OT, Stardock's MOM influenced game news

[WraithLord]

Hi,

Just wanted to share with you an interesting thread about this game in the AOW-SM heaven forums.

Needless to say I'm *very* excited about this game. MOM was the first TBS start. I've played and until two years ago I was still actively playing it.

Quoting Edelward quoting Brad

This is a quote from some of their vets ,Brad:

***I don't want to hijack the thread here with an tangential discussion on what should be in a fantasy strategy game. But here's my 2 cents on that:

1) Character building. The player is a character in the game. Nearly all magic in the world actually flows from the player. If you've ever read The Silmarillion (Tolkien) all the magic in Arda basically comes from the spirit of the things created by Eru. So in this sense, the player is a kind of Valar of sorts who can choose to invest their growing power into their creations/minions or into themselves (or a bit of both). That's an over simplification but the point is, part of the game mechanics is having to choose between making your forces more powerful or actual character.

2) The game is very spell-centric. The 3D engine is being designed so you can do Populous style spells to the world. Since it's turn-based (as opposed to real-time) that also means you can have some ridiculously fancy spell effects.

3) Very distinct magic schools.

4) You cannot build heroes. They have to be recruited and there's no Inn. Ones ability to attract heroes is one of the game mechanics and "interesting choices" players have. Those heroes can be wimpy or powerful depending on how the player chooses to use and invest in them.

5) There is massive scaling in this. At the beginning of Fellowship of the Rings (the movie edition) you could see just how powerful Sauron is. In this, if you manage to get a dragon, that dragon can wipe out hundreds of units. And by scale, we mean there's thousands and thousands of troops. One ancient dragon is taking out hundreds of troops.

6) Cities are built and improved and local geography matters. I won't say more on this right now.

7) Multiplayer will involve all players moving at the same time.

8) Battles zoom in so that tactical combat can occur which is also turn based.

This is quote from developer:
**I do want to stress that the goal for this isn't to be a MoM clone. It has its own game mechanics, many of which are in common with MoM since, in a sense, both want to have a lot of Civilization-style elements.

One advantage of being designed in 2007 is the hardware requirements are probably going to be higher than our other games. I want to see large battles. I want to see creatures that can wipe out massive numbers of foot soldiers and such. I want to see magic spells that can flood terrain, raise mountains, ruin worlds. I want to see the land sicken and die when evil takes it over.

If we'd done a MOM2, we would have been faithful to the Master of Magic mechanics. But since we're doing a new game, hopefully we'll be able to make a game that combines favorite elements from many games plus adds our own on innovations to the genre. But it'll be some months before we start putting up any previews or anything (or even announce the game officially). **

[meister_miagi]

Sounds really cool!

[lch]

How is this news? There's info on this since almost four years now. http://www.masterofmagic2.com/

Give it time and see what they come up with. They already said half a year ago that they are not going to produce a Master of Magic 2, but something with influences from MOM, Populous and X-Com *. They didn't buy the MOM license. There are already quite a number of MOM-inspired games.

Actually, I've stumbled over Dominions only because I was looking for a MOM substitute and neither Age of Wonders nor Spellforce nor Heroes of Might and Magic or whatever else I tried was really getting it right. There's half a dozen clone projects that stopped more or less halfway through the design phase, too. And incidentally, I've played a MOM game the whole of yesterday in DosBox, for old times sake. (I pretty much unlearned to play it effectively in hard mode)

But I think now that MOM had its time and it has long since gone past. There will be other games similar to it, but they won't be a 100% adaptation. So give it a rest and just look if those other games are maybe good in their own regard.

/rant

*) Which are, of course, all very popular games. That's PR in action for you.

[BesucherXia]

Hmmm... a really good news.

But I am among the people, who have been disappointed and losing faith for stardock.

Just look at this tread to follow up the "newest schedule" for Galciv2 exp2 beta patch. Just hope they would not break words this time...

[Jazzepi]

Oh who cares D: I'd rather a developer take a billion years to make a good product then rush it out the door. You can't have it both ways.

Look at Blizzard. They're constantly pushing products back, but everything they touch turns into gold.

I have a friend in the IT industry in Washington DC who works for a defense contractor. His saying is this. It can't be fast, cheap, and quality. You have to sacrifice somewhere.

Jazzepi

[theenemy]

You got me drooling at the topics name...

[chrispedersen]

No insult to Dom!

[Cor2]

I am waiting on Spore and Fallout 3.

[Morkilus]

Simultaneous turns in multiplayer? Massive battles, creatures that can wipe out whole armies? Choosing between powerful troops and a powerful initial character? Sounds like it's been influenced by something other that MoM to me. The only thing I've been concerned about since the beginning is the tactical combat mode. I have to assume this has the option to be modeled or automated a la Space Empires 3, and hope that it's done well. I'd hate to feel obligated to play each and every battle tactically just because the model doesn't favor my favorite heroes. I prefer the "script well, hope for the best" way.

[NTJedi]

Morkilus said:
Simultaneous turns in multiplayer? Massive battles, creatures that can wipe out whole armies? Choosing between powerful troops and a powerful initial character? Sounds like it's been influenced by something other that MoM to me. The only thing I've been concerned about since the beginning is the tactical combat mode. I have to assume this has the option to be modeled or automated a la Space Empires 3, and hope that it's done well. I'd hate to feel obligated to play each and every battle tactically just because the model doesn't favor my favorite heroes. I prefer the "script well, hope for the best" way.

This might be my fault...

My email transactions with one of the stardock developers revealed very promising features planned for this upcoming game. I emailed a list of 8 different important game features back during August_2007, the response I recieved indicated these were already working in the game or were planned to be ready for the final release. One of the eight features I requested was an option for "custom AI scripting"... allowing the AI to become stronger, unique, etc., as members of the community improve/change one of the personality types, which has been highly successful for other games with this option. Multiple AI personalities which can be improved by the community would be a great step forward. Ideally new personalities could be added and the "option" for each AI to have a randomly selected personality.

I knew Stardock was already using ideas from MoM... so I also suggested reviewing 3 other successful stable games:
A) Heroes_3 Complete
B) Dominions_3
C) Age_of_Wonders_ShadowMagic

Then about 2 months later Stardock was actually advertising for Dominions_3 which is bought at Shrapnelgames, so they returned the favor and advertised for Stardock games.

Needless to say... I'm also very excited with Stardocks upcoming fantasy game expected for release during 2009.