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| Endless Space |
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Posted by: Sirian - August 20th, 2012, 23:12 - Forum: Master of Orion
- Replies (11)
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Endless Space has been out for about a month. It's a 4X space game in the tradition of Master of Orion. It's not a clone or remake, but has many of the fundamental, familiar elements.
I have played over a hundred hours of Endless Space. That's not as many games as one might think. These empire games can go pretty long, and this one is fairly traditional in most ways.
The biggest problem with any empire game is the combat. ALL previous combat systems have had their weak spots. With Civ it was the Stack of Doom, and that issue plagues MOO1 as well. Combat systems with any tactical element end up with balance flaws to where the tactical can override the strategic. Games with purely strategic combat end up being purely about the economy and who can build the best snowball, via minmaxing the strategic path. All the various combat systems have cracks, which if exploited to the max can dramatically lead players away from where the game intended to go.
Endless space tries to simplify the combat dramatically. It's not quite down to pure number crunching, so it's NOT just about the economic snowball, but it's dramatically less intricate than Civ or Master of Orion. This has its up sides. If you choose not to focus on trying to break the combat model (it's doable), then you are left with a more strategic, less tactical game, for the most part.
I can't say that I was impressed with this game on first contact, but I gave it a little more time and a chance to grow on me and it did. In fact, I've lost sleep on a few nights, looked up and found it was hours later than I intended to stop, and realized I got sucked in to "one more turn" until I met some strategic goal or other, and only then came up for air. A game that can do that must be doing plenty of things right.
Endless Space is not a successor to MOO1. It does have some issues that may inhibit extended replay. But it is worth experiencing. So I am giving it my recommendation to MOO fans. Don't expect miracles; just allow yourself to have some fun. The multiplayer for this works reasonably well, too.
While I'm here, I want to say a positive word about Space Pirates and Zombies. This is an almost entirely tactical game, with a progression that is impossible to lose at, but in which forward progress must be validly earned. I played this game all the way through more than once and greatly enjoyed it. I might go back some day for one more run.
This one has some foul language and adult themes, so don't get it for your kids. It's all about the combat. So maybe try the demo first. If you like it, there's plenty of goodness in store for you.
Another game that gets my big thumbs up is Mount and Blade: Warband. Specifically this version of the game is the best balanced, to the point at which I can't play the others, which have a few more flaws. This is a first person shooter minus most of the shooting, where the action is mounted and you have free reign over your toon. The graphics are dated but good enough for a gameplay lover like me, and I played the living daylights out of this game. There's a strong strategic metagame behind the combat encounters, which gives you a reason to keep on fighting. I loved this game. It's a pure classic. I am sure to go back for more at some point.
In fact, this game is worthy of a page on my site, even more so than the other two. My experiences with it reach that soaring level of fun that comes through in my best reports. The only thing that pulled me out of this game was Skyrim, which is also a worthy game.
Last night I spent the evening rereading all my MOO1 reports. Many of the details slipped my memory until I had read them again, so it was almost like being a fresh reader to my own writings. ... I miss writing reports like these, where I'm having a blast with a game that is both challenging and fun, and not dwelling on the game's flaws. That's harder to do in today's game world where games have built themselves up over time with "must do" elements that carry designs beyond where games in the past went, which actually end up not being as much fun to play. Sequels tend to pile on in bad ways.
Steam has been a godsend in this regard. Digital platforms allow the distribution of lower budget games to niche markets, and there are some real gems in amongst the games that are $30, $20, even lower cost. All three of the great games I mentioned above are in this category, rather than the blockbuster AAA high art games that hit the WalMart shelves.
I'd like to write some more game reports, about whatever games I'm playing that are good fun. It just takes so much energy. So no promises. But there is a part of me that is nostalgic for the days when I wrote about games instead of working on games.
- Sirian
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| Going backwards - MoM v1.0 |
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Posted by: Tiltowait - August 20th, 2012, 18:50 - Forum: Master of Magic
- Replies (7)
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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":
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.
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| Enemy wizards giving up vs. casting Spell of Return |
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Posted by: Tiltowait - August 20th, 2012, 04:49 - Forum: Master of Magic
- Replies (9)
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When I take an enemy fortress, the computer has a choice between giving up (all cities revert to neutral and keep their garrisons, all units in the field are eliminated) and casting the Spell of Return. Obviously, I prefer the first outcome.
How does the computer figure this? I've seen wizards start casting Return when they only have one other 4-pop city on a tiny island somewhere, and in my last game one wizard gave up despite having 6+ large cities (it was a relief not having to take them all tediously, one by one, and then ship troops from the home continent to garrison them to prevent counterattacks).
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| World with no neutral cities! Plus some thoughts on small worlds |
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Posted by: Tiltowait - August 20th, 2012, 04:28 - Forum: Master of Magic
- Replies (4)
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I attach a save file of a game I recently started. I didn't have a "good feeling" about the map, so I was about to start over. I hit ALT-RVL and lo and behold there are no neutral cities on either map! Wow. It's a small sized world, admittedly. However, in all my playing, I've never seen a small size world without neutrals. Look at Myrror, it's empty. The official strategy guide says that 15 neutral city sites are selected at the beginning of the game.
I always play small these days. Why? Because when I play on medium or large, I spend most of my time managing a huge empire of cities. Ugh. The worst of DOS game micromanagement hell! You MUST put cities everywhere, or your economy will be crushed by the computer who DOES put cities everywhere. I didn't want to play MoM because of this.  I would begin the game and quit as soon as I commenced my first city development. I just didn't want to see that city management screen!
I started playing on small worlds, and it was nice. Just build my core of 4-5 cities and I'm done for the game. The accepted wisdom is that the computer doesn't deal well with small worlds, but it manages to get off its islands well enough. I like to concentrate on the part of the game that I enjoy, building stacks, map strategy, getting this game's selection of heroes, and in general having fun with the random number generator. With medium or large maps, there is just too much dealing with cities and not nearly enough combat.
I also play on hard level. Impossible is just impossible. I know if I put enough effort into the game, I could win on impossible - but I don't want to do that. That's WORK. Ugh! I like where I'm at right now. I wish there were a level between hard and 2x impossible, that would make me happier. I suppose with ancient games like this, everyone who still plays it is an utter expert by now. However, the game still manages to surprise me from time to time with something I've never seen. Some rare spell, or an uncommon hero, or a strange artifact. I haven't explored the entire thing, and again that's where I like to be.
I suppose all of the development occurs in a direction tailored for the super-expert players, which would seem to be expected. I mean, it's amazing that anyone is still working on this game AT ALL. I'm very thankful for the insecticide mod, it has taken the correct philosophy of "fixing what's broken" instead of "change the game away from MoM and into some other game that uses the same interface". It makes the game better, and it stays MoM. I can't really complain that the squeaky wheels get the grease.
[SIZE="2"]PS - forum adminstrator please add .gam to the list of approved file attachments[/SIZE]
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| Screenshot tag testing |
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Posted by: T-hawk - August 19th, 2012, 20:53 - Forum: Off Topic
- Replies (42)
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New feature!
I cooked up a custom tag named [Screenshot]. You can put an image URL inside it. It will automatically compact the image to a small size of 800x600 to fit in a forum window easily. But it is clickable to toggle the image back and forth to full size.
What's the difference between [Screenshot] and [Spoiler]? Spoiler is better for a large number of images, since they don't load right away until the reader clicks it. Screenshot is better for one or two very large images, so that the smaller version is visible inline without an extra click. Note that Screenshot does download the entire image at full size; it's only resized in the client browser.
You'll need Javascript enabled. If not, to see the screenshot at full size, you'll have to do it yourself with something like right-click -> "view image".
Feel free to try it out in this thread. It worked for me in Firefox 14, Opera 12, and IE 8. I'd appreciate some testing in other browsers, especially mobile.
Code: [Screen[b][/b]shot]http://www.dos486.com/civ4/civ5efficiency/1700ad.jpg[/Screen[b][/b]shot]
Click on this image for a demonstration!
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