Looking at how fighting hero abilities (Might, Agility, Arcane Power, Constitution) changed in CoM. Most of them didn't change. Might, Arcane Power, and Constitution effectively doubles the growth rate of corresponding ability and corresponding super ability improves the skill x2.5 faster. Whereas Agility now changes shield growth rating from 2/9 to 11/9 which is x5.5 improvement and super Agility gives x7.5. Сomparing to x3.25 and x4.25 multipliers in original game that makes Agility an extremely beneficial hero ability. Much more valuable than in original game.
I understand rationale under slowing down hero shield growth with level. However, to make this change consistent I suggest to proportionally cut the rate of Agility contribution to leveling.

Hey guys,

Now that it appears we've got an official Master of Magic sequel or Remake on way (courtesy of Slitherine who've bought the rights from Atari's IP dungeon and made the announcement on their site) I've been thinking about how after all these years many of the old MoM communities have vanished and a lot of good fan 'Wish lists' have been long lost.

They've probably barely started the project yet so now is the time to get fan feature requests and wish list items in front of their faces. If the remaining fan base doesn't speak up now then god knows what sort of game we'll end up with. So now is the time to act!

Does anyone know of any Master of Magic 2 Wish lists out there that I could post on the Slitherine forums? If so please link here!!

I did some searches here at Realms and couldn't find anything other than this old can't stand list thread lol. Maybe Seravy's Caster of Magic thread and Insecticide's patch thread changes/features lists might be useful too. Some of the features Implode put in his Master of Magic HD Multiplayer remake are worth mentioning as well.

If there's nothing more then we should probably get started on a new one here ASAP lol!!

Heart of Ice Prologue


To prevent the other gamebook thread from becoming too unwieldy, I've decided to post the solo RPG stuff here.


I recently found Heart of Ice, a gamebook written by Dave Morris, perhaps best known for his Fabled Lands series.  Heart of Ice has a setting unusual enough that I should explain it here before playing.


By 2031, weather control satellites were created to repair Earth's climate and ozone layer.  The supercomputer network controlling these is the Global Artificial Intelligence Array, or Gaia for short.  The plan was successful, at least until 2037 when Gaia started to have glitches including random shutdowns, heat waves strong enough to crack Paris's pavement, flash floods in Bangladesh, Australia having "torrential rain", and central Asia turning into an "arid wasteland".


These problems were the result of a computer virus, which London scientists tried to stop by hacking into Gaia in 2054.  Gaia rewarded London for this by nuking it into oblivion.  Soon Gaia conquered the computers controlling weapons systems and communications too.  One American president said "She was intended as mankind's protective mother, but this 'mother' has gone mad".


"It is now the year 2300.  The rich stand aloof, disporting themselves with forced gaiety and waiting for the end.  The poor inhabit jostling slums where disease is rife and law is unknown.  Between the cities, the land lies under a blanket of snow and ice.  No one expects humanity to last another century.  This is truly 'the end of history".


And after that thinly veiled reference to Francis Fukuyama, it's time to pick one of 7 classes, or create a custom character.  Since this is my first RPG gamebook, I'll stick with a default class for now.  All player characters start with 4 Skills, 10 Life Points, and 30 scads.  Life Points are Hit Points, and you die if you go to 0.  Scads are the local currency, and there's no capacity limit because they're stored on a sort of debit card.  This may be an icy wasteland where humanity is about to become extinct, but the banking system still works.


I'll explain Skills in greater detail once they become relevant, aside from the ones that come with my class.  Might as well pick Visionary for now.  It comes with Close Combat, Cunning, ESP, and Paradoxing.  Close Combat is a martial arts Skill based on "karate, ju-jitsu, and t'ai-chi".  Cunning is used to "think on your feet and devise clever ploys for getting out of trouble".  ESP is a combination of mind-reading and Spider Sense.  And Paradoxing is the power to defy physics with your mind.


Both ESP and Paradoxing require a "psionic focus", which counts as a Possession.  Characters can only have up to 8 Possessions, and automatically start with whatever they need to use their Skills.


The campaign setting is what's left of the Mediterranean region.  Lower sea levels and ice have altered the geography substantially.  The Iberian Peninsula is now connected to Morocco, cutting off the former Mediterranean from the Atlantic Ocean.  Sardinia and Corsica are now a peninsula connected to mainland Europe.  The Ligurian Sea is the area between Iberia and Sardinia-Corsica.  There's a Gulf whose full name I can't read because of how tiny the font is on the map, but it's between Sardinia-Corsica, Tunisia, and the Sicilian peninsula.  The Inland Sea is the name for the former eastern Mediterranean.


But most importantly, the Sahara Desert is now the Saharan Ice Wastes.  The Lost City of Du-En far to the south of Karthag is the object of my quest.


Unlike the other gamebook thread, this one will probably not have 100% completion playthroughs.

https://www.pcgamer.com/master-of-magic-...litherine/

Legendary heroes. This is general concern not the CoM specific. However CoM keeps supporting this ability.

The primary in game fame purpose, as I understand it, is an ability to attract better heroes. Other uses are minor and non strategic related (decrease in army support, final score).

From the strategic point of view the first 5 fame is the most wanted and most difficult milestone. As soon as you amassed army capable to earn fame one at a time it is just a matter of more battles to get to 10-20-40. How hero fame contribute to it? From the first impression, it seems pretty weird for hero demanding fame to even get hired and then generating it after that. I could understand it if the process acquiring fame was incredibly painful and slow and hiring some legendary low level guy (preferably 0 fame) would help you build up your attractiveness for higher heroes much faster. However, it is not the case. The earliest legendary hero the Rogue (fame 20). He doesn't contribute much to it. Since you have already got to fame 20 without his help, you'll spurt to 40 pretty quickly anyway before he even get to level 7 (3 * 7 = 21 fame) to close gap between 20 and 40. Other legendary heroes are fame 40. So their fame doesn't give you any strategical advantage at all. All it does is reduces your army support a little and contributes to final score. Which, in my opinion, should not be a property of a primary battle unit.
Would it be more strategically appropriate to remove this ability altogether? As an option is to put it on lowest level heroes (fame 0 and 5) and give them just 1-2 fame increase per level? This way it would at least contribute to your fame progress in some initial stage of the game.
Or, even better, just add amount of fame for each hero exactly equal to what the penalty when you lose hero in battle! No need for a specific relatively useless ability and the formula is automatic. This way 6 heroes would build up total of 6 * 8 / 2 = 24 fame. That is a pretty good help to get to final 40 mark but don't even exceed it. So you need to contribute some battle generated fame too. How do you like it?

Some feedback after playing CoM a little

Towers of wizardry are impenetrable. They all contain high end units en mass: dragons, wyrms, etc. I have cleaned almost all arcane plane for now. All the nodes, lairs and opponents but I still cannot penetrate any tower of wizardry nor any myrran AI can. I feel like they were not the hardest objects in original game and allowed communication between worlds relatively early. The hardest one were some nodes with exceptional army and exceptional item reward that you can go for if you seek an item buff.

I believe towers should either comparable or weaker than the most protected capital in the middle of the game. Otherwise, as soon as someone somehow managed to build up an army capable of cleaning tower forces is automatically captures each and every city in the way. In other words, as soon as you penetrate other plane you won the game already.

If you have never played Diablo before, here's a chance to try it out

https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...p?tid=9689

Rivsoft makes the game playable for anyone with a web browser over at diablo.rivsoft.net

This is a free shareware version, iirc, known as Diablo Spawn, which only the warrior class is available to play and only a couple of levels.
However, if you have an actual copy of Diablo, you can drag the DIABDAT.MPQ file from the game’s installed folder to begin playing that version of the game in the browser instead.



Having Diablo playable in a web browser also makes it perfect for brief breaks at work or school. Just don’t forget to have Alt +F4 ready.

Some thoughts about dispel types. I don't say they are right nor that they should be implemented like that. This is just how I envision it. People may disagree with me and/or it may be infeasible to implement this way.

Here is most fine graned dispel types by dispel targets. Not all of the are even in original game.

1. Single unit enchantment overland and its mass versions: 1a) all enchantments of a single unit and 1b) all enchantment of all units in a square
   
2. Single unit enchantment in combat and its mass versions: 2a) all enchantments of a single unit and 2b) all enchantments of all units in a square
   
3. Single area enchantment overland and its mass version: 3a) all enchantment in a square
   
4. Single area enchantment in combat and its mass version: 4a) all enchantment in a square
   
5. Single global enchantment and its mass version: 5a) all global spells
   

• All enchantments of a single unit overland and in combat
  
• All enchantments in a single area overland and in combat
  
• Single global enchantment
  

• All enchantments of all units overland and in combat.
  

This is my "todo" list for the next version, including quite a lot of ideas where I would like to hear some opinions first :

1. Dispel Magic works on Magic Vortexes. I don't think it should, it's not even a unit enchantment... (same for Dispelling Wave)
2. You can dispel Warp Node in combat and unlike dispelling city buffs, this effect is permanent. Do we care to have this feature? I believe the overland map is where combat unrelated overland spells should be dispelled at...
But if we do want to keep it, the very least it should be limited to only dispel Warp Node spells cast by other players, not yourself.
2b. Which btw is something we should also do for overland dispelling of Warp Node as well. Originally it didn't store an owner but it does now so checking for it being your own or not is possible. This also makes it possible in theory for the spell to resist dispelling according to normal rules (Specialist and Runemaster applying), although fixing that might make the AI's strategy suboptimal (dispel nodes first, cities second).
3. The AI is incapable of casting Wall of Fire and Wall of Shadows in battle, obviously I'll fix this.
4. Merchant offered item sales should scale their budget based on turn count. Buying a Haste or Regeneration item on turn 50 can be an issue. (ofc finding them is still a possibility but unlike lair items that are guarded by harder monsters the better they are, the merchant merely needs you to have the gold ready.) I don't remember but maybe we already have something like this, just not very well adjusted?
5. The chance of 1 pick, 2 picks or very rare spell should be weighted. Right now it's 1/3 for each, while before the pick generation related update, it was 2 single picks and 2.5 very rares for 0.9 doublepicks. So double picks are currently more than twice as frequent as they used to be and this change was not intended. Not sure what's out preference, 1:2:3 or 1:2:2 for double,single and very rare spell or maybe something entirely different? Note that double picks tend to benefit the human player slightly more (as they are more expensive and are placed into harder nodes the AI can only beat later) while single picks tend to be more valueable for the AI (who is somewhat more likely to pick these up in a way that results in getting actual very rare spells out of it instead of just a random offcolor 1st book). Very rare spells are a middle ground as the AI is more likely to get a very rare spell by opening it late enough, but they have a higher budget requirement than single picks so the human player has a better chance to find them first especially if playing fast strategies. The difference is small though (1200 budget vs 800).
6. After completing my ongoing troll game, I probably should try playing a few games using Sapher's "undead hydra/behemoth" strategy. If testing shows it is a problem, changing Warp Creature to scale the chance of success based on target creature tier might be a good solution. So instead of the current "Save at -5" we could have "Save at -X or there is Y chance of effect" where Y would be 100% on uncommon and lower, but less on rare and even less on very rare targets. This even allows a larger X than the current. We might even want to consider this regardless of the test results. I don't mind the very rare creatures getting killed at a low chance but I do mind if they come back as undead in 1403-1405 consistently enough to win games with it.
Edit : Alternately, we can make a new rule "regenerating supernatural creatures can't turn undead".
7a. Mystic Surge should not be possible to Dispel. This is simple, if it can be dispelled, the player gets a free chance to recast the spell and reroll for even more and better buffs. Obviously the buffs themselves remain dispellable, just not Mystic Surge itself.
7b. Mystic Surge maybe shouldn't add invisibility. Again simple : invisible units can't be targeted by dispel magic so the AI can't counter it by dispelling even if they had the mana. So rolling this gives you a free pass of "cast spells until turn 25 then enemy retreats". That's okay for Sorcery at rare, idk how I feel about it in chaos at uncommon.
8. What if Wall of Fire added a strategic combat bonus to units like normal City Walls do, except to their attack power?
9. What if Fortress Lighting was scaled by the Difficulty setting for AI players? I feel it's way too effective as a way to eliminate unwanted neutrals for the human player at the current strength and the only reason it was ever raised (or added to the game) was the AI needing it. I understand why it needs to be the same effect for Normal and Fair difficulty, but I'm fine if the player beats those levels with life buffed swordsmen so they do fine with a lower lightning strength. It should only be impossible on the higher difficulties. Alternately it could be limited to the first X turns of battle, but unlimited for the AI on high enough difficulty?
10. Alternately what if neutrals were a bit harder to manipulate? If every city on the map had a "constant random" modifier to their priority, it'll become harder to make neutrals attack a different city. Unfortunately, if the random amount is too high the monsters will target very suboptimally, and if it's too low they are still easy to manipulate. So this might not be a good idea, I don't think I can make good formula for it.
11. Now that caster vs death demons is actually random instead of predetermined, maybe the chance of caster demons should be higher than 50%?  (You still get 100% Death demons when the battle unit total is over 18, that's unavaoidable. Death demons were made with the purpose to ensure caster demons in those slots don't crash the game.)

That's all on my list at the moment.