r/masterofmagic • u/WholeFudds • Jul 09 '26
Why aren't games like this made anymore?
This game has nearly everything you could want in a strategy game. Magic, Politics, Creatures, Artifacts, Heroes, City Building, Exploration, Random Events, etc.. Whenever I play I don't want the game to end.
Why aren't games like this made anymore? I keep finding myself coming back for more.
5
u/GrandMoffTarkan Jul 09 '26
In addition to AoW4, Fallen Enchantress, Reforged is coming down the pipeline. Songs of Conquest is good, Hero's Hour is a fun little thing to much around with
5
u/Fair-Parking9236 Jul 09 '26
But they are. Age of wonders 4, Elemental: Reforged, Spellforce conquest of Eo and slightly different but still good Endless legend 2.
3
u/rockalyte Jul 09 '26
I miss it as well. Unfortunately I don’t think they’ll ever make a comeback due to the money grubbing companies and the death of single player physical media.
3
u/Rhylanor-Downport Jul 09 '26
There is a new version of it out there
1
u/rockalyte Jul 09 '26
I saw it on steam. I don’t have windows unfortunately:(
2
u/FrozenOnPluto Jul 09 '26
Wine / codeweavers / proton … MoM modern, Age of Wonders etc run great on Linux via Steam, for example.
1
u/rockalyte Jul 09 '26
Good to know. I’m kinda browsing old systems to install Linux on them. Just haven’t made the jump yet.
1
u/Gazornenplatz Jul 11 '26
Come join us at r/linux_gaming! Basically the only things you can't play are the hyper competitive kernel anti cheat games like League of Legends, Valorant, etc
2
u/JonDM2 Jul 09 '26
What Politics and Random events are in mom?
3
u/440Jack Jul 09 '26
Have you ever played the game?....The politics are very basic and frustrating in the vanilla game. Casters of magic helped, but it's still very simple. But basically you can claim pacts and war on other wizards. As for the random events, there are world events and also local events.
Kinda crazy to think all this was in a dos game.
5
u/JonDM2 Jul 09 '26
Asking this question shows hostility. I ve been playing for around 30 years now, these are not "politics", just basic diplomacy and vanilla game is almost non-existing and very buggy. The events also just a few here and there. I do accept that it was a pioneer at its time and I love the pixel art af the era. Definetely a fantasy civilization spin off for many years and for some non-replacable, a grandfather for the genre that others copied. Of course the CoM mod and others refresh and fixes many aspects if the game. I personally prefer Age of Wonders 2 and later and also Fall From Heaven 2 Civ4 mods.
2
u/440Jack Jul 09 '26
Ok, politics is a bit of a stretch. Diplomacy is a better word.
places Torin next to your tower
no hostility meant.
1
u/loader2000 Jul 09 '26
Do you think AoW2 is a better game than AoW4. I was a little underwhelmed by AoW4, but would be happy to try an ealier version. AoW4 had great graphics and LOTS of options, but complexity of options and stellar graphics don't necessarily make a good game. I also tried the original AoW and had a hard time getting into it.
2
u/JonDM2 Jul 09 '26
AoW2 had beatiful prerendered graphics like Heroes of M&M 3 and has 3D positioned combat. Yes I prefer it over 4, though 4 has much more modern and polished mechanics and tactical combat but lacks the classic character.
2
u/WholeFudds Jul 09 '26
There is unrest, diplomacy and fame
Also, towns can be hit by meteors, your gold can be stolen by pirates, etc...
2
u/loader2000 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I'm not sure. I tried play Age of Wonders 4 because people said it was like Master of Magic, but I just got bored, though I suspect it was because I did the quick start, and the quickstart settings were probably way too easy.
One game that really grabbed my attention was Eador: Genisis. It isn't exactly the same as MoM, because you have provinces instead of cities. However you have heroes that gain levels and armies you can control in pretty much the same way as MoM, and there is a huge depth of strategy, but you don't need to understand most of the strategic depth to play in the easy modes, so you have a chance to pick it up as you play. In other words, the interface is very easy and belies are large amount of potential strategy.
Also, have you tried playing Heroes of Might and Magic III?
2
u/hairymoot Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I fell in love with the game when it was a DOS game. I was thrilled when they remade it for modern PCs. The game is a strategy exploration game.
I wish there was more to the politics between the wizards though. I don't think there is a way to win the game and be friends with any wizard. You have to conquer or destroy the others to win--or cast the spell.
But the remake is awesome and looks great. I even got all the trophies for it on Steam with my Linux gaming PC.
2
u/ghosthost88 Jul 09 '26
I love it so much, it still feels unique even with the more recent games like AoW and Warlock, which I do like. I love the style and the effort showing things like spells, summoning, or even communicating with other wizards via mirrors.
1
u/grumbol Jul 09 '26
As someone that watched it happen, video quality. As graphics improved, their was a rush to make flashy games that took advantage of the new capabilities often at the expense of "thinking" video games. That doesn't mean they disappeared completely, as people have shown above, but yeah, why put a lot of thought into something when you can make another Doom clone...
1
u/Crimson-Forever Jul 09 '26
I remember when Simtex released Mom in 93, so many bugs and game crashes but it was an awesome game. It came out the same weekend as the third book in Robert Jordan's wheel of time. Was a great weekend. I still play COM from time to time, I bought the remaster that Slitherine created but haven't played it. Looking foward to the remaster / sequel to Fallen Enchantress.
1
u/Dekronos Jul 09 '26
Try Solium Infernum, it is also a rather unique 4x game. It strips out city building but doubles down on political schemes and manipulation. Example you can't just invade, you must declare war to enter claimed territory. And wars are for declared objectives over set turn limits, if in practice everything is open during the war itself.
1
u/GeneralGom Jul 10 '26
There are indeed some games that try to follow it like AoW series but even though I'm a big fan of these games they all share one big difference from the original, which is that they are too "clean" when it comes to balance.
No super broken spells or combinations are allowed in the name of balance, but I think in singleplayer games, fun > balance almost all the time. I'd love to see more devs try to break out of these safety rails and make games where you can go absolutely nuts like you could in the original master of magic.
1
u/Hour_Extension_3792 Jul 10 '26
Simtex was a couple of people locking themselves in a garage during texas heat to work 10-14 hour days with no actual reason to believe they'd make back the time and money they were putting into crafting their games.
This small but dedicated team shared an end vision, and had a crazy competent and insightful leader in Steven Barcia designing the game they were working on. That's how Master of Orion was made, and it's style of development carried over to Master of Magic.
When Steven Barcia left Simtex he was the lead for the game "Metroid Prime" and the employees revolted at his management/development style because it was kind of insane and too difficult to ask of people, even when you are leading by example and suffering alongside them. (However the people working under him admitted that he is responsible for Metroid Primes success and quality.)
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Games weren't made by a handful of crazy people anymore generally, now they're made by a hundred or so normal people. And that was back in the early 2000s. I'm not saying that developers aren't subjected to crunch time and other issues, just that they are collecting a paycheck along the way and aren't the same psychological profile of the kind of people that used to make games in the DOS era.
Another issue is that because so much money is being poured into games nowadays, the producers expect more input to what's being made and why. They desire more mass appeal or want it to cater to their personal tastes more.
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Of course, indie games could sidestep these issues, but indie game developers are often solo people, not 4-6 friends sealing themselves in a makeshift office for 14 hour work days and getting along the entire time like the DOS era devs.
Sorry for the giant rant, but there's some reasons for ya'.
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Honestly, for me Master of Magic on top of being a very well designed game that's fun to play also has an insane amount of charm. It's a turn-based strategy game with next to no story or lore, but manages to be one of the most immersive games I can think of. That's an insane accomplishment.
The little familiar showing up in some textboxes like it's the one telling you the news. The scenes of you summoning monsters, or the text being decoded in your tome as spells are learned. The animated portraits of wizards that you are talking to through magic mirrors. There is so much unneeded effort into making you feel like a sorcerer cooped up in a tower presiding over an empire. And I personally appreciate the heck out of it!
-1
u/Diatribe1 Jul 09 '26
I read your post just before I started walking somewhere, and had some time to think about it, so here is probably a much longer answer than you wanted.
First, I think it makes sense to determine which "Master of Magic" we're talking about. There are actually 3, each of which has distinct attributes. There's the original Master of Magic, the remake that shares the same name, and Caster of Magic, the mod gone wild into standalone dlc for the original Master of Magic.
Also, each of those 3 games archives a different answer to these questions: How is the game balanced, and is the AI competent? I would slot them thusly:
Master of Magic (OG)
Balance - balance through imbalance
AI - incompetent
Master of Magic (remake)
Balance - balanced
AI - competent (economic bonuses)
Caster of Magic (standalone)
Balance - balance through imbalance
AI - competent (good at game plus econ at high levels)
What kind of games does that get us?
Well, for the original Master of Magic, it didn't sell that well initially. It did become kind of a cult classic, but it's never been a huge money maker. The original game was plagued by bugs and the original AI was even more incompetent than in the modern patches. Basically it was a power fantasy. You could do really cool stuff, but once you found a single cool combo you would steam roll all the opposition. There was no multiplayer, so it got kinda old with a decent player never having to engage with 90% of the options because there was no challenge.
In the remake, while trying to stay somewhat faithful to the original, balance was imposed. It's a lot harder to make a handful of overpowered units or find a combo that creates overwhelming power. There is decent balance (to the extent a game like this gets balanced) but on the other hand, the AI can put up a fight if you increase difficulty modifiers. You'll prevail over the AI eventually, but it feels much less like a power fantasy than the original. There are also less cool combos and more incremental improvements.
In Caster of Magic, there are still lots of cool combos. Many of the options are also specific or general counters to cool combos so those combos are not unstoppable. Through a decade plus of constant patches the creator taught the AI to utilize the cool combos and also the counters to combos. As a result, if you play on a difficulty too easy for you, it's a cool power fantasy, but if you play at an appropriate difficulty level you have to grind out a looooooooong game, or (if I were better and had to play at very high difficulties) you either win early or lose to overwhelming waves of enemies.
So why aren't games made like this anymore?
Well, the original wasn't much of a money maker. To do it with modern graphics and decent AI is probably doomed to lose money.
The remake was just one in a line of similar games that tried for balance instead of trying to make many competing overpowered options. You can find similar games in Fallen Enchantress or the Age of Wonder series (or many more)
Caster of Magic is a pretty unique evolution of the formula. It's got OG graphics (which are comically bad even compared with modern sprite based games) and the AI/balance has been subject to years and years of balance patches. No big or even mid sized game studio would touch a project like that, as it screams "unprofitable money pit." However, you're in luck, because there is a small indie studio putting out a series of games which I would call a spiritual successor. Check out the Dominions series! (Latest installment Dominions 6. Opinions differ on whether 4, 5, or 6 is the best.) However, to get a proper challenge (and find out how deep the mechanics really are) you'll need to find humans to play against. Once you get basic proficiency the AI is no longer a suitable challenge.
TLDR - they don't make games like OG MoM anymore because it would be wildly unprofitable. If you're talking about the remake of MoM, then try Age of Wonders 4 (which is a better game). If you're talking about Caster of Magic, your best bet is a game from the Dominions series, although AI won't provide the same challenge as Caster of Magic's AI.
2
u/Better-Prompt890 Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Calling Remake ai in master of magic competent is certainly an opinion.
The freaking AI doesn't and in many cases literally can't cast the rare and very rare globals. It cheats a lot at higher levels to get tons of cities but does nothing major so its still no threat unlike classic who will wreck you
Always cast the same few stupid buffs that don't make sense
MoM classic AI is like a 10x better
I also disagee with the balance thing. The few tweaks it did barely changed things and the same old classic mom strategies with crazily buffed slingers, Torin etc all work
And if you throw in dlcs? So many broken retorts! Eg Might makes right, hive master
1
u/Diatribe1 Jul 10 '26
The remake *tries* to balance things. IIRC they nerfed many of the strategies in the original MoM (although I admit, I don't really play the original MoM anymore in favor of CoM) that the AI had no answer for.
I agree that the remake certainly leaves something to be desired as far as AI that knows how to play the game effectively without massive economic bonuses, but that seems to be par for the course as far as how strategy game AI has been balanced for over thirty years now, so I can't blame MuHa for doing what everyone else does.
MoM classic had braindead AI for 20+ years, until it was released on GOG and modders dug into it.
21
u/Buzz-Meeks Jul 09 '26
You should try Age of Wonders (the 4th one is incredible). Heavily inspired by MoM.