM around. Have a look at the "Game Editors" section (12.1) of http://uk.faqs.ign.com/articles/372/372466p1.html

The links are now defunct, but you'll find those files on other sites, too.

[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.