Master of Magic 2 Wishlist For Slitherine

[vicwaberub]

The battles are the core of MoM:

A part of the core, but certainly not the whole game.  There's exploring, expanding and exploiting too, and some people consider those parts to be more important than the exterminate part.  I play 4X games to watch the story of my marvelous empire unfold.  I consider winning battles to be a validation of the other parts done properly.  All the research and other resources I put into developing certain units and spells is validated by defeating an attacker or successfully adding to my empire.  Having my troops feast on the livers of those slimey <insert appropriate race> troops is just a bonus.

If MOM was just a tactical battle simulator, I wouldn't have even considered playing it.  I tried AOW shadow magic and didn't like it because there wasn't enough empire building.  I wish that a new MOM will properly develop those other aspects of a 4X game.  If the later game turns into too many tedious battles each turn, I'll have to decide if the early game is satisfying enough to be worth buying the game.

Yes, one part. But a very important part. There are different type of games with tactical battles: 

- MoM has a lot of short battles
- HoMM has a lot of 'PvE' battles and one or two big 'PvP' battles
- AoW has a few battles, more 'PvE' as 'PvP'
- Total War has some 'PvP' battles, but they are very long

I prefer a lot of short battles. Games with an explicit tactical battle maps are not suitable for MP. One solution would be a design like in a game like 'Warlock'/'Civilization' with battles on the world map. 

MoM and AoW are wargames. Empire Builders are an own subgenre in 4X. I found this great article for more informations (there are some other interesting articles on this site about 4X games too): http://www.big-game-theory.com/2015/04/a...genre.html

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Thanks, vicwaberub for that link. Good article. The parts about decision depth and pacing are particularly useful. I want to have to make definite game-changing decisions all through the game, rather than a few decisions at the setup part, with the rest of the game being just micromanaging the never-changing strategy. I don't want "On turn 57, set the tax rate in city 7 to 5.317 and start building a cavalry unit." which applies to every game, regardless of the random map or which AI races are where or what retorts/spellbooks they have. I want to be surprised in the game, and have to change my strategies to meet those surprises.

[vicwaberub]

I tried AOW shadow magic and didn't like it because there wasn't enough empire building.  I wish that a new MOM will properly develop those other aspects of a 4X game.  If the later game turns into too many tedious battles each turn, I'll have to decide if the early game is satisfying enough to be worth buying the game.

MoM needs more support units and more empire build spells.

I hope for a new MoM2 a mixture of 
- MoM (magic system, mass of units, a lot of short battles)
- Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes (citys and units are like RPG characters and can be customized)
- Dominions 5 (800 spells, 3.000 story events (!!))
- AoW:SM (nice world graphic, underground as second world)
- Warlock (battles on the world map)
- ...

There are so much good ideas for a new and better turn based fantasy strategy system. I hope they ask us to get new ideas.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

MoM needs more support units and more empire build spells.

The problem with support units is that it makes for more tedious scrolling and clicking each turn.  In late game Civ, you might have scores of engineers demanding attention each turn.  I consider that kind of support unit to be one of those things that is fun in early game (when you only have a few) but which become a real drag later.  For such things as road-building, I'd rather see a system where you have to make some real decisions (allocate some of your limited resources to linking town 23 with town 17, or maybe just allocating a % of resources to imperial roads) and let the computer deal with the tedious stuff; a system that doesn't grow in tedious micromanagement as your empire grows in size.

- Dominions 5 (800 spells, 3.000 story events (!!))

The problem with Dominions as I remember from version 3 is that a lot of those spells and units pretty much never get used.  A nation might have two dozen regular units to choose from, but your armies will consist of only a few types, every single game.  If you use more than that, they're probably just minor variations of each other, and the combat difference is minor too.  If I read the suggestions for a nation, it's usually "this is the unit your armies will consist mainly of" and "research this area to get this spell, then switch to that area to get that spell" and that applies regardless of the map or the other nations on the map, with occasional exceptions.

For MOM2, I'd rather see a smaller selection of good spells that you really have a hard choice deciding between, and the decision of which makes a real difference in how the game unfolds.  I'd also like the system to offer definite 'this spell OR that spell' decisions, meaning that once you've decided on one spell, the other option doesn't show up again.  I didn't like Dominion's system of getting all the spells in a certain branch/level after putting x points into it.  Having a different (limited) selection of spells each game improves replay value.

- AoW:SM (nice world graphic, underground as second world)

I vaguely remember detesting the graphics and limitations of the map.  Worlds of Magic was supposed to be MOM2, but they put a lot of effort into 3D graphics (instead of gameplay) and the screenshots showed something that I think would have caused me great eyestrain trying to pick out a green&brown elvish unit on a green&brown 3D map.  For a _strategy_ game, the map's primary purpose is to deliver critical information in a convenient manner, not looking pretty.

When WOM's developers asked for input, I said I'd accept MOM's graphics as long as it came with deeper gameplay.  Their response was that they didn't want deeper gameplay, since MOM was perfect already, it just needed better graphics.  I wonder if they're regretting that decision now.

It's been nearly a quarter century since MOM was released.  I'm really disappointed in the lack of advances in 4X games in that time.  Hopefully Slitherine can identify some advances to apply, and also what mistakes to avoid.

[MrBiscuits]

Well Caster of Magic is almost my perfect game, so that with a higher resolution and a bit prettier would be nice (but not too pretty to detract from the gameplay eg. 3D).

There's a few things I'd change though, I find city curses and corruption/raise volcano can be annoying as there's no real way to counter them especially corruption in the early game. If you are playing against a chaos wizards and have a race without a unit that can purify, then those gold and mithril tiles you carefully placed your cities around are pretty much useless and there's nothing you can do about it.

Same if you aren't life with consecration then curses can hit your cities and there's no spell or building that can counter it. 

Also this is a 4X problem in general, but I find moving hundreds of units around the map each turn really tiresome towards the end game. Some way of managing this better would be great, but I'm not really sure if there is a solution to that problem.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

There are aspects of games that can be simple to mod out to meet personal taste, so as long as the developer provides good access for modding, those things aren't a problem. Some mods will break the AI, so it would be nice if the developers would take modding in mind when developing the AI.

I think the late game problems, such as moving too many units, comes from not thinking aspects of the game through to how they work in the late game stage. Perhaps developers should take the time to think of what would be a fun late game. Middle game too. Early game is critical, since a not-fun early game will result in many returns. Reviewers probably focus on early game too, and certainly don't write about long-term replayability.

There are some possible solutions to the 'too many units' problem. The game could be designed to build up a few strong armies. Instead of just a few levels of experience, there could be equipment upgrades, special abilities/bonuses. Instead of just an elite mithral swordsman unit, it could have bonuses against klackons because it lost many figures in battle with them, or maybe it gained a bonus against death magic from other battles. Maybe the chance to gain improvements depends on how many armies you have?

Ability to produce more units grows with the number of cities. Maybe the cost of maintaining armies could grow non-linearly (bureaucracy, logistics, etc). Command points are another solution. There are possible solutions, I just don't know which would be most fun/satisfying.

[MrBiscuits]

Civ 4 had maintenance growing exponentially as your number of cities grew, which helped stop endless expansion. Although it had the same problem in the end.

It's not just the number of units, it's moving them all separately at different speeds and keeping track of them all. 

I always thought that having a city building phase and then a war phase where you can move troops over longer distances in one go would help keep track of everything. Taking months or years to make an invasion is annoying.

[Seravy]

As I've explained previously, the large amount of units in the late game is part of the design. There is no way in this genre for the AI to remain competent unless they rely on numbers, both because the AI lacks human intelligence and can't do precision strikes that actually have a high chance of working, and because it's super easy to counter an incoming attack by attacking the incoming enemy before they reach their target, and destroying or weakening it using combat magic. And that design is necessary because it allows the player to feel in control of the situation. If you couldn't respond to incoming armies before they hit your cities, and the AI knew to specifically send stacks that are guaranteed to counter yours and win, it would be a very unfun game. Finally, in the 4X genre, players with significantly more resources should win, and the only way to achieve that is through making the players clash constantly, spending their resources in the battle until one of them runs out. (resources : mana crystals spent and the units who die)
Without large numbers, we'd need even more tiers of units and a larger gap between each tier to achieve a "quality over quantity" style gameplay, but as explained above, that'd be less fun because you'd basically have no way of defending yourself. You'd be like "oh the enemy already has titans, and I only have giants, I lost. Time to start another game." That doesn't happen currently, even if the enemy has a tier higher spells, you can still put up a fight and if you play well enough and/or have the larger pool of resources, win.

That said, I agree having too much units can be a bit exhausting in the late game. Still, the only two other options I see - incompetent AI or unstoppable AI - are worse. Regardless whether the AI simply is too good and always sends the perfect stacks to win or the game relies on fewer but stronger armies.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Okay, I can't argue with that argument. AI limitations really do spoil otherwise good ideas. Maybe we can come up with some ideas for reducing the player's management burden of all those units? Even replacing the engineer unit with a unit-less 'build a road from here to here' command would help reduce tedious mouse-clicking. The chance of engineer units having surprise encounters isn't important to the game.

How about a 'patrol pool' where assigning units to the pool (or just a slider for resources allocated to it) sets the chances of detecting enemy troops within your borders, and the rate at which engineering projects finish? It could set basic city garrisons too, without all the mouse-clicking of building specific units and moving them around. MOM is too unit-centered for that as a mod, but for a future game it might be worth considering.

I'll have to play MOM (or rather, COM) a lot more while paying attention to what detracts from smooth gameplay.

[Seravy]

One thing that definitely detracts from smooth gameplay for me was getting 10-20 "building completed" reports each turn, but that is easy to solve by implementing a building queue, or even a grand vizier function that can be controlled on a per city basis.
The other thing is not having the ability to set up a rally point where newly produced units will move from the city that produced them, but this too, should be trivial for a new game to add.
Having to protect engineers when there is enemy presence is part of the game and considering how much gold you earn by having roads, it's the least to be expected.