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| The beta is over, so now I will talk about it by Roop 12/10/2022, 8:50pm PST | ||||
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| Back when I made this recommendation, they hadn't even implemented a few of the late-game spells and the enemy wizard AI wasn't in the game either, enemy wizards could only cast a couple spells but did build settlers and expand their cities fine. Didn't matter, one morning I decided to playtest for a bit, an hour later I couldn't remember if it was the middle of the night or the middle of the day. Was I getting up or going to bed? Sipping my coffee didn't help, it was cold. All the old spells are back, and the same gameplay as the original. I didn't even know what year it was anymore.
I will be buying it, but I can't really review it or anything because I didn't play any of the later builds. They did put in the AI finally, and I got to playtest that and I dutifully reported bugs and even found a hot sploit. I reported it of course, ahh but brought back memories of being in an old World of Warcraft expansion beta, finding hot sploitz and reporting them like some narc, thousands upon thousands of cheeseheads and scrubs crying out in agony across multiple servers. Anyway, it's only a single-player game so I wonder if they patched out my hot sploit? It was a good beta test, it ramped up when I got too busy for it, a lot of good testers joined. The devs were so happy they decided to gift a few copies and give the rest a discount, and asked on the test Discord what we thought, who should "win." But everybody knew who deserved those copies. Couple guys would not only report bugs, but post the old code as well as the fixed code below it. So much of the game is in the moddable scripts. Because it's based on The Very First Civilization... it kinda ignores innovations and ease-of-life things that have become expected from 4Xs. Like boats. Game developers from Sid himself on down never figured out the fucking boats. To gather an army, put it on a boat and know when exactly to take them all off the boat let alone remember even why the units are even on the fucking boat to begin with, sounds simple? Nobody could ever fucking do it. Sid barely figured out the goddamn aircraft carriers. If you spawned on an island in these kinds of games, you were always safe. Finally, Brian Reynolds gave up one day and had units just transform into tiny boats when they tried entering the water, and everybody was amazed and loved this idea and that's what happens in 4Xs now. But in Master of Magic, it's before all that and they have big fucking boats. Some units can have water walking or flying, but you have flying boats and summoned boats, and don't forget the small fucking boats, has to be boats. Brian Reynolds does not post on this test Discord motherfuckers, so I wondered will these Devs get the ships working, where others have failed? That very night, start a new game with a new build and an enemy Wizard summons a floating island, had placed a spearman on it, and was raiding my island territory, stealing all the lairs that didn't have monster guards before I could get to them. I was so happy, Jafar had become a complete prick again, and now with a boat! You don't build mines, not even on resources, don't build farms, just roads, and only if your starting race actually has engineers. People may not remember early Civ, how it was, early game there was a lot of clicking Next Turn, Next Turn. I think Civ 3 eventually had you click Next Turn, and multiple turns would pass by automatically until something fucking anything eventually happens. People always hated that shit, so it's changed nowadays, and there was quite the discussion of this in the test Discord. Master of Magic has heroes, and that gives the player something to do early-game, so they added starting with one as a main menu option. That was a great idea, and they give you a free scout summon also, so that helps. But there's still this clunky Civ 1 vibe, and some people might be bewildered by old-fashioned game mechanics, even with the Thea 2 engine. But I prefer the stacked units, myself. The latest Civ has just become... too much shit, too much shit you have to build up everywhere on this cramped motherfucking map--all a clusterfuck of units on top of cramped shit because there's no stacks... fuck one unit per hex, fuck it! This old-fashioned game is fucking refreshing. If you never played Master of Magic you must be a fag, so here's some tips and tricks for the fags: Any of the default wizards is fine for your first game. I'd stick with a wizard specializing in one realm of magic probably. That way you get to see all the tier 3 spells. Splitting your bookshelf, you might not get all the good spells. That's not bad, having multiple realms of lower level spells (like all the good unit buffs) can be really powerful. That's why customizing your own wizard is usually the way to go. Don't underestimate those retorts, lots to choose from, like node mastery is not even on a default wizard but that's a really powerful retort. Guys would post different wizards they came up with, one had one with 3 retorts and only a handful of spellbooks to work with, crazy builds they made work. You can always find spells of your realm you might not be able to otherwise research in monster lairs, but also sometimes new spellbooks and maybe a new retort. There's a lot of races to start out as, but you'll encounter neutral cities you can conquer later so you'll never be stuck with one race. Any of the races on Myrror are better than the ones starting on Arcanus, but that means taking the starting on Myrror retort. The races aren't equal on Arcanus either, just look and clearly some are just better, but they all have their use... for whatever particular strategy. High Men are obviously the best, great running empires with a lot of built-up cities, doesn't seem to be much wrong with them at first glance... and they have Paladins. Nerf the paladins! It's true in this game too! People hate these paladins (those are the people who start with Orcs). Paladins are Immune to Magic, you see, and it's as great as it sounds. Why would anybody ever take those ugly Gnolls with all the penalties? Gnolls can't build shit because they're dumb as shit, they look horrible, and they ain't using any fancy alchemists guild, so that means they never get to unlock pretty Mithril weapons if they ever could get lucky and find it. But Gnolls can build wolf pens and that means Wolf Riders, the most powerful and deadly cavalry with which you can then rush across the map and Raze any cities before they biuld any cathedrals. Or maybe just pick lizardmen, they may be another town of idiots but all their units have gills. And just rush and crush any and everything with an army of giant turtles. Bonus Tip: Halfing Slingers. Arcane Realm These are the utility spells every wizard gets. You won't be needing to scout the whole map in this game (or scout much at all unless you want to) because you get a Reveal Cities spell. Nature realm has an upgrade that shows everything going on everywhere, not just cities. Life Realm The best at doing everything other than damage, and even then it damages Death. I'd recommend for your first game... and if you happen to have those gayass Paladins I mentioned earlier, they'll think you're just the fanciest of Wizards, that Weapon Immunity spell you have goes really well with their inherent Magic Immunity (Sorcery realm), creating this gay warm fuzzy synergy between the two of you. Life also gets the Haste spell, so that means you can buff up a fast army. That has to be the best buff late game. There are many great unit buffs, almost too many, but don't ignore Heroism. My advice when starting a game with Life, always pick that buff first over enchanted weapon or armor or anything else. You want those early game units to become elite, that's what you want, and when they eventually do level up to elite on their own, don't worry the buff comes off automatically. It doesn't sound sexy in the spellbook, but people called for it's nerf. Nerf! Nerf the buff whether it was in the original game or not, be damned! Also if Life wasn't great enough, gets a spell to summon the Best Hero in the Game (all the heroes have a hidden rank used to compare to your fame score). Praise Torin. Bonus Tip: Late game, empires will get huge, the bigger the better like in the original Civ. No penalties like in later 4Xs. But if you just like having a smaller empire in your late game (like most people), cast the spell that puts a fountain of youth in your city, and then do it in every city. Now you can have the maximum tax rate because no one can be unhappy. Just have a new spell ready to buff any new city you happen to take. Death Realm Opposed to the Life Realm, the two cannot share the same bookshelf. This realm can debuff everything in enemy cities (food, production, wealth), which maybe won't scale as well at harder difficulties (because of AI bonuses) but I did bring down Merlin on Hard, that green bastard. His empire collapsed under pestilence and plague, and most converted to neutral cities. You can debuff units too and do direct damage. Death units don't heal, which can be a pain in the ass, except they are cheap units meant to be fodder. You get used to it. Powerful Death summons like Wraiths get the ability to drain life (healing themselves hopefully) and raise enemy units killed that way as undead, so fresh skeleton fodder. You can also pick a unit and turn it into a werewolf, these guys regenerate so at least somebody in your undead army will be healthy. Death doesn't get a hero they can summon like Life does, but both realms do have random heroes that will offer to join only if you have enough books. Bonus Tip: When you can, make an army of Shadow Demons. They can teleport between both planes, fly around and they regenerate. Find weak lairs on the opposite plane and loot them for your heroes. Sorcery Pure magic focus, upgraded dispelling and then a spell lock to stop enemy dispelling on your own units. The magic immunity buff is from this realm, and summoning the Storm Drake, a dragon with inherent magic immunity. Nerf the Storm Drake! Direct damage Lightning attacks, and you can buff your heroes with Wind Walking so everyone in their stack can fly. Bonus Tip: Have a good fast army with a hero or two, then summon a floating island and fill it with slow units and have them follow around behind. Don't ignore the mighty floating island! Actually I think I may have accidentally got it nerfed, so I'm sorry about that. BUT Floating Island still outclasses Jaer the Wind Mage (that little bitch). Chaos You can set shit on fire and watch it die, or just have a wall of fire around your city and watch shit try to run through it and burn, or go and set your own unit on fire and watch shit catch on fire tries and attack it, that kind of thing, firey swords for everybody. But then you can also mutate normal units, so they might grow demon skin or demon wings, become chaos creatures. You can cast corruption, turns the land to shit. You can make Volcanoes rise to fuck everything. Then you can cast a spell that automates this process, wait what was the spell called again... that's right Armageddon. Armageddon ain't so bad--especially when everyone else is a chump and you ain't a chump. Bonus Tip: You kind of people don't deserve bonus tips. Nature The realm of fairies and faggotry, lots of healing and redecorating going on, you'll love it. You can transmute resources, turn coal to gold or silver to mithril, make the land pretty and generally feel self-important. You get to summon a Great Wyrm, which has the ability to tunnel anywhere on the battlefield, attack, and either tunnel away or attack again. A great bitch ability, which is also a spell you can cast on your units and hero bitches. Bonus Tip: The Web Spell summons a real actual sticky web out of an actual real or unreal sticky asshole. So, it works against units with magic immunity. The game is out December 13th. Slitherine has a release party planned on Twitch where they'll also talk about their other upcoming games. https://www.slitherine.com |
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