Master of Magic remake from Thea developers and Slitherine

[Lacrymas]

I think the DLCs only come with content.

 

[mastroego]

index.php:
it's actually a legit question.

There have been games recently, like XCOM2 IIRC, where critical updates (like engine fixes) came only with the DLCs.

 

[Axiomatic]

hhhmmm, so, if I get it while discounted, skipping DLCs for now... do I get all the post-release updates?
Except pure DLC content, of course?

What I mean is, are there general improvements or revisions that ONLY come with the DLCs?

Yes the latest general improvement like AI, diplomacy, UX improvements eg build queues that allow adding items with perquisites etc are independent of the DLC.

More broadly compared to base game launched in Dec 2022, you essentially get 2 roadmap worth of improvements that were announced in early 2023.

Edit : Technically even without paying a cent beyond the base game you do get free content including 1 free DLC and the Halloween update content

 

[Axiomatic]

index.php:
it's actually a legit question.

There have been games recently, like XCOM2 IIRC, where critical updates (like engine fixes) came only with the DLCs.

Really? That's a dick move.

 

[Axiomatic]

Now that's the dlc and patch is out I can talk about the AI improvements.

Sadly there's still a ways to go...

They no longer declare war on contact (but that was always a easy fix) but their defense of cities espically capital is still hit or miss

They still rarely cast global spells, this could be modded in the future but still..

I'm getting a sense (just a sense I got no insider info) this is the end of the planned DLCs (the last 3 were pre announced in early 2023) and possibly official support (maybe another 6 months to close remaining issue?)

It all depends on the sales of course

 

[mastroego]

it's actually a legit question.

There have been games recently, like XCOM2 IIRC, where critical updates (like engine fixes) came only with the DLCs.

Really? That's a dick move.

Yeah it was XCOM2.
Devs claimed the recoding was extensive and tied to the changes they were doing with the expansion, so it couldn't be "ported" to the base game.

Now that's the dlc and patch is out I can talk about the AI improvements.

Sadly there's still a ways to go...

They no longer declare war on contact (but that was always a easy fix) but their defense of cities espically capital is still hit or miss

They still rarely cast global spells, this could be modded in the future but still..

I'm getting a sense (just a sense I got no insider info) this is the end of the planned DLCs (the last 3 were pre announced in early 2023) and possibly official support (maybe another 6 months to close remaining issue?)

It all depends on the sales of course

Hmmmmm.
What about currently available mods?
I've seen there's a big one already, which adds races and all.

 

[Lacrymas]

The original really didn't need more races and wizards. What it needed was a balance pass, multiplayer, more wizards per game and maybe some modern UI improvements, especially for camera movement, but that's it. Yeah, sure, there was no "water race", but did it really need one? Endless Legend got a water race and it's super unbalanced and overpowered.

 

[Axiomatic]

it's actually a legit question.

There have been games recently, like XCOM2 IIRC, where critical updates (like engine fixes) came only with the DLCs.

Really? That's a dick move.

Yeah it was XCOM2.
Devs claimed the recoding was extensive and tied to the changes they were doing with the expansion, so it couldn't be "ported" to the base game.

Now that's the dlc and patch is out I can talk about the AI improvements.

Sadly there's still a ways to go...

They no longer declare war on contact (but that was always a easy fix) but their defense of cities espically capital is still hit or miss

They still rarely cast global spells, this could be modded in the future but still..

I'm getting a sense (just a sense I got no insider info) this is the end of the planned DLCs (the last 3 were pre announced in early 2023) and possibly official support (maybe another 6 months to close remaining issue?)

It all depends on the sales of course

Hmmmmm.
What about currently available mods?
I've seen there's a big one already, which adds races and all.

You probably thinking of Mythical Realms . The author is a long time beta-tester and probably the most influential tester of the remake. It's the closest to Caster of Magic, in that it tries to balance the obviously weaker stuff but unlike Caster it doesn't go overboard and radically redesign everything. It also has new races.

There's also Fantastic Balance that focuses just on balance.

There's Rise of the Planewalker, which sounds exactly like what it seems a MTG mod. These are probably the big 3 currently, those there are other small mods that add a race or two.

Other mods focus on giving you more starting settings to play with (e.g. More Starting settings 2), bug fixes, and other increasing small changes - for example, I like these set of mods that affect spell of mastery, everything from removing it totally to making it easier or harder to cast, or ones that give more sorting options to city list etc

Also there were many mods that were released for the game before Steam Workshop was implemented, a lot are now abandoned and/or not brough over to Steam Workshop. Notable one is Solitude Aeturnus - Tactical Combat Mod, which not only makes upgrades to the Tactical AI but also adds new features like bonuses for being in certain terrain, flanking, units can start invisible and ambush etc (all of which the AI uses).

But yeah I expect the mods to increase often it is announced there is no more official updates.

 

[Axiomatic]

The original really didn't need more races and wizards. What it needed was a balance pass, multiplayer, more wizards per game and maybe some modern UI improvements, especially for camera movement, but that's it. Yeah, sure, there was no "water race", but did it really need one? Endless Legend got a water race and it's super unbalanced and overpowered.

I disagree. Your viewpoint is that of a Caster of Magic one.

I enjoy some of the new extensions in the DLC. Not everything though, mostly because I think the developers are not very good at the game, so there's a lot of fluff in there mixed in with fun ideas with some of the new Wizard retorts. Races I agree, the modders are better at it.

 

[mastroego]

Well, Axiomatic, I just thought to myself
"what the hell".

And now here we are... added to library.
And you're even a newfag, if you'll allow my saying so.
While I, am a cheap oldfag.
So, quite the achievement getting me to do that.

But this is a double edged sword, of course.
I will hold you personally responsible for this purchase.

 

[Lacrymas]

Well, Axiomatic, I just thought to myself
"what the hell".

And now here we are... added to library.
And you're even a newfag, if you'll allow my saying so.
While I, am a cheap oldfag.
So, quite the achievement getting me to do that.

But this is a double edged sword, of course.
I will hold you personally responsible for this purchase.

Do recount your impressions when you get the chance to play it. I wouldn't have super high hopes, though.

 

[mastroego]

For now I just fired it up out of curiosity.
First impact is nice enough, I guess.

Still, backlog.
It might sit there a while.

 

[Axiomatic]

Do recount your impressions when you get the chance to play it. I wouldn't have super high hopes, though.

I had a glance at your posts on Master of Magic vs Mastroego, it's possible both of you are looking for different things (and/or willing to tolerate different types of flaws). So even if he likes it/finds it decent you probably won't.

Essentially, Master of Magic remake is meant to be unbalanced just as the original game was, which also explains why there is no MP. Modders will try to do a "balance pass" (see the mods I mentioned), but that wasn't the mandate given to Muha or they didn't choose to do this. A "balance pass" is likely to piss off tons of players who want the original experience when it comes to game mechanics (and good luck trying to get die-hard fans to agree what is balanced, what isn't) and given how bad the developers are at the game it's also fortunate they didn't try too hard at this.

That said, because of this "rule", it leads to a strange situation where they try not to touch the original base game but workaround it by adding new stuff. e.g. instead of buffing death magic which is known to be weak, they add new stuff in DLCs like Necromancer to try to make death magic more playable. Instead of buffing unpopular races like Orcs and Klackons they added Wizard abilities that buffed those races directly . Not sure if there is any game like this.

That said, they did a few clever balance things I didn't appreciate until playing it for a few months.

But what about other changes (there are close to 100 known differences)? These are due to technical limitations/ limited capability of the team, sigh.

 

[Axiomatic]

I hereby withdraw my official recommendation to get Master of Magic (2022) remake.

 

[Lacrymas]

Tell us more.

 

[mastroego]

I hereby withdraw my official recommendation to get Master of Magic (2022) remake.

 

[Mortmal]

I hereby withdraw my official recommendation to get Master of Magic (2022) remake.

Why especially? The original was great, but today, no remake holds a candle to something like Dominions anyway.

 

[Axiomatic]

I hereby withdraw my official recommendation to get Master of Magic (2022) remake.

Why especially? The original was great, but today, no remake holds a candle to something like Dominions anyway.

Disagree about Dominions.

Anyway the current build is broken. All the Ai improvements we tested during the beta somehow is not in this public build. Worse for some players the changes they made to the build queues to allow items with prerqeuisits causes a huge slow down.

 

[Axiomatic]

Tell us more.

I am working on a review.

 

[Axiomatic]

Change History:
v1.09.14 – 21th February 2024
Modification:
•Tweak to some roaming armies allowing them to join endangered towns in some cases
•Improvements to AI behaviour forbidding it to send armies to POIs (points of interest that are not war related) without considering current danger to the town that army is to be taken from (These should address the AI ‘runaway issue’ reported by players)
Fixes:
•Lag resulting from screen refresh calls linked to Build Queue (Town screen and/or Build Queue Popup)
•Lag resulting from screen refresh calls on Spell Casting screen
•Negative Gold rewards when taking/razing cities
•Issue with generic event references not being cleared between runs (i.e. new game/load game) resulting in them being reevaluated possibly multiple times at the end of the turn for no reason and/or incompatibility issues if some runs used DLC while others did not.
•Rare crash resulting from adventures unable to handle "No Lairs" setting
•Festivities event corrected
•Meteor Storm spell error corrected

 

[Axiomatic]

Spotted on the Master of Magic Discord. An announcement about the fate of Master of magic is coming soon.....

 

[Lacrymas]

Spotted on the Master of Magic Discord. An announcement about the fate of Master of magic is coming soon.....

You still haven't told us why you don't recommend the remake ;d

 

[Axioms]

The remake sucks for a lot of reasons. It plays really slow, even for a TBS game, the quality of life features built up over the decades were ignored, but then they made it hex based which while good kinda contradicts their claim about why no QoL. Etc.

 

[Axiomatic]

The remake sucks for a lot of reasons. It plays really slow, even for a TBS game, the quality of life features built up over the decades were ignored, but then they made it hex based which while good kinda contradicts their claim about why no QoL. Etc.

Not defending the game, but it's pretty obvious why it went hex based.

Hint low budget team wanting to reuse something they have used before. I would say most of the changes are just due to incompetence.

 

[Axiomatic]

Spotted on the Master of Magic Discord. An announcement about the fate of Master of magic is coming soon.....

You still haven't told us why you don't recommend the remake ;d

Look. I'm not one of those people who think MoM game design is outdated, if you think so, the game was never meant for you. (Go Play Age of Wonders 4 or something)

It was targeted for fans of the original game (of which I understand there are still many fans here who play Classic MoM). But even for that audience, it's just implemented very badly.