New year, New Master of Magic! v1.5 fan patch

[frutagode]

Hi folks,

I played Master of Magic the last time many years ago. Found by luck this forum with the new patch and thought I give it a try.

I choose unmodified Tlaloc(Orcs) for my playthrough
Enemies were Sharee(Gnolls), Tauron(High Men), Rjak (High Men), Kali(Nomads)
Difficulty: Normal
Patch version 1.50

A nice patch. I noticed the AI builds now many ships and also transfers invasion troops.


Here a few comments:

Diplomacy:
- All 4 Opponents declared war on me very early for no reason. I was a bit behind in power, but did not do anything to provoke them. (I was locked on a small island in the beginning.)
- When I catched up in power the opponents suggested peace and even Wizard Pacts (cool)
- Later on, the opponents refused to trade spells, although I had some very high powered black spells, they were certainly missing. (This seems not so clever, if they want to win)


Bugs/oddities I noticed:
- Jaer Windmage: Has ability wind walking. When he fights on ocean squares he cannot move.
- Jaer Windmage: In combination with a pathfinding unit the whole stack needs 1 movement point per square. So pathfinding does not work.
- Enchanted roads: Pathfinding units need 0.5 movement points even on enchanted roads.
- Enchanted roads: When you order a unit somewhere on enchanted road to board a ship a few tiles away, it treats the enchanted road as normal road.
- Single Wyvern Rider: Moved to destroy an unoccupied Gnoll outpost. Destroying the outpost did not cost movement points.
- You have a combined stack of flying units and ships. If you want to move away with one ship, all flying units follow the movement, although they are not marked.
- I used the warp node spell on enemy nodes and AI does not dispell their warped nodes, instead it gathers magic spirits around them.
- Three enemies did not cast spell of return, although they had many cities left (they should?).
- All enemy heroes stayed usually at their master's fortress forever (they should not?).
- Roaming monsters from nature node attacked my city and still had the stat bonus from the node.
- The last opponent with two cities left had to disband all his land troops (because of not enough gold?) except he kept his large fleet of many warships.

One last question: Is there a table somewhere which bonusses the Ai gets? It seemed to me that even on "normal" difficulty it is cheating a lot.

Thanks for the patch, it was I good playthrough.

[Seravy]

- All 4 Opponents declared war on me very early for no reason. I was a bit behind in power, but did not do anything to provoke them. (I was locked on a small island in the beginning.)

1.51RC4 should improve this significantly, give it a try.

- Later on, the opponents refused to trade spells, although I had some very high powered black spells, they were certainly missing.

They probably had nothing to offer.

- Jaer Windmage: Has ability wind walking. When he fights on ocean squares he cannot move.

That's what wind walking does. Flight on the overland map, but not in combat.

- Jaer Windmage: In combination with a pathfinding unit the whole stack needs 1 movement point per square. So pathfinding does not work.

Pathfinding is a ground movement type, you can't use it while flying. (The whole idea of pathfinding being faster than flight is stupid to be honest, in the CoM mod they are equal speed)

- Enchanted roads: Pathfinding units need 0.5 movement points even on enchanted roads.
- Enchanted roads: When you order a unit somewhere on enchanted road to board a ship a few tiles away, it treats the enchanted road as normal road.

I suspect you used noncorporeal units for these? They cannot use roads.

- Single Wyvern Rider: Moved to destroy an unoccupied Gnoll outpost. Destroying the outpost did not cost movement points.

Outposts have roads under them. On Myrror they are enchanted roads.

- You have a combined stack of flying units and ships. If you want to move away with one ship, all flying units follow the movement, although they are not marked.

Not a bug, that's how ships work, they transport all unselected units in the stack automatically. A bad solution but otherwise the ship couldn't move if the units carried are out of moves.

- I used the warp node spell on enemy nodes and AI does not dispell their warped nodes, instead it gathers magic spirits around them.

I'm not 100% sure but I think the AI dispells cities and other stuff first, nodes last. Or the opposite, I don't remember.

- Three enemies did not cast spell of return, although they had many cities left (they should?).

Wizards with exactly zero mana left don't do it. It's a very silly feature which I already removed from CoM, I don't remember if it's part of the 1.51 patches though.

- All enemy heroes stayed usually at their master's fortress forever (they should not?).

This works better in Caster of Magic where the AI uses each hero for its intended role (either fortress or sending it out to attack things), however that patch is far too detailed to be compatible and is based on unit abilities that don't exist in the base game so it's not part of the 1.5x patches.

- Roaming monsters from nature node attacked my city and still had the stat bonus from the node.

Nodes have auras around them which is only visible after you meld them. Anything in that area receives the bonus.

- The last opponent with two cities left had to disband all his land troops (because of not enough gold?) except he kept his large fleet of many warships.

The AI is not allowed to disband ships - it might drown other units. This is why ships have zero maintenance in CoM. I'm not sure if that's also part of 1.51 but probably isn't.

One last question: Is there a table somewhere which bonusses the Ai gets? It seemed to me that even on "normal" difficulty it is cheating a lot.

Yes, there is. You can see it by using ISLE's tweaker and loading wizards.exe.

[someone]

Hello!

I'm trying to use 1.51RC4, 1.51RC3 or 1.50Final without luck. Got them from here:
http://seravy.x10.mx/CasterofMagic/
When the game starts the map is all dark (can't even see my capital or units, but I do can see the UI).
If I move the units they show up, but they can move forever and in weird paths...

Caster3.31 works ok.

I'm installing them copying extracted files over 1.31 version files.

I don't know if it's related, but the extracted files have a "Wizards.exe", but the original files only have a "WIZARDS.EXE". I'm on Linux, so maybe this is relevant. If I replace the old WIZARDS.EXE with the new one (capitalizing it), when the map should start, it doesn't, just stays dark without song.

Main menu / game creation works on all cases.

Any ideas? Thanks for the attention!

[Seravy]

Yes, Linux cares about the file names. Capitalize all files before overwriting. I did that once but it seems windows doesn't care and changes it back anyway. That kind of bug happens if you load the new save files with the old wizards.exe or vica versa.

[someone]

Yes, Linux cares about the file names. Capitalize all files before overwriting. I did that once but it seems windows doesn't care and changes it back anyway. That kind of bug happens if you load the new save files with the old wizards.exe or vica versa.

Thanks for the reply!

When I capitalize Wizards.exe and replace the old one, I get the second error I related "when the map should start, it doesn't, just stays dark without song".
Main menu / game creation works. It only stops working after it generates the map and was supposed to start it.

Tried again a few times, waited a few minutes, but I only get a black screen without song...

Using DOSBox 0.74.

[Seravy]

Yes, Linux cares about the file names. Capitalize all files before overwriting. I did that once but it seems windows doesn't care and changes it back anyway. That kind of bug happens if you load the new save files with the old wizards.exe or vica versa.

Thanks for the reply!

When I capitalize Wizards.exe and replace the old one, I get the second error I related "when the map should start, it doesn't, just stays dark without song".
Main menu / game creation works. It only stops working after it generates the map and was supposed to start it.

Tried again a few times, waited a few minutes, but I only get a black screen without song...

Using DOSBox 0.74.

idk, never tried to play this on Linux.
magic.exe handles game creation and main menu, wizards.exe is the actual game afterwards, so it sounds like it's still wizards.exe that is crashing.

You can also try the 1.51RC patch, maybe that one works better?
Other possible problems might be the dosbox settings (I know some people get crashes for no reason with some configurations - best to try running dosbox with the default settings first and see if that works) or the sound settings (some of those can cause crashes too).

Aside from that the only remaining possibilities I can think of is that your 1.31 is either not 1.31, not the English version, or is missing files.

[someone]

Yes, Linux cares about the file names. Capitalize all files before overwriting. I did that once but it seems windows doesn't care and changes it back anyway. That kind of bug happens if you load the new save files with the old wizards.exe or vica versa.

Thanks for the reply!

When I capitalize Wizards.exe and replace the old one, I get the second error I related "when the map should start, it doesn't, just stays dark without song".
Main menu / game creation works. It only stops working after it generates the map and was supposed to start it.

Tried again a few times, waited a few minutes, but I only get a black screen without song...

Using DOSBox 0.74.

idk, never tried to play this on Linux.
magic.exe handles game creation and main menu, wizards.exe is the actual game afterwards, so it sounds like it's still wizards.exe that is crashing.

You can also try the 1.51RC patch, maybe that one works better?
Other possible problems might be the dosbox settings (I know some people get crashes for no reason with some configurations - best to try running dosbox with the default settings first and see if that works) or the sound settings (some of those can cause crashes too).

Aside from that the only remaining possibilities I can think of is that your 1.31 is either not 1.31, not the English version, or is missing files.

Thanks! I tested with 1.51RC3 and it worked! (I was trying RC4)
I tested 1.50 and 1.51RC3 before, but I probably didn't renamed Wizards.exe for them.
Version 1.50 also works (after rename). So only 1.51RC4 doesn't work here.

[Seravy]

I wonder, maybe RC4 is just not working at all? Did it work for anyone else?
There could be an incompatible patch included...

[ElusivSanity]

I wonder, maybe RC4 is just not working at all? Did it work for anyone else?
There could be an incompatible patch included...

I can confirm "when the map should start, it doesn't, just stays dark without song" for v1.51rc4.  I can start 1.4,1.4n.1.51rc3 just fine. 

Running in dosbox .74-1 on mac.

So which version would you recommend for the time being? 

Thanks for these updates!

[Seravy]

I wonder, maybe RC4 is just not working at all? Did it work for anyone else?
There could be an incompatible patch included...

I can confirm "when the map should start, it doesn't, just stays dark without song" for v1.51rc4.  I can start 1.4,1.4n.1.51rc3 just fine. 

Running in dosbox .74-1 on mac.

So which version would you recommend for the time being? 

Thanks for these updates!

RC3 then. I have to find which patch was incompatible in RC4 and undo it.