We all know and love v1.31. It's the final "bugfixed" version. Does anyone have previous versions of Master of Magic? Of course there would be tons of bugs, but you could see the game in an earlier state. It would be interesting to see, just from a spectator standpoint. Either as a train wreck or a historical snapshot, take your pick.
There were some changes made to the game before the final version. Anyone remember the blue spell Guises? It disguised a unit as a random unit. You'd be checking out a computer player's city, and you'd see five swordsmen and a griffin, or something. Sounds cool, right? But move your mouse pointer over the unit and the correct name would appear. And of course casting it on your own units was useless. It was replaced by Blur in v1.2. Who knows how many other obscurities are in these earlier versions?
I know there was v1.0, v1.01, v1.1, v1.2, v1.3, and v1.31. All of the FTP sites listed for download have long since gone offline. Here are some of the filenames, if anyone wants to do some searches online.
mom1_01.zip [readme.txt]
momv11.zip
momv12.zip [readme.txt]
momv13.zip
I found the following gem from a post entitled "Suggestions to put into MOM 1.2 patch":
Here's a quote from Alan Emrich:
Another post from Alan, during the period he was writing the Strategy Guide, regarding v1.2, what he called "the AI patch":
The question I had about defeat vs. banishment was answered on July 4, 1995.
How to become an "undead" Wizard
Mom 1.3 - My first impressions
And then there was the infamous Death Settlers controversy - after defeating a unit of Settlers with life-draining and raising it from the dead, you could use it to found a "death city" that could build undead units and all sorts of other cool stuff. Of course, you had to build it during a Bad Moon, on a corrupted square, next to a death node, etc., otherwise it it wouldn't work...
---------------------------------------------
Version 1.2 Gameplay Changes and Enhancements
---------------------------------------------
SPECIAL ABILITIES:
- The Alchemist special ability allows all of your new normal
units built to be equipped with +1 magical weapons, as if an
alchemist's guild were present in all of the wizard's towns.
- Archmages gain +50% towards their spell casting skill.
- Node Mastery makes you immune to having your spells dispelled
while in a node.
- The special ability of Famous now starts you with 10 fame.
- The Conjurer's bonus of +25% now applies to research of
summoning spells, maintenance costs of fantastic creatures, and
casting cost for all summoning spells.
- The Artificer reduces the cost of creating magical items by 50%.
- The Runemaster ability doubles the wizard's chance to dispel
another wizard's enchantment, instead of making the runemaster's
spells harder to dispel.
- The Chaos Mastery, Sorcery Mastery, and Nature Mastery abilities
now give the wizard a +15% bonus to his research and casting of
spells of the appropriate realm, instead of +10% just to
researching.
- The Channeling special ability now reduces maintenance for all
summoned creatures by 50%, in addition to eliminating the range
penalties for casting combat spells away from your fortress. The
Channeling ability costs 2 picks.
- The Myrran ability now costs 3 picks.
SPELLS AND MAGIC:
- A wizard's fortress generates magic power equal to the number
of spell book picks selected when the game begins, instead of
the base 5. Myrran wizards then make an additional +5 magical
power from their fortress.
- A wizard's starting spell casting skill is equal to twice the
number of spell books chosen when the game begins.
- Guaranteed spells have been eliminated. Instead a wizard may
select one spell for each book he picked above one when the game
begins. Wizards who selected 11 picks begins with all common
spells, 2 uncommon spells, and one rare spell.
- The Disjunction spell now has a base cost of 200.
- The Windwalking spell now has a maintenance cost of 10 mana.
- The Weakness spell is no longer automatic and requires a save,
but the spell does have a -2 resistance penalty.
- The Starfires spell only costs 5 mana to throw.
- The Holy Weapon spell now costs 10 mana to throw in combat,
50 overland.
- Great Unsummoning now has a -3 resistance penalty.
- Guardian Wind has become a common spell and costs 10 mana to
cast in combat, 50 mana overland.
- Guises has been eliminated as a spell, and replaced by Blur.
The Blur spell is uncommon sorcery and covers all of your units
in a veil of wispy illusion, making it very difficult to see the
exact positions of the protected units. As a result, all hits
inflicted against the blurred creatures have a 10% chance of
just missing. Blur is a global combat spell and costs 25 mana to
cast.
- The Dispel Magic True, Disenchant True, and Disjunction True
spells all dispel with a strength equal to 3 times the mana spent
on casting the spell.
UNITS AND HEROES:
- Units may only fire 1 missile attack each turn. Firing a ranged
attack ends the unit's turn.
- Units with lifestealing may still attack with their normal attack
- Clarification: all animated dead units cost 50% more mana to
maintain than the creature's cost before becoming undead,
regardless of how the creature become undead ( ghoul, demon
lord drain, life drain spell, animate dead spell, etc.).
- Berserkers have a 7 hand-to-hand, 3 defense, 3 thrown, 7
resistance, and cost 120gp.
- Hammerhands now have a 4 defense.
- Sky Drakes are now very rare creatures.
- Death knight's now have a h-to-h attack strength of 9
- Demon lord now has a -5 save to life stealing
- Djinns are now very rare creatures.
- Halflings standard units cost 150% normal
- Halflings no longer have a +1 defense.
- Magicians have a 5 strength and Warlocks have a 7 strength.
- Galleys and Triremes have a 4 defense.
- Galleys have a 2 range arrow attack with 8 ammo.
- Gnoll units cost the normal standard unit costs for spearmen,
swordsmen, bowmen, halberdiers, and settles.
- Gnollish wolf riders may now move 3 and have a 7 attack
strength.
- Lizardmen dragon turtles require a stables and an armorer's
guild to build.
- Draconian standard units now fly at a speed of 2.
- Draconian airships may not carry units.
- Great Drakes now have a 30 hand-to-hand attack strength, a 30
strength breath weapon, and a 10 defense.
- Wizards lose 1/2 fame point per level of heroes slain in battle.
- Maleus now has the spell of flame strike.
- Rare and very rare fantastic units have had their defense
increased:
Chaos Spawn: 6 DEF Sky Drake 10 DEF
Chimera: 5 DEF Wraith: 6 DEF
Efreet: 7 DEF Death Knight: 8 DEF
Great Drake: 9 DEF Demon Lord: 10 DEF
Angel: 7 DEF Stone Giant: 8 DEF
Arch Angel: 10 DEF Gorgons: 7 DEF
Storm Giant: 7 DEF Beheemoth: 9 DEF
Air Elemental: 5 DEF Colossus 10 DEF
Djinn: 8 DEF Great Wyrm: 12 DEF
MOVEMENT:
- Flyers may now use enchanted roads.
- Teleport only costs 1 movement point in combat.
- Pathfinding allows all units within the stack to move on land
squares as if they were roads.
- Non-Corporal units can move on any terrain as a road.
- Desert map squares cost one movement point to cross.
MISCELLANEOUS:
- All non-fantastic troops reduce unrest by 1 per 2
troops garrisoned in a city.
- 'No Report' will appear within a enemy city you
are viewing if the city is not within scouting
range of any of your troops and indicates your
lack of information about the troops within
the city.
- More powerful heroes will not approach a wizard
unless the wizard possesses larger levels of fame.
- Mercenaries of the special races (Beastmen,
Dark Elves, Dwarves, Draconians, and Trolls) will
only approach wizards which have contact with
Myrror, i.e. in control of a tower, owning a city
on Myrror, or possessing an Astral Gate. Likewise,
only normal races will petition for hire if
wizard has contact with Arcanus.
- All special abilities that heroes can possess
may also be 'super' versions which give an
additional +50% bonus above the special's normal
bonus.
- Fleeing from combat forces units to disband 50%
of the time (25% for heroes). Intro and Easy game
settings allow heroes to always flee without any
risk of elimination.
- Winning a battle against 4 or more opponents
increases the victor's fame by 1, and decreases
the loser by 1. Building a new city does not
effect fame.
- When a wizard's fortress is captured, he is
banished into the void and must throw the Spell
of Returning to return to Arcanus and Myrror.
The spell requires 1000 mana to cast, and you do
not receive magical power from any source except
alchemy while banished. In addition, a banished
wizards cannot cast any spells in combat, but may
still direct the activities of cities under his
control.
- Klackons have the unique ability of self rule and
reduce the level of unrest in the city by -2 if
the fortress of the controlling wizard is a
Klackon city.
- Rivers yield 2 food, and Grasslands yield 1.5 food.
- The gold bonus received from road is limited to
3% per townsfolk within the city.
- The gold bonus Nomads receive is treated as a
road gold bonus, and is cumulative with roads,
but is also limited to 3% per townsfolk in the
city.
- A left mouse click on any resource on the city view screen will
give a complete accounting and breakdown of resource production.
- Trade Goods do not benefit from bonuses from any other source in
a city.
- A conquering wizard may now chose to raze a city, totally
destroying the town and slaying all of its occupants. The razing
wizard then receives 10% of the original cost of all buildings
within the city, but loses 1 fame per size of the city, i.e.
1 fame for a hamlet, 2 for a village, 3 for a town, etc.
- The default tax rate is 1 gold per townsfolk with a 20% unrest
rate.
There were some changes made to the game before the final version. Anyone remember the blue spell Guises? It disguised a unit as a random unit. You'd be checking out a computer player's city, and you'd see five swordsmen and a griffin, or something. Sounds cool, right? But move your mouse pointer over the unit and the correct name would appear. And of course casting it on your own units was useless. It was replaced by Blur in v1.2. Who knows how many other obscurities are in these earlier versions?
I know there was v1.0, v1.01, v1.1, v1.2, v1.3, and v1.31. All of the FTP sites listed for download have long since gone offline. Here are some of the filenames, if anyone wants to do some searches online.
mom1_01.zip [readme.txt]
momv11.zip
momv12.zip [readme.txt]
momv13.zip
I found the following gem from a post entitled "Suggestions to put into MOM 1.2 patch":
Quote: Impossible level... This game promised to be really, really hard..BUT..
Sss'ra had Myrror all to himself and was _punishing_ the rest of
us. He had doom mastery, armageddon, meteor shower, and great
wasting going at the same time. It was vicious. Had to kill him,
there just weren't two ways about it. And, wow, he had 30,000 mana --
this wasn't going to be easy, he had around two-dozen maxed-out cities.
As it turns out, they were guarded by two priests. I mean two priests
_on the whole continent_ He was apparently turning ALL of his gold
to mana. Dumb Dumb Dumb.
Here's a quote from Alan Emrich:
Quote:> Okay, I received a beta of the MOM v1.2 patch (actually, I got three
> different updates on it -- SimTex is really cranking away!) this weekend.
> There's a lot of night-and-day differences.
> The first thing everyone will notice is that computer players now play
> the game, too. So do the raiders (oh, BOY, so do the raiders!!). Diplomacy
> is working (it actually seems a bit easy to influence the other wizards,
> but I like a good diplomatic challenge, so I'm sure I'm being bias on that
> analysis).
> Some of the races have been tweaked. Halflings are a tad more
> expensive, Draconians move 2, Gnoll wolf riders move 3 (they're much
> better on the battlefield with that extra movement point, believe me!).
> Alchemy, Conjuror and Rune Master have all been beefed up. Channeler is
> now a 2-pick retort.
> Nodes are a LOT tougher, Wizard Towers seem a bit easier. Computer
> players don't expand nearly as fast as they used to (well, across the
> water or planes, anyway), but they are downright PARANOID about
> garrisoning the cities they DO have. Don't expect any more walkovers of
> cities with 3+ population points.
> There's also a Civ-ish end-game screen that give players a point score
> for their empires, spell research, timeliness of winning, etc.
Another post from Alan, during the period he was writing the Strategy Guide, regarding v1.2, what he called "the AI patch":
Quote:1. Improved AI. Right now, everyone knows the AI is lame. Any gamer can
usually overrun the other players without working up a sweat. Designer
Steve Barcia says he's up to the challenge and is hacking away at the
code. He promises most games in the future won't be won by conquest, but
by the need to cast the Spell of Mastery.
Specifically, computer players will be much smarter about forming
effective "hunter/killer" stacks (and USING them!) and garrisoning their
cities. He explained the new logic computer players will use, and it makes
sense to me (I'm no programmer, but the strategic principles the AI should
use will be much more sound).
2. Faster play speed. I've already got an interium playtest patch and
the time between clicking on NEXT TURN and your ability to do something is
about 33% faster right now. You can really notice the difference, but it
might still be too slow for some. Me? I'm satisfied with the new, faster
speed that I've seen.
3. Less gold. Treasures (in gold) will be a titch smaller and Trade
Goods will produces less gold, too. Not enough to kill you, but enough to
make gold a bit more valueable.
4. Lower maintenence cost (in mana) to upkeep summoned critters. This
will probably drop by around 25%, but may only affect rare and very rare
fantastic creatures.
5. More value for picking Spell Books before starting the game. Each
one will enhance your starting skill level and will give you a certain
amount of KNOWN spells at the start of the game -- both critical elements.
6. Myrran will probably be hiked to 3 picks's worth of the pre-game
selections.
7. Magic and Guardian Spirits might become non-coporeal. This makes it
a lot easier to get them to distant nodes on Arcanus!
8. They're considering adding more random events if they get the time.
One where all the lairs produce monsters, others that are race specific
(i.e., something good/bad happens in every Gnoll city, etc.)
That's all that I can remember off the top of my head. There's a lot
more to it, particularly in subtle tweaks to the numbers. For instance,
Gnoll wolf riders will move 3 now. This makes them great, particularly in
combat, as they can race for the other guy's rear line units. Also,
Draconians will move 2 each, instead of one (that flying ability was
actually holding them back before!). Stuff like that.
The question I had about defeat vs. banishment was answered on July 4, 1995.
How to become an "undead" Wizard
Mom 1.3 - My first impressions
And then there was the infamous Death Settlers controversy - after defeating a unit of Settlers with life-draining and raising it from the dead, you could use it to found a "death city" that could build undead units and all sorts of other cool stuff. Of course, you had to build it during a Bad Moon, on a corrupted square, next to a death node, etc., otherwise it it wouldn't work...
---------------------------------------------
Version 1.2 Gameplay Changes and Enhancements
---------------------------------------------
SPECIAL ABILITIES:
- The Alchemist special ability allows all of your new normal
units built to be equipped with +1 magical weapons, as if an
alchemist's guild were present in all of the wizard's towns.
- Archmages gain +50% towards their spell casting skill.
- Node Mastery makes you immune to having your spells dispelled
while in a node.
- The special ability of Famous now starts you with 10 fame.
- The Conjurer's bonus of +25% now applies to research of
summoning spells, maintenance costs of fantastic creatures, and
casting cost for all summoning spells.
- The Artificer reduces the cost of creating magical items by 50%.
- The Runemaster ability doubles the wizard's chance to dispel
another wizard's enchantment, instead of making the runemaster's
spells harder to dispel.
- The Chaos Mastery, Sorcery Mastery, and Nature Mastery abilities
now give the wizard a +15% bonus to his research and casting of
spells of the appropriate realm, instead of +10% just to
researching.
- The Channeling special ability now reduces maintenance for all
summoned creatures by 50%, in addition to eliminating the range
penalties for casting combat spells away from your fortress. The
Channeling ability costs 2 picks.
- The Myrran ability now costs 3 picks.
SPELLS AND MAGIC:
- A wizard's fortress generates magic power equal to the number
of spell book picks selected when the game begins, instead of
the base 5. Myrran wizards then make an additional +5 magical
power from their fortress.
- A wizard's starting spell casting skill is equal to twice the
number of spell books chosen when the game begins.
- Guaranteed spells have been eliminated. Instead a wizard may
select one spell for each book he picked above one when the game
begins. Wizards who selected 11 picks begins with all common
spells, 2 uncommon spells, and one rare spell.
- The Disjunction spell now has a base cost of 200.
- The Windwalking spell now has a maintenance cost of 10 mana.
- The Weakness spell is no longer automatic and requires a save,
but the spell does have a -2 resistance penalty.
- The Starfires spell only costs 5 mana to throw.
- The Holy Weapon spell now costs 10 mana to throw in combat,
50 overland.
- Great Unsummoning now has a -3 resistance penalty.
- Guardian Wind has become a common spell and costs 10 mana to
cast in combat, 50 mana overland.
- Guises has been eliminated as a spell, and replaced by Blur.
The Blur spell is uncommon sorcery and covers all of your units
in a veil of wispy illusion, making it very difficult to see the
exact positions of the protected units. As a result, all hits
inflicted against the blurred creatures have a 10% chance of
just missing. Blur is a global combat spell and costs 25 mana to
cast.
- The Dispel Magic True, Disenchant True, and Disjunction True
spells all dispel with a strength equal to 3 times the mana spent
on casting the spell.
UNITS AND HEROES:
- Units may only fire 1 missile attack each turn. Firing a ranged
attack ends the unit's turn.
- Units with lifestealing may still attack with their normal attack
- Clarification: all animated dead units cost 50% more mana to
maintain than the creature's cost before becoming undead,
regardless of how the creature become undead ( ghoul, demon
lord drain, life drain spell, animate dead spell, etc.).
- Berserkers have a 7 hand-to-hand, 3 defense, 3 thrown, 7
resistance, and cost 120gp.
- Hammerhands now have a 4 defense.
- Sky Drakes are now very rare creatures.
- Death knight's now have a h-to-h attack strength of 9
- Demon lord now has a -5 save to life stealing
- Djinns are now very rare creatures.
- Halflings standard units cost 150% normal
- Halflings no longer have a +1 defense.
- Magicians have a 5 strength and Warlocks have a 7 strength.
- Galleys and Triremes have a 4 defense.
- Galleys have a 2 range arrow attack with 8 ammo.
- Gnoll units cost the normal standard unit costs for spearmen,
swordsmen, bowmen, halberdiers, and settles.
- Gnollish wolf riders may now move 3 and have a 7 attack
strength.
- Lizardmen dragon turtles require a stables and an armorer's
guild to build.
- Draconian standard units now fly at a speed of 2.
- Draconian airships may not carry units.
- Great Drakes now have a 30 hand-to-hand attack strength, a 30
strength breath weapon, and a 10 defense.
- Wizards lose 1/2 fame point per level of heroes slain in battle.
- Maleus now has the spell of flame strike.
- Rare and very rare fantastic units have had their defense
increased:
Chaos Spawn: 6 DEF Sky Drake 10 DEF
Chimera: 5 DEF Wraith: 6 DEF
Efreet: 7 DEF Death Knight: 8 DEF
Great Drake: 9 DEF Demon Lord: 10 DEF
Angel: 7 DEF Stone Giant: 8 DEF
Arch Angel: 10 DEF Gorgons: 7 DEF
Storm Giant: 7 DEF Beheemoth: 9 DEF
Air Elemental: 5 DEF Colossus 10 DEF
Djinn: 8 DEF Great Wyrm: 12 DEF
MOVEMENT:
- Flyers may now use enchanted roads.
- Teleport only costs 1 movement point in combat.
- Pathfinding allows all units within the stack to move on land
squares as if they were roads.
- Non-Corporal units can move on any terrain as a road.
- Desert map squares cost one movement point to cross.
MISCELLANEOUS:
- All non-fantastic troops reduce unrest by 1 per 2
troops garrisoned in a city.
- 'No Report' will appear within a enemy city you
are viewing if the city is not within scouting
range of any of your troops and indicates your
lack of information about the troops within
the city.
- More powerful heroes will not approach a wizard
unless the wizard possesses larger levels of fame.
- Mercenaries of the special races (Beastmen,
Dark Elves, Dwarves, Draconians, and Trolls) will
only approach wizards which have contact with
Myrror, i.e. in control of a tower, owning a city
on Myrror, or possessing an Astral Gate. Likewise,
only normal races will petition for hire if
wizard has contact with Arcanus.
- All special abilities that heroes can possess
may also be 'super' versions which give an
additional +50% bonus above the special's normal
bonus.
- Fleeing from combat forces units to disband 50%
of the time (25% for heroes). Intro and Easy game
settings allow heroes to always flee without any
risk of elimination.
- Winning a battle against 4 or more opponents
increases the victor's fame by 1, and decreases
the loser by 1. Building a new city does not
effect fame.
- When a wizard's fortress is captured, he is
banished into the void and must throw the Spell
of Returning to return to Arcanus and Myrror.
The spell requires 1000 mana to cast, and you do
not receive magical power from any source except
alchemy while banished. In addition, a banished
wizards cannot cast any spells in combat, but may
still direct the activities of cities under his
control.
- Klackons have the unique ability of self rule and
reduce the level of unrest in the city by -2 if
the fortress of the controlling wizard is a
Klackon city.
- Rivers yield 2 food, and Grasslands yield 1.5 food.
- The gold bonus received from road is limited to
3% per townsfolk within the city.
- The gold bonus Nomads receive is treated as a
road gold bonus, and is cumulative with roads,
but is also limited to 3% per townsfolk in the
city.
- A left mouse click on any resource on the city view screen will
give a complete accounting and breakdown of resource production.
- Trade Goods do not benefit from bonuses from any other source in
a city.
- A conquering wizard may now chose to raze a city, totally
destroying the town and slaying all of its occupants. The razing
wizard then receives 10% of the original cost of all buildings
within the city, but loses 1 fame per size of the city, i.e.
1 fame for a hamlet, 2 for a village, 3 for a town, etc.
- The default tax rate is 1 gold per townsfolk with a 20% unrest
rate.
