Master of Mana

yes, Patch 1.2 includes a new Spellresearch system. A lot of fun

tesb also reworked the tile graphics are. Just look at the new desert graphic

Screenshot

Mana Mechanic

• Mana decay removed, instead only a static amount of mana can be hoarded at any time (100 mana default)
• GlobalEnchantments/Terraformings/Summonrituals can now be channeled over several turns. If you have for example 10 mana income and 50 mana hoarded and start a Summon Ritual that costs 200mana, it will be finished in 15 turns.

Mana Bonus System

• Every Spellschool has one(!) Bonus linked to it. This Bonus reduces Spellresearch of that particular school
• All other Mana Types are considered Wildmana
  • Wildmana cannot be dispelled
  • Raw Mana Nodes cannot be turned into Wildmana
  • Wildmana allows to research unique Spells (Ice for example allows Damage spells with Cold/slow effects like Snowfall)
  • Raw Mana has a 66% chance to be turned into Wildmana at the beginning of the game

Spell Research

• The Spellresearch Schools are completly remade. Light, Elementalism and Dark are gone and replaced by 5 new Spellschools (inspired by Dungeon and Dragons Spell System). In the Picture below you can see the Evocation Spellschool that focuses on Spells to deal damage.
• Spellresearch will not be random anymore (you select one item and research it, like techs)
• There will be no restriction to beeline a specific item
• Spellresearch costs will now depend on what you research (like techs, more powerful things are more expensive)
• Some Spellresearch requires a specific type of mana. For example you need Ice Mana to research the ice spells (slow/blizzard/snowfall). About 33% of all Spellresearch items require a mana type.
• No Spellresearch is locked down in a game. Theoretically you can research everything if you have the spellresearch and all Mana types, but this is nearly impossible. Realistically you will have to make choices what you want to research and you want to take the types of mana you have access to into account.
• There are Spellresearch items that do not unlock new spells but instead make Spells better. For example Elemental Assault will increase the Damage your mages do with Elemental Spells by 5. This is implemented to give an incentive to specialize in a given area rather than just cherry picking a few things here and there.

Combat Auras from Arcane Units

• Effects are now unlocked by Spellresearch rather than individual promotions. So if you research Iron Skin, the Combataura of all your Arcane units gets better.
• Enchanted Blade Effect now scales with power of Combataura (instead of being 10% allways)

Balance

• City States Civic gives +10% hammers
• removed some techprereqs from Equipment
• Bonus from Fertile Lands Enchantment reduced from 900% to 100%
• Bonus from Cottage/Towns for Resouce Discovery of adjacent Improvements reduced. Towns now increase resource find by 50%. That means if you have 5 towns with 8 Improvements adjacent, they will find a resource every 100 turns on average (in addition to the 5*8=40 improvements finding a new resource every 50 turns on average).
• Removed Aerons Chosen mechanic
• Barbarian Trait gives -30% culture, -30% Spellresearch
• Tech Archives added (after Writing)
• Building Archives Added, gives Spellresearch and Science Bonus
• Scientist specialist gives 1 Spellresearch and 1 less science
• Master Hunter House Vadalis -2 Strength
• Doviello/Clan of Embers can build Mage Guilds
• Peaks don't reduce the Amount of Infrastructure a City can support for free ("Open Space Penalty")
• Sidar arcane Units can't wane
• Process Wealth: Prereq is Barter and Ratio reduced to 1:4
• Process Research: Prereq is Education and Ratio reduced to 1:4
• Min Distance between Cities increased to 3
• increase movement of disciple units to 2
• add Summoning Circle "Building": Teleports Summons to the city it is build in
• Leaders who are at peace with the barbarians are blocked from exploring dungeons.
• Observatory Building added (requires Astronomy tech and Mountain adjacent to city, increases Science)
• Salon Building added (requires Philosophy, increases science, reduces gold and food)
• Granary Building modified: Consumes a Wheat/Rice/Corn Bonusresource. Gives food based on the amount of these resources available.
• Miracles require State Religion
• Cathredal/Altar increases gold/faith of Priests instead of production (quite weird if a Priest is as good as two engineers )

Civic Rework

• some civics removed, some added, some modified
• Military State (or Crusade) are now necessary for Battlecaptions (both together increase spawnrate)
• Lumber from Ancient Forests is now unlocked by Harvesting Civic

Fixes

• culture modifier from fur trader removed
• can explore shipwrecks
• Dwarf/Infernal Special Armor cannot be selected as a Promotion
• Combat Strength Modification of Combatauras also works for Defense
• Chaos Rift does not create World Wonders/National Wonders
• Workers in cities do not wake up because of danger
• Promotions from Global Enchantments are removed when the Global Enchantment is removed
• Doviello Form Wolfpack generating too many wolfpacks.
• Display of Faith on Mouseover
• TerrainmakesValid is shown for Improvements in the Pedia under Requirements
• Evoke Volcano does not target cities
• Fix an issue where Noble Houses could spawn as Barbarian Civilization
• issue with Monks and Seal of Fury / Defiance
• Enraged Units cannot be disbanded

AI

• fixed a few Worker AI bugs
• Improved AI use of Equipment
• AI should promote it's Siege units now
• AI will beeline Tier2 Military now. Choice depends on Civ/leader.

ModModding

• add Civilization XML tag for flavor screens (modular civs)
• IDW Percent promotion tag fixes

Art:

• New/Tweaked Terrain Graphics for:
  • Broken Lands
  • Fields of Perdition
  • Plains
  • Grassland
  • Desert
  • Burning Sands
  • Ice
  • Marshes/Wetlands
• Aristrakh Skeletons have new Art
• Further Optimization of Art files to reduce MAF
• Faerie Forests and Burned Forests now tile correctly, like any other trees
• Osgabella has a Texture for her Mace
• Nullstone Golem has a texture

Aristrakh:

• removed Ancient Vampires, the melee line was too strong with them
• Vampire Lords can be build
• Added UU for Beastmaster and Marksman, basically every branch should have a powerful Vampire UU at the end now

 

best TBS ever, period. plus it just keeps getting better and better

 

Please continue working on this it is highly appreciated!

 

have no fear, working is going on just fine

you can join us on the MoM forums if you want to contribute to the discussion

 

This looks very interesting. I'm not sure how much time I can sink into it, but I'm giving it a try.

Installation of v1.22 worked without any noticeable issues.

A bit more documentation of the mod's features and settings would be welcome. I'm setting up a game on an ErebusContinent map right now (as suggested in the MoM forums due to naval AI not being there yet). I tried to look up whether the map sizes have the same number of plots as in unmodded Civ (would be good to know in order to estimate which map size my machine will be able to handle), but couldn't find this information. There are some map settings (like "Cohesion" or "Smart Climate") whose function I can only guess. There's a map setting for "Ancient city ruins" but it's turned off, I couldn't find any information on its function (presumably goody huts) or the reason why it's turned off either. The "Era" setting has many options which don't really sound like eras, at least the last one ("System use") sounds like a bug, but since I couldn't find any information about these settings, I can't even guess whether the others might be bugs too. The setting "No vassals" was deactivated by default - personally I find vassals a very enjoyable part of Civ, and so I looked whether there was a specific reason for disabling them on default, and what would happen if I reactivated them - but again, no luck. Despite vassals (and therefore colonization) being disabled, the default number of civilizations per map size is still reduced (compared to vanilla Civ), as if vassals where still part of the game; I couldn't find any information about that. Lots of game settings have tool tips which probably make sense to people who already know the mod and its concepts, but for someone who doesn't, they could as well be written in Greek, because they try to explain unknown concepts by popping up a short sentence full of even more unknown concepts.

After starting the game, I opened the BUG options. On the "General" tab, the tool tip for the option "Show mana bar" only states that an XML key is missing. The same goes for the tool tip for "Disable the Flavor Background" on the "City Screen" tab. Also, the "Unit Naming" tab has no functionality at all, it only displays a list of missing data. Furthermore, clicking the "BUG mod help" button leads to a "File not found" error popping up. I also noticed that the mod seems to use an outdated version of BUG (v3.6 for BtS 3.17 according to the System tab).

Btw, the above probably sounds like I'm disappointed and complaining about minutuiae, Please believe me that I'm not. I'm quite curious about this mod, I like the setting and the general design, and especially your thoughts about AI design (and how to modify a game's design so that the AI can handle it) sounded very promising to me. I don't exprect a rather fresh mod to be perfect in terms of documentation and player help. However, since you probably plan on working on those two things anyway (the homepage indicates that a manual is planned), I'm offering my first impressions as feedback, to perhaps give you an indication where there might be room for improvement.

I'll play a bit now and may return later with feedback on the actual game.

 

here you can find all info regarding ErebusContinent http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=308590

here is a tweaked version for MoM with suggestions for the settings: http://www.masterofmana.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1005&start=0

make sure to start a play now! game to clear all gameoptions before you play MoM, cuz that's most likely what's causing your issues with vassals. you don't have to actually play it then, just start it and then exit to main menu and start a custom game to your liking.

please note that ErebusContinent maps take a while to generate as they are VERY detailed and realistic. so use something else when you use play now! to clear custom settings, otherwise you'll be staring at your screen for a minute just to then go to the main menu after generation

also feel free to ask if you've got any more doubts, regarding the custom game options or whatever it may be

 

Hi Psyringe,

welcome to MoM, "aber Vorsicht", it is highly addictive As for the BUG error messages... nothing serious, can be overlooked. As to documentation: yeah, atm it lacks, but this will change after a while. We are all too busy to play...

Regarding "player help", imho MoM is here near perfection, just join our forum:

http://www.masterofmana.com/phpBB3/

Greez,

Tschuggi

 

Thanks for the quick replies. Using "Play now!" once removed the oddities with the game settings (I should have thought of this myself). I like the ErebusContinent map script very much btw, it indeed does create very realistic terrain, and the mountain ranges also create bottlenecks and tactical opportunities.

I'm now 350 turns (epic speed) into my first game. Here's some more feedback:

- I still keep running into walls wrt documentation. It took a while to find out how equipment, infrastructure, spell research, and spellcasting (global and by units) worked. There are still many things that I don't know or just guessed. I often look in the Civilopedia for info but don't find anything about the subject I'm looking for. The only documentation that I found in your forum was targeted at people who already played FfH (I haven't), and it's also outdated. It's not a game breaker, I still enjoy the game - but at times I really struggle to understand what's going on or how I'm supposed to use a given feature. It's also a bit frustrating to find out 100 turns into the game that one missed a feature that one should have used all along - at this point, many players will probably just quit and say that the mod is "too confusing". While I do like the complexity, more documentation would be very welcome.

- Slightly related to the above: there's also a lack of flavor texts. I would love to read about the personality and background of the leaders I'm playing against. Having biographies or at least descriptions of these characters would not only add to the atmosphere, but could also give clues about their priorities and playing style.

- The helpfile from the BUG mod seems to be missing. Clicking on the help button in the BUG options screen just triggers a file not found error. So in order to find out how to use certain BUG features, one needs to have another BUG installation with a working helpfile.

- The AI seems a bit erratic at times, though it's of course possible that I just started next to a nutcase a la Monty or Ragnar. Swift Nell DoW'ed me when we both had three cities and lots of room to expand to, so the Luchuirp and me quickly eradicated her. When she had only her capital left, I parked a small stack of axemen next to it and watched what she was doing. She kept two swordsmen stationed in the city for defense, and from time to time built a third one, which she then sent north, going around my stack, intruding into Luchuirp territory - where it was immediately killed. Despite being outnumbered she never asked for peace, she just kept wasting swordsmen until I finally took her capital.

- I was in a war against the Hippus. After asking "Let's bury the hatchet", they offered a ceasefire. But when I tried to agree to it, they suddenly rejected their own offer. this happened three times during the war (which was finally ended by a compassion event).

- The AI does not seem to pursue religions (at least none of the AIs in my game does). I'm the only one who researched one and the whole continent shares my faith.

- Although the difficulty jumped to Deity pretty quickly (I used the "flexible difficulty" setting), and although there's still a lot in the game that I don't understand, I have no difficulties staying at no 1 in score. In regular Civ, I win about half my games on Emperor. The game seems pretty easy so far, though impressions based on score might of course be misleading.

- I've repelled attacks from the Hippus and from the Bannor with the same simple technique: Use Disciples of Leaves as basic defenders (two each in border cities), and when someone declares war, concentrate them in the attacked city and let each of them summon a tiger each turn. The tigers are weak, but they do win some of the battles, and neither AI brought a stack big enough to overwhelm them before my reinforcements arrived. When in tight corners, I can use healing salve to make my units last longer. Once my reinforcements (axemen or adepts) reached the city, the fight was decided quickly.

- Speaking of adepts, I haven't seen any AI use one so far, which seems odd since I rely on them a lot. When attacking a lair or city, I first build up my mana, then move 3 adepts near the target. Even though they have no moves left, they can still unleash spells on the target without having any danger of being attacked themselves. Then my other units close in from behind and kill the weakened defenders.

- The disciples also have a useful feature to automatically summon a tiger at the beginning of the turn. The icon that controls this function does not indicate whether it's currently turned on or off. I haven't found any other way to check that setting. How can I find out whether it's on or off? I can of course see whether or not a tiger has been auto-summoned in a given tile (it'll be the tiger with no movement at the beginning of the turn), but let's say I have two disciples in the tile and see that one tiger has been summoned - how can I find out which disciples needs his auto-summoning switched off?

- Random seed preservation seems to be broken. I had to reload the game after some crashes (related to the 2 GB barrier, problem solved the usual way), and although I took the same actions, combat outcome was different. I haven't ticked the option to randomize the seed after each reload.

- Two times, units of me suddenly moved although I didn't order them to. Both were units that I gained from events. One was an axeman that I gained from the "serial killer caught" event, he suddenly wandered off. Then there was a unit named "Heroes of the Sword" that suddenly moved out of the city where I stationed them. I sent them back, and they re-entered the city and immediately left it again. Is there a "confusion" enchantment that I may have overlooked and that causes units to randomly wander around, or is this bug? In both cases, saving and reloading apparently brought the unit back under my control.

- No AI seems to be interested in researching seafaring technologies. I surrounded the whole continent with my ships and didn't meet any other vessel.

What I really like so far is the diversity of the civilizations. I also like how expanding one's empire is a constant struggle even when no rivals are around. more animals and barbarians, Hidden hazards (spiders) and sea-going animals (lizards) mean that expansion and exploration are much more dangerous than in the regular game, which is very fitting for the fantasy atmosphere. Also, the different resources and magic schools look interesting, but I haven't really used them enough to already say something about them.

 

Hi Psyringe,

yeah, lack of documentation and flavour tests is still valid... regarding this one:

Your unit from the serial killer event has the crazed promo, which gives him a chance to get the enraged promo, which lets the unit wander off until it has attacked/killed or gets killed. The other unit (hero of swords) has been probably targeted by an adept with a "boiling blood"- or "greater curse"-spell which deals damage and gives the unit the enraged promo. You should be able to see this when looking at the unit-promo-screen at bottom-left.

Regarding naval warfare: does not work yet for the AI.

Regarding AI using arcane units: I have games where they kick my ass with arcane units, especially when I try to attack cities. They hit me often with the great curse, which fits your above description of wandering unit... seems they did hit you with some nasty spell.

AI declaring war often is a known issue, most probably because of the powergraph... and AI not maintainig peace is a known bug.

AI defending its cities not so well is a known issue and will be addressed in the next two patches, but I do encounter civs who seem to be sometimes very well defenders and I can at max take one city... but this differs from game to game. Atm I prefer to start on deity and remain with it, and I do enable no settlers. Had the best games with this setting, but this is very subjective.

Ai and diplomacy - yeah, known, we have a few suggestions for that...

Ai and difficulty levels... known issue.

Ai and religions: I heard this now from a few other guys in the forums, but can't check on that. In most of my games I have at least two or three other religions, that weren't founded by me and that are spread very intelligent by the Ai. I have religious wars on a regular basis. Though I have to mention that, when focussing on being the first to discover religions, it is very probably to succeed.

You wrote so much... can't answer now to all of it

Glad to hear that you enjoy the game. With the next two patches (1.3, 1.4) the AI and your mentioned issues will improve a lot!!!

Greez,

Tschuggi

 

Thanks again for the quick reply. It's great to hear that the mod is in continuous development and that documentation and AI will improve further.

Regarding the "AIs don't research religion" and "AIs don't build arcane units" issues, it could be that I'm simply playing against AIs who regard these as low-priority. I guess time, and more games, will tell.

 

random seed preservation is not broken. even without "new random seed on reload" , at any given time if you reload the outcomes will be different. if you keep reloading the same point it will always be the same outcome though.

 

True, though there's still something wrong (at least in the tests I ran), in a condition you didn't mention (and that I didn't describe sufficiently either, sorry for that). I tried the following:

1. Activate a horseman. Save the game. Use activated horseman to attack enemy horseman. Result: My horseman survives with 3.2 strength.

2. Exit, restart and reload the game. Use activated horseman to attack enemy horseman. Result: My horseman survives with 4.1 strength.

3. Exit, restart and reload the game. Use activated horseman to attack enemy horseman. Result: My horseman survives with 4.1 strength.

4. Exit, restart and reload the game. Use activated horseman to attack enemy horseman. Result: My horseman survives with 4.1 strength.

As far as I remember, this is not exactly the intended behavior, and in unmodded BtS the trials 2-4 would also have resulted in my horseman surviving with 3.2 strength. The intended behavior of random seed preservation was to give a user who reloads a game the same result as if he hadn't reloaded. This doesn't seem to be the case in MoM, at least not according to the test above.

To me, it seems that either:

( a ) the wrong random seed is written into the samegame (and this wrong seed then gets processed correctly), or

( b ) the correct random seed is written to the savegame, but something between "load game" and "passing control to the user" makes use of the RNG, so when the combat actually starts, the random seed has changed compared to trial 1. Whatever accesses the RNG does so consistently and identically upon each reload though.

It might be possible to determine what's going wrong by comparing the combat logs of trial 1 and one of the others. If (for example) trials 2-4 have the same sequence of events as trial 1, with only the first combat round of trial 1 missing in trials 2-4, then this hints at explanation ( b ).

Now I agree that this analysis is probably way too overblown for an issue that's definitely not more than a minor annoyance, especially considering that there are probably dozens of things with higher priority in the development of this excellent mod - but nevertheless I do think that the analysis itself is correct. If it isn't, I'd be happy to see any mistakes corrected.

 

your analysis is correct. will be fixed.

 

whoa, years of playing FFH and I had never noticed it wasn't working as intended. kudos !

 

As much as I'd love to play this, I cannot. Like another poster mentioned, I get a message saying that the files are corrupt. I've tried two separate mirrors and have gotten the same result.

Oh well, at least I have WM to tie me over.

nvm, I guess the third time really is the charm.

 

The lastest version of Master of Mana is finally stable on my system. However, I have noticed that the new civs (Scions, Aristakh, etc.) mostly don't appear as AI players in the game and can't be selected when setting up a custom game. Is there any way to play against them?

 

the download is working again for those who had trouble

http://wildmana.hengames.de/MoM1.2.exe

 

Patch 1.23 fixes a few bugs

http://www.masterofmana.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1419

 

some of the new civs don't have an AI specifically written for them yet, so you'll have to wait or play multiplayer

 

Hi again

I just finished my first game of MoM, so I thought I'd relay my impressions.

(1) Earlier, I said that the AI rivals didn't seem to produce adepts or found religions. This turned out to be wrong. They did both, it just took them a long time to get there (even on Deity).

(2) AI army movement and group composition seemed odd at times (as already described earlier for the Balseraphs). Examples:

(2a) During a war, the Hippus kept shifting about two dozen horsemen around in the vicinity of a chokepoint that I had sealed with a fortress. Every second or third turn, a small group of them would end up right next to the fortress, where my defenders could take them out conveniently. The Hippus never moved their full force (which I couldn't have taken down so easily due to their numerical advantage) near the fortress. The only time when the Hippus were approaching the fortress with a considerable force was when I had removed some of the defenders to fight a barbarian incursion elsewhere. Hence I think that the AI apparently did want to break through the chokepoint, but felt too weak whenever it approached, so it retreated those units that still had movement points, left the others to die, was clueless as to how to deal with the situation otherwise, and kept repeating these steps during the following turns. Side note: The AI had apparently concentrated most of its forces at this front, because when the Luchuirp attacked the Hippus on a different front, the Hippus lost 4 cities extremely quickly, so they must have been almost defenseless and with no troups left for counterattacks.

(2b ) In a war with the Calabim, they moved a stack consisting of 16 adepts (and nothing else) right into my territory, where they were slaughtered by my horsemen patrols in two turns. It doesn't seem sensible to send 16 adepts into a warzone without any protection. The Calabim did have vampires and hunters, which could have provided at least some protection (or distraction). Note: At that time, the Calabim occupied the northern and southern shore of a bay, while I owned the eastern shore. It's possible that the stack of adepts didn't "want" to enter the warzone, but simply wanted to travel from a location in the northern half of the Calabim empire to one in the southern half. If the AI sent this stack along its way without realizing that it would need to pass through my territory at the eastern shore, then this might explain the seemingly ill-prepared composition of the stack.

(2c) The Bannor declared on me, and then attacked with small stacks of catapults at three places. Each stack was wiped out quickly. It might have looked smarter for the Bannor to combine their forces before attacking, though I'm not totally sure (it was pretty late in the game and probably wouldn't have that much of a difference).

(3) Speaking of war declarations: Both the Calabim and the Bannor declared on me while they had one city in the midst of my empire, surrounded by my culture. Instead of using this city as a staging point, they left it almost defenseless; in both cases I took the respective city in the first turn after the war had broken out.

(4) Does the city proximity bug (i.e., the AI seeing cities as "right next to me" even if they are separated by a body of water, and sending troops on a long and useless trip around the impassable terrain just to get to the seemingly "close" destination) still present in your codebase? That would explain why the Calabim (southern shore of the bay) attacked the Doviello and Sheaim (northern shore of the same bay) even though that meant sending lots of troops on a long journey. However, the Calabim didn't have any other non-aligned neighbors closer by, so perhaps they just didn't find a better target.

(5) There seems to be a lack of notifications in the game. Often my units had suddenly taken damage and I simply couldn't see what caused it. The turn log didn't have any information about it either. It's a bit frustrating to have units damaged or running off without getting a warning or any other information about it - it makes the player feel helpless. I guess that an enemy spellcaster had cast a damage spell on my units, but without getting a notice, that's only guesswork and it's hard to come up with tactical commands to prevent or reduce the damage. Having enraged units entails the same problem, they simply wander off without giving a warning, sometimes (when the unit had lots of movement) I didn't even notice it until the unit suddenly appeared in a combat deep within enemy territory.

(6) Speaking of enraged units, I've had it happen twice that an enraged unit walked deep into enemy territory without being targeted by the enemy at all, only to attack some random worker unit. One of my enraged units actually passed right through the entire empire of an enemy, only to attack some workers at the far border. I don't know how enraged units are supposed to acquire their targets, but it seems odd that (a) they would stroll through the enemy's lands for a dozen turns before finally capturing a hapless worker, and (b ) the enemy would actually allow them to do that.

- The hard cap of magic points causes a couple of problems or oddities:

(7) A mana cap of 100 seems rather low considering that it only allows (without cost reductions) 4 magical attacks for the entire turn (and then forces a pause to replenish the mana reserve). Likewise, the mana cap makes taming animals a huge effort (it uses up 2/3 of the maximal amount of mana that you can have in the early game, and then it can even be resisted).

(8) I don't know whether my playstyle caused this, but I had access to magical equipment costing more than 100 mana way before I could ever hope raise my mana cap. May need some balance.

(9) The mechanic to use mana from the reserve to cast a ritual faster is out of the player's control and creates odd situations. Example: I plan an attack, build up mana reserves, and right when my mages are in a position to shower the enemy defenses with lightning bolts, all my reserves are suddenly depleted because the game decided to accelerate my ritual. The player should have the possibility to opt out of this mechanic imho.

(10) It seemed a bit arbitrary that rising the mana cap is a specialty to the evocation school, and no other schools have anything similar. I guess you could say that the evocation school benefits most from having a higher cap (more potential to unleash destructive spells in a shorter timeframe), but then again, the mechanic to use the mana reserves to complete any magic ritual undermines that possible explanation right away. What was the reason to design the system this way?

(11) In general, I'd expect the current mana cap to make magic much more useful for big empires. As it stands, any meaningful use of magic is going to deplete your reserves. Bigger empires have more cities and (probably) more nodes, so they will replenish these reserves faster. As a result, in a one-on-one war, the bigger empire will usually have more potential to cast spells than the smaller empire. I'm not sure if this is intended. Usually I'd expect a mechanic here that limits the benefits of having a huge empire somewhat (as inflation and rising city maintenance do for gold).

(12) I still haven't figured out how auras are supposed to work. Partly that's because the respective spell category is a misnomer, under "abjuration" I'd expect dispels and anti-magic, but not aura magic? For a long time I didn't even look into the spells of that area because I thought "my enemies aren't using magic against me, so what's to abjure?".

(13) Having a large selection of spells to choose from is good, but the spells didn't feel very different from each other. Spells from the fire and lightning lines often cost the same and do the same amount of damage - a bit more diversion would be welcome.

(14) Some spells don't seem to work as described. I once cast "Greater Rift" on two defenders in a city and saw no effect, though nothing in the spell's description told me that the spell might fail. For some fire spells, the description mentions an effect lasting for several turns, but it neither mentions how many turns that effect will last, nor whether this per-turn damage is additional to the damage listed in the spell description, or whether it means that said listed damage is simply distributed over several turns. "Charm" and "Domination" are explained as having effects like "the unit is charmed" - well, I kind of guessed that, but I'd like to know what it means in game terms. I found an explanation of the "charmed" effect in the civopedia, but no explanation of the domination effect. Furthermore, some descriptions seem just wrong - confusion confuses the stack of the caster? Really?

- Equipment is an interesting addition to the game, but has some quirks:

(15) It's another mechanic that helps bigger empires more than smaller ones. Equipment needs resources, resources are produced by buildings or improvements, bigger empires will have more of those than smaller ones, storage of resources seems unlimited (or the limit is very high) and there's no decay, hence bigger empires will find it easier to equip their troops. This may be intended, but if it's not, then it may need rebalancing.

(16) It adds another layer of micromanagement into the game, and the game currently doesn't have adequate tools for this layer. For example, there is no way to check at a glance the individual equipment of the units in a stack. When you run out of a resource, and equipment can't be repaired, there's no way to find out which units are already affected except clicking through them. Preparing a stack, or performing an attack, now requires many more clicks than before because more information has to be checked (and is less accessible).

(17) The equipment system seems rather intransparent with regards to which equipment is available under which circumstances. I have no idea why some of my units have access to equipment that others seem unable to ever get, nor can i see any documentation (which would be helpful in building my army, currently I'm first building units and _then_ try to find out whether I can them equip with the things I wanted to give them).

(18) The equipment in its current implementation is very powerful and devaluates the promotion system. Outfitting a freshly built unit can easily make a difference of +70% to its chances of winning a given battle. Again this may be planned, and to some degree it's inevitable, but I'm not sure if that's really what you want. For example, making a decision like "Do I promote this unit with +10% general combat strength, or +20% strength against melee units?" becomes almost meaningless when you also can equip the same unit a weapon that gives it +90% strength under all circumstances. Again, this may need some balancing.

(19) As a side effect of the above, the equipment system might slightly punish warmongers. In regular Civ, warmongers usually fall back a bit in research, but they make up for it by having a veteran army of well-promoted troups, possibly giving them an edge when attacking a more peaceful empire. With equipment, the peaceful empire has more options to catch up in unit strength. However, there may be other rewards for having high-level units (I think I've read something about a hero mechanic but I'm not sure whether I understood how it works in-game), so it may be balanced already.

(20) By the end of the game, I frequently experienced blackouts: While scrolling around on the map, the screen would suddenly go black and show only Civ's mouse pointer, then the game would freeze or crash. I vaguely remember experiencing such things with another mod long ago, but I don't recall if or how it was fixed.

(21) By the end of the game, I had lots of global enchantments running. Although these were giving me huge bonuses, no AI ever tried to dispel one. Also, the global enchantments are another design decision that makes bigger empires better. For the same cost, a big empire can get several times the net effect out of the same enchantment than a small empire (especially with enchantments that place a bonus effect into each of your cities). And the bigger empire will even have an easier time casting and supporting the enchantment. It might be better for gameplay to scale the enchantment upkeep with the number of items affected (perhaps with increasing upkeep costs per item, as with city maintenance). I certainly don't know everything about this complex and fascinating mod, but so far, most major additions seem to tell me that "bigger is better" and that I simply have to grow large to win.

(22) Infrastructure: I'm a bit torn with regard to its usefulness as a feature. Apparently it limits the number of improvements that a city can support, but IIRC can't be influenced by tech or other settings. This means it doesn't add any more diversity to the game, instead it just slows down city development - and does so in a way that makes much more micromanaging necessary. Instead of slowly developing my cities like in regular Civ4, I now have to check whether they can support the new improvement, and when my workers are done with one city, I have to look around for another city that can support more. I tend to end up with cities not being as well-improved as they could because I overlook them when checking the situation. Workers now have to relocate more often since improving an area systemitacally (for example, from west to east) is now detrimental to the city. I wonder what the supposed gain of this feature is, because the way it's implemented now, it would be much easier (and achieve the same effect of slower city development) to just make improvements longer to build and/or make workers more expensive or limit them otherwise.

After all this criticism (sorry again - as i said, I did enjoy the mod, but my feedback often focuses on the criticism for practical reasons), I'd like to give an extra thank-you to the people who wrote the leader-specific diplomacy texts. the ones I encountered were very well done and contributed a lot to the atmosphere, they also helped to understand the characters of my rivals. Actually, I think MoM's diplo texts are better than the original ones in Civ4 (the Caesar salad joke and other silly attempts at humor still make me roll my eyes whenever I encounter them).