Mattastic
Warlord
A couple of weeks ago (in the middle of my internet downtime), I started playing the classic 1994 Microprose game, Master of Magic. For the uninitiated, it's an empire-building game set on a pair of magical worlds (like you hadn't guessed).
Anyway, I thought I needed a break from modding the Civ4 interface, so I thought I could take up doing an MoM mod as a secondary project. That turned out to be more ambitious than I could possibly achieve, but I wanted to share some of my ideas in case anyone wanted to have a go.
So far I've hammered out some details of units, and the five Human-like (as in, no resizing or model replacement needed) races from the orginal MoM. I have also decided to remove Draconians (and to even out 13 Civs with 13 leaders, Sss'ra also) because the fact that every unit of theirs could fly was a little overpowering! Details of all this follows.
The part of MoM that I think will be the MOST challenging would be research and spellcasting. MoM's techs were spells, and there were around twice as many as Civ4 techs. Furthermore there was no defined tech tree, the number of spells you could research depended on what books of magic you chose at the start of the game, and there was no logical progession of research. You cannot translate MoM's spelllist into a tech tree - I've tried. This will be a challenge that I'd be very interrested to hear ideas on.
Spellcasting is a little easier, but still a huge task. I have ideas for the following kinds of spells...
Buildings and units (normal units, at least) are a fair bit easier. In MoM, all buildings and units were unlocked at the start of the game, but both required certain buildings to be built beforehand. You had to have a Barracks to build a Spearman, and you couldn't build a Parthenon without a Shrine. The building tree will probably be the same as in the MoM manual (Google it), with one main exception. Parthenons will be called Cathedrals, and the original cathedral will be made obselete. This is because Civ4 only contains three kinds of religious buildings per religion, and there's no sense in having an additional one since it has no real benefit for the extra work involved.
I have compiled a quick unit list based on what was available in MoM. Please note, however, that the Unique Units are only some of those for Barbarians, Dark Elves, High Elves, High Men and Nomads. Some Unique Units have not been finalized - see the Civilization details for more information)
The five human-like races I've outlined details for are shown below. I'm pretty sure they're more or less balanced, but I think it'd need playtesting to be sure. I dunno what'll happen with the more exotic races, but I'm sure it'll be possible to do them all one way or another.
The actual in-game details of unique units (or any units, or buildings, for that matter) have not been worked out fully yet.
There is, however, one summoned creature which I want to address: the Magic Spirit. In MoM, there existed Nodes for three of the five schools of magic. They'd be occupied by some kind of magical creature, but after defeating them you could summon a Magic Spirit to "meld" with the Node, thus producing mana. I propose Nodes become a new kind of resource. Some very clever coding might be able to place appropriate Barbarian creatures on the node square, without the ability to leave it. Afterwards, the Magic Spirit would have the unique ability to create the "Meld" improvement, destroying the Magic Spirit, but generating mana.
The Nodes might look as follows:
Chaos Node - A volcano
Nature Node - A forest square with glittering leaves
Sorcery Node - No idea; MoM used a kind of glowing lake
There were no Life or Death nodes, although there were ruins and old temples and such which could contain life or death monsters.
This really just leaves religion, civics, wonders, and the like, which I have no idea for whatsoever.
I would be interested in knowing what others think of these ideas, and whether or not any of it sounds at all feasable.
Anyway, I thought I needed a break from modding the Civ4 interface, so I thought I could take up doing an MoM mod as a secondary project. That turned out to be more ambitious than I could possibly achieve, but I wanted to share some of my ideas in case anyone wanted to have a go.
So far I've hammered out some details of units, and the five Human-like (as in, no resizing or model replacement needed) races from the orginal MoM. I have also decided to remove Draconians (and to even out 13 Civs with 13 leaders, Sss'ra also) because the fact that every unit of theirs could fly was a little overpowering! Details of all this follows.
The part of MoM that I think will be the MOST challenging would be research and spellcasting. MoM's techs were spells, and there were around twice as many as Civ4 techs. Furthermore there was no defined tech tree, the number of spells you could research depended on what books of magic you chose at the start of the game, and there was no logical progession of research. You cannot translate MoM's spelllist into a tech tree - I've tried. This will be a challenge that I'd be very interrested to hear ideas on.
Spellcasting is a little easier, but still a huge task. I have ideas for the following kinds of spells...
Spoiler :
I have compiled a quick unit list based on what was available in MoM. Please note, however, that the Unique Units are only some of those for Barbarians, Dark Elves, High Elves, High Men and Nomads. Some Unique Units have not been finalized - see the Civilization details for more information)
Spoiler :
Spoiler :
There is, however, one summoned creature which I want to address: the Magic Spirit. In MoM, there existed Nodes for three of the five schools of magic. They'd be occupied by some kind of magical creature, but after defeating them you could summon a Magic Spirit to "meld" with the Node, thus producing mana. I propose Nodes become a new kind of resource. Some very clever coding might be able to place appropriate Barbarian creatures on the node square, without the ability to leave it. Afterwards, the Magic Spirit would have the unique ability to create the "Meld" improvement, destroying the Magic Spirit, but generating mana.
The Nodes might look as follows:
Chaos Node - A volcano
Nature Node - A forest square with glittering leaves
Sorcery Node - No idea; MoM used a kind of glowing lake
There were no Life or Death nodes, although there were ruins and old temples and such which could contain life or death monsters.
This really just leaves religion, civics, wonders, and the like, which I have no idea for whatsoever.
I would be interested in knowing what others think of these ideas, and whether or not any of it sounds at all feasable.
