Welcome!

[Jorus]

tbh, I have experience with DosBox installing MOO2 and wanted to avoid relearning that whole process over again - I was hoping that there was another solution.
I didn't know about DR, but came upon GOG's site yesterday which claimed to deliver MOM instantly with 64 bit compatibility for $5.99. I thought it worth the risk, and it worked flawlessly. Download and install, no problems (it uses DosBox also, but I suppose it is pre-configured).
Of course the graphics look choppier than ever on a 1680 screen, but it seems to work fine. Updated to 1.40h also w/o a problem.

[Catwalk]

Welcome Jorus, glad to have you with us
I hope you'll check out the Catnip section, the first release of the mod is scheduled to be out around Christmas.

[Jorus]

Thanks Catnip for the greeting. I'll keep an eye out for your Christmas present. J

[Iranon]

Hello everyone!

Master of Magic was my favourite game in my teens, and it has so much sandbox appeal that it still doesn't feel stale - none of the 'dig in, analyse it to death, move on' routine that's the norm for me otherwise.

I'm still having a blast... and trifles like abysmal AI, more bugs than all the rainforests on earth together and somewhat questionable game balance don't change that.

[Molach]

Well hi.

Had a lot of fun with this game, a bit while growing up, and then (more) when I discovered dosbox a few years ago.

When I ran through the list of my old-time favourites thru the 'box, MoM was the one that I seriously started wasting time with. Moo II was also a mayor time-waster for me. Lately Civ IV and specifically fall from heaven mod have been the greatest contributors to spousal disharmony. And the innocently-looking little game of ADOM. Watch out for that one. But fortunately my old gaming-PC was affected by the black sleep, and the portable one I got from work is unable to run programs unapproved by the boss. So I guess I have to wish for one for christmas (that is 'wish for permission to buy myself one'). In that case I might try wasting time again. Looking forward to trying out the patch, good job on that.

-T

[kyrub]

Ahhh, another ADOM player. (Welcome * 7 + 3,14 to you, Molach!)

-----

ADOM... The game that teached me why "spoiler" derives from spoiling, the game made by an individual refusing to opensourcize it and to explain all of its mysteries, the game the cruel world itself!
If only I could have a fresh ADOM experience again without knowing the damned spoilers. Tower of Eternal Flames...

[WhiteMage]

Hi everyone! I am 38, married and have 2 kids. I am a chess player since age 3 and played in chess tournaments until age 11. My training is in computer science - artificial intelligence and I programmed Chess, Connect-4 and Gomoku games with AI before, but my all time favorite game became Master of Magic, which I played since 1994. Although I am quite busy with my real life, I am passionate about this game and interested in participation – any way I can. My other favored games are: Heroes of Might and Magic 3 – Shadow of Death, MOO1, Civilization 2, Age of Empires 2 TC, and 2 new remarkable games: C-Evo, and Battle for Wesnoth. During my teens I played Impossible Mission on C64. I tried out most of the turn based strategy games out there, but I repeatedly come back to MoM, since the new games are typically shallow and lack content in spite of their flashy graphics, beautiful music, and massive advertisement. Last I played Galactic Civilization 2, but I definitely prefer MoM.

My own self imposed rules how I played MoM v1.31 before were:
- impossible, 4 opponents, large land, random magic
- fully randomized wizard for which I have an algorithm
- cheapest spell picks
- random race
- if battle is a draw then that entire army must be disbanded immediately regardless who attacked
- production change in city is only allowed if 0 production is complete or being forced to change
- must threaten all wizards at the beginning of every turn if not at war
- if at war then no discussion is allowed; no spell trade
- if I Banish a wizard (without defeating) then I lose the game immediately
- if I attack a wizard fortress by units then after that I can't attack anything else, but wizard fortresses: can't attack any other cities, units outside of cities, neutrals of any kind, etc.

These are rules I created for myself over the years just to make the game challenging. They do not show how great I am, but how poor the AI really is. Needless to say that this current development is a big interest for me. I hope that with this development I can soon start to play normal games and simply play by the rules. That’s why I am here.

[Catwalk]

I prettied up your post a little bit Interesting rules, some of them match what we're trying to do here. I've made a number of custom rules myself for Colonization, such as requiring luxury goods to create new colonists with food.

[fwoop]

Hi! Once every year or two I inevitably scratch the MoM itch (in addition to the MoO1 itch. Not MoO2, that game is gross :3). I came back juuuust in time to find out there was a forum called dragonsword... that had just disappeared off the internet. But now this forum is up so...

Re: "Why not just remake the game from scratch?"

Well, consider what MoM is.
Smash MoO1 and Civilisation together.
Then keep adding features. Then add some more. Keep adding until your eyes roll up into your head and pop out the back.

MoM is extremely feature rich! Which means lots of replayability and general fun times, but also some downsides:

Balancing: it gets much harder the more features you put in. Not that it needs perfect balance - games can be fun regardless.

BUGS: the more features you add, the more bugs you add. This is an iron law ok. It's probably some crazy exponential relationship, proof that the gods hate us having fun games to play with.

People don't seem to comprehend that games like MoM and XCOM1 are great feats of coding despite their age, and the people involved were very brave/batty to dive into such hard tasks they set for themselves.

That said... it probably won't stop me trying my hand at coding a clone sometime. At least I'll leave the code opensourced for any masochists to peer at

Anyway, nice forum!

[Catwalk]

Welcome fwoop, glad you made it here. I vaguely recall seeing your nick at Dragonsword, I'm afraid we lost a whole bunch of members when it went down. How did you find us?