f13.net

Released today on Steam. WAP is a butt and won't be a guinea pig, so someone else buy it and tell everyone how close (or not close) it is to Master of Magic.

thx

http://store.steampowered.com/app/265970/

The Steam forum posts are pretty grim. Even the more positive comments (apart from what may be sock-puppets) talk about crippling UI issues, bugs, and crashes.

feck k

So many potentially great fantasy TBS games have been released over the last 2 years, and *none* of them have turned out great. Endless Legends is the closest to being being good, but they all suffer from some huge flaw and just bad design.

Some patches and a Steam sale are necessary ingredients in this brew.

Agreed. I did see there was a patch today, but didn't see the specifics.

They are all trying to "fix" or reinvent problems that weren't really problems in the 4x formula from what I can tell.  Each company trying to put their own spin on or remove parts that the designer didn't like, kind of fucking things up because play testing and iteration isn't a part of their workflow. 

The other problem seems to be that the companies pursuing this are small and fall prey to the shiny.  They don't have the budget to do proper coding AND slick art so they throw money at art because that's cheaper and sells quicker initially.

So yesterday was actually the first time I'd heard about this game. I read up on it, the reviews and everything else and frankly couldn't NOT buy after I read it.

The devs had the explicit goal of recreating MoM in a modern engine, spiritually at least, since they can't do so exactly. After playing 3-4 hours, I think they pulled it off.

The people tearing the game apart in Steam reviews and forums are doing so because it's an old game with old strategies. One of the kids I saw gave it a terrible review because "I can't capture anything. The game cheats and sticks armies of monsters I have no hope of defeating. I am unable to fight anything in the areas around me." People who've actually played MOM know you've got no chance of taking out those Dragons, Centaurs and Faeries with your Rank1 spearmen. You scout, then move on.

So far I've seen nothing of the "filler text" complaints, either. It could be that this is what the 1.0.1 patch did. Everything's been pretty clear to me when I needed to find out information.

Gameplay? The game is intuitive to me and feels exactly like MoM, outside of their tweaks so as to not get their asses shut-down. Full disclosure; I still regularly fire-up MoM a time or two a year and play a campaign through. Anyone whose only exposure to 4x was one of the more recent games would probably have a problem.

"Circles" are books of magic from MOM. You can gain or add more at cusomization.  There are far more circles than just the 7 from MoM, for a total of 12. Elemental circles and Affect Circles are the primary divider. From what I can tell, spells you are offered are determined by the overlap of these circles, but not restricted by it.  

For example "Aid" (MOM: Bless is the closest I can think of) falls into Augmentation (enhance circle) and Life (element circle) Some of the new spheres, like Biomancy, should give some cool space for spells. Biomancy is described as drawing on the positive and negative energies of the world to affect living and dead things. Much cooler than just "life" or "death" books, IMO.

All the wizard traits are there with a few new ones like Worldshaper, which lets you cast those awesome terraforming spells from MoM's Life Books without needing to have any ranks in it.  There are also several handicaps to gain additional points at customization time. Examples are: Tyrant, which raises your unrest by 20% across the board for +2 picks or Aecetic which caps you at 1000 gold max for +3 picks.

The combat grid is there and feels exactly like MoM's. Ranged units shoot across the board (one shot, so they're using the 1.5 patch) for reduced accuracy, everyone can move then attack or melee can attack 2x per turn. None of the jankiness of Fallen Enchantress' "move or attack" or "well this guy's casting so the spell will go off next turn."  They also attack & defend per # of figures. If you didn't realize this was happening in MoM then you missed a big component of that game. Halflings didn't kick ass because they were broken, they had more figures per unit so they got more attacks. That's why those little 3-attack slingers would fuck your shit up; there were 9 of them in a unit.

A nice modern enhancement here is that the max moves are shown in highlight on the unit's turn. No more, "aw shit, I missed the rocks and my spearmen only moved one space. I'm fucked." Also, at the start of the combat you are given the option to place your units manually vs. the game's auto-placement. No more of the, "well they stuck my Heroes behind everyone, time to waste a move shuffling"

Races that are in the game are different. None of the "well this is a Draconian so they look like this but build all the same shit and have the same bonuses as men." They have different units for each race. Each race is handicapped or enhanced in different ways so you have different build priorities, just like MoM. You don't realize how much you missed this until you've got it again.

The map and Cities are your oldschool Civs squares. This means cities are still that familiar old + layout of 3 tiles out and up from your center. The game does the courtesy of showing the whole city's influence/ workable space when surveying so you know exactly where to plant yourself.  Which, of course, means the survey tool is there as well. Telling you the exact size you can expect that city to be and with the enhancement of telling you what resources will be within its boundaries if you found it where you've currently got the cursor. That's great because there were several times in MoM I'd go to plant a city thinking I had adamantium and, nope, one tile off.

Artifact creation is here, too.  I haven't created anything yet but it's as in-depth as it was in MoM. You can also select the material the artifact is made of now. I'm sure that's going to affect the properties somehow, so fucking awesome.

Heroes? Yep, they're in there, along with the summon hero spell. I only summoned one, a Paladin, and it was everything I would have expected from MoM. Traits, powerful, able to wear equipment. My only beef was I couldn't rename him.

Complaints:
The Art is pretty janky. It looks like they used whatever terrible modeler Stardock did for Fallen Enchantress. This is the worst part of the game for me. Cell-shaded characters and a weird, very bland, color scheme for everything.

The game isn't flat but is isometric, while I expect that these days in a 4x it uses a 2/3 iso (vs 3/4) view that makes things difficult to select things.  Everything also looks very flat and overlaps other tiles too much because of it. You can get used to it but it's frustrating at times because that lower-angle makes a big difference.

The camera doesn't pull out far enough. One of the things that makes iso work in 4x games is you can still pull back to get a wide view. This is not the case here and you always feel cramped. To give you an idea of how zoomed-in things get, your city block takes up almost the entire screen at max zoom. Kinda fucked.

The game isn't done. The devs were posting and answering questions on steam's forum yesterday from what I can tell. There were questions about things like, "where's chain lighting." with responses indicating they were still getting things into the game. It's not a deal breaker for me, but some of you might feel you're overpaying for an incomplete game.

MoM is my FAVORITE game of all time, and I do not feel abused in this purchase. It could be the newness, but it's definitely the heart and soul of MoM in another engine. Unlike so many pretenders before it, all the pieces are there.

ed: One more con:  No event movies. All you get is the little Civ4/ 5 bubble on the side of the screen. Since the game was forced to release due to contract obligations, this is yet another 'unfinished' piece. Doesn't kill the game but it does feel missing.

Does this have multiplayer?

Merusk wins today with that review from the perspective of a sane person.

I'm not sure what you mean, so, thanks?


Built-in Hotseat but no LAN/ Internet option.

Had my first crash, set me back a few turns nothing catastrophic.

He was just saying that you played and reviewed it without gnashing your teeth or getting dramatic. It was a helpful review, I am going to avoid purchasing until it is more ironed out and has a deep discount.

What kind of special resource titles are there and what do they do?

Nice review, thanks! Good to see an opinion from someone who is both sane and a fan of MoM.

Ah. Behaving like an adult then. Yeah, it's a rarity on the internet. I try.


My list will be limited to the ones I've seen so far.

Fertile Soil:+1 food
Wild game: +2 food
Healing Herbs: 10% pop growth
Iron Ore: +3 production
Nightshade: +8 Spell resist
Silver Ore: +2 Gold
Crystals: +2 power

Given that list I expect gold ore, special minerals like mithril and adamantium to make an appearance as well.

I missed another big change to the game, too, mainly because I didn't play with it during my initial rush. They've taken the Dual-plane nature of MOM and spun it out big time. There are now 6 extra planes, one for each element. Life (Paradise), Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Shadow (death). These planes have different bonuses for cities built on them. For example, Life plane can have no undead units and Shadow can't have units that aren't undead, earth plane gives +3 production, etc. Pretty cool change and I'm curious how it's going to play out.

Sounds more promising than I had originally hoped. Will still wait for a Steam sale or a few patches/reviews (or both).

What kind of races are there?

Humans, Elves, Bad Elves, Dragonmen, Dwarves, Insect guys and some others.

It's extremely old school (which I love) and very rough around the edges. It does look like MoM's depth is there, but there is a huge lack of polish. TBH I personally do not think it is worth the high price they are asking.

As i love MoM (and also still play it occasionally), i am really torn on getting this now, or waiting for a few weeks.  It doesnt sound like it's worth the full price, but if they keep patching at a rapid rate, it might get there.
Since this was a kick started game, what is the deal with the "they were forced to release too early to meet contractual obligations" bit?

It also appears they are going to be releasing editors in the future so you mod your own games.  And you can read their Quick Start Guide (http://wastelands-interactive.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Quick_Start_Guide) online if you want to learn more before deciding.

If you do not absolutely adore MoM, don't buy it full price. You'll be annoyed by the rough edges and get frustrated at some of the limitations and the balance issues that aren't all honed. (Some of the pacing is way off. I get 2 hours in and I still don't have a decent capital city that can produce 2nd tier units.)

I'm a fucking fanboy of MoM even 20 years on. I don't regret paying full price, but I suspect most will.


I've seen it referenced on a few posts but haven't dug too deeply into it. The KS money wasn't the full bill, it was only $35k or so. I guess some publisher gave them dough as well, forcing them to release.  The team looks like a lot of really young guys on Facebook, so no surprise they underdelivered or signed a contract they didn't fully realize the impact of.

Very few KS games release on only KS money. They either get an angel or crawl back into bed with publishers. Some (like Larian) plan on this.

One of the sadder cases I've seen was the Jagged Alliance sequel. When it didn't stand up to the feature set of JA2, people slammed it in reviews leading to the devs asking for leniency because of the low budget. The last update was the lone remaining dev talking about how his apartment is filling up with boxes of t-shirts he needs to send out to people some day.

Any updates on this? How is it shaping up?

Gamespot doesn't really like it  :grin:

http://www.gamespot.com/reviews/worlds-of-magic-review/1900-6416080/

I've been distracted with PoE and trying to work that game out.

That said, this is one time I'll tell you to read the comments to a link.  As I said above, this is not a game for modern kids and the reviewer explicitly lays that out in several paragraphs when you read it with knowledge of MoM and how it plays. The reviewer is complaining that it's an old school game AND that it's MoM, which he's never played. Relevant quotes:

1)
2)
3)
4) (Guy doesn't know how to play old 4x)

5) (Again, he's never played MoM)

6) (Fuck off kid, if anything these are too fast and troops should move fewer spaces. That would drive you bonkers.)

He has only two points I agree with.  1) The art is lackluster, which I said before. 2) There's a number of minor bugs that need resolution. The worst I've had is sudden CTDs during turn resolutions.

The comments have enough folks saying, "What, you never played MoM?" that I know I'm not alone in this.

Most of that sounds fine to me. Still going to wait for a patch and/or a sale, but encouraged. Thanks!

Ditto.  This sounds like the MoM clone I've been waiting for.

What do you guys not like about AoW3? And how is this different? I thought that was the MoM clone that mostly pulled it off?

Didn't like AOW 1 never bought 2 and haven't considered 3.  I don't remember my specific gripes, so I'll pick it apart based on the features of AOW3's site.

1) It has a story. I hate stories in my 4x.
2) I'm a wizard, I don't want a "Class" for leaders, I want perks and traits that make me different.
3) I don't remember hero units being "heroes" they're "Army leaders" that give bonuses but can't actually attack. I could be confusing this with another game, though.
4) I don't recall juggling magic research vs. mana gain.
5) Could you build your own artifacts?
6) Spellbooks - Spellbooks were fantastic in MoM and determined the flavor of your wizard even more than perks. Power of spells and availability of them were determined by how many books your wiz. had.  (Circles in WoM)

You'll want to check out AoW3 a bit more because it has most of those things.. although with that said it hasn't quite hooked me for some indefinable reason.

AoW, in all its incarnations, never fully replaced MoM because like all these games it changed two vital things.

1) The city building aspect of AoW is anemic, to say the least. MoM was built on a civ concept game, whereas AoW is more about tactical management and hero movement. Cities in AoW are far simpler than in MoM (or any general civ game), and the entire "expand" part of 4X games is extremely shallow.

2) Hero speed. units in MoM moved at a really slow pace - again, same as in Civ games. Units in AoW move *fast*, to the point where a hero can appear out of the fog of war and take your capital on the same turn. From the start the game is far more about the heroes and the army they carry with them, and their ability to dominate the map and exploit holes, than civ style games.

AoW to me feels like a more complicated version of Heroes of Might and Magic, rather than Master of Magic. Good game, but not really the same type.

This is 40% off atm, how has the patching been going?  Is the game growing well or drifting?

TBH I got distracted by Pillars and then Marvel's big Avengers event & Warframe. I started a new game up again last weekend for a bit while Marvel was patching and there's some performance improvements. You can also zoom way the fuck out now which helps immensely.

The core game is still MoM and still glorious and intuitive to me, but they added a tutorial for the kids who don't know WTF is going on or how to play an oldschool 4x.

If one of your complaints about that variety of 4x is, "WTF I HAVE TO HIT END TURN LIKE 12 TIMES IN A ROW"  then it's still not the game for you.  It never will be, though, as it's MoM at its core.

Held off as long as I could during the Steam sale and finally picked this up for 40% off. I have only done the tutorials and started a couple of games, but so far I like it. It is rough around the edges, and will take some time to figure out how I like to set up games and play (there is zero explanation about the different planes in the tutorial), but I think I looks fun. I hope they can improve performance a bit though- in large games the AI turns take a long time even at the start. When empires are sprawling it will likely take even longer.

I got it back in a previous sale too, it is fun and I'm liking it.  I feel it still needs some polish and it isn't the prettiest of games but it's captured the spirit of MoM better than any other recent games.

Put a few hours into this the past few days. It definitely has potential, and it definitely needs more work. They just patched a couple of days ago, and I hope they keep working on it. They are very close to making it great. It is playable now, but it dire need of polish and QOL enhancements. Documentation and an actual working wiki would be nice as well. It is not easy to find comprehensive information about it online. I will keep dabbling with it as I get the urge.

 I also bought AoWIII during the same sale, and have started tinkering with it. If WoM had the same polish, it would a better game. AoWIII is almost too complicated, but I am hoping I get a feel for it as I play. In contrast, there is TONS of info/walkthroughs/advice about it online, so I am sifting through that while I work.

"Reboot/sequel" to this is releasing on Monday. Current owners of WoM (all dozen of us) will get it for free automagically. I am sort of excited- I liked the core of this game, but it needed a lot of polish and balancing. Hoping they unfucked it enough to make it playable.

Nice. I assume the relaunch is due to the bugs and tons of negative feedback from folks who didn't know the original MoM.

Aaaannd, yep checking the Steam hub that's exactly the case.

Playing this right now. Holy SHIT it takes a long time between turns. Like 45 seconds. That is borderline unplayable.

Soooooo, you're NOT playing it right now and you're a liar.

I have plenty of time to post between turns  :oh_i_see:

thatsthejoke.jpg

Posted a thread about it on Steam, and at least got one of the devs interested and troubleshooting it. Hopefully they can fix it.

Still looking for a job? :why_so_serious:

I haven't started yet! Today was supposed to be my last day, but they extended me another month when they realized that A) my job takes a bit of expertise and a LOT of tribal knowledge, and B) I am literally the only one left in the company that has a clue how it all fits together. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in a couple of months when things go sideways and the people I trained can't handle it. I will leave them my Paypal address so they can send my consulting fees up front  :awesome_for_real:

Just stand firm on that. While I left my previous employer rather than your situation the positions required similar tech and tribal knowledge.  They have my cell and have tried to on using personal connection to my former minion to get them out of a bad position. 

The only reason I haven't told them to pound sand is it happens after hours or via text, and since they're my current employers customer I don't want to hurt the relationship. If there was no connection they'd get an invoice for the four hours they've used in the last two months. 

First hotfix/patch made huge improvements to the AI turns. Down to like 5-10 seconds, which I can live with.