Sunday 18 August 2002

If this Screenshot from Master of Magic seems familiar, it is because this is a player's favorite moments: Banishing yet another pesky treacherous opponent from the planets of Arcanus and Myrror.

Magic distraction

In my experience there are few legal and decent experiences that can capture my mind and imagination as much as a game of Master of Magic. This strategy game from 1994 has been out of production for something like six years, and is hard to run on modern computers. (It is an MS-DOS game, and expects a freshly booted PC with MS-DOS 3.1 and no other programs running. You can still run it in a DOS box, but for each new version of Windows there seems to be less support for MS-DOS games. No big surprise, I guess.)

It is hard to say exactly what makes this old game so appealing. It is a very complex game, but then again so is Civilization III; and I got fed up with that after a few long games. It just drags on and on. I don't get that feeling with Master of Magic. In part I think it is because Master of Magic is less predictable. Sure, some civilizations are stronger on commerce while others have an edge in religion; but come the Middle Ages they all get knights, and later they all get bombers. Not so with your wizard opponents. A red wizard fights very differently from a green wizard or a white wizard, all through his life. Both on offense and defense your choice of magic makes a difference. In addition the different races have different units to some extent, and even the same units may have different strengths depending on race and depending on the spells cast on them.

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Because of the immense complexity of the game, there are many winning strategies. Actually the game is simply too complex for an artificial intelligence, or at least for the artificial intelligences of 1994. If you manage to make it to the middle of the game, you are likely to find your competitors floundering and making bad decisions. You can still lose, even if you are pretty good at the game, by playing on the hardest level ("impossible"). On this level the computer opponents are given many and great benefits while you are held back. Strategies that make sense on other levels simply won't have time to work on the highest level. You have to move quickly and decisively before your enemies get the upper hand. Another effect of this fast-paced game is that even small details in your starting conditions can cripple your entire game; there simply is no time to work around your limitations. If you start with too many squares of ocean or tundra, you may as well start over at once.

For this reason I consider the next to highest level ("hard") to be the true strategic level. If you have a solid understanding of the game, victory should be assured; but your final score will still depend heavily on your strategy. Furthermore you will have to adapt your strategy for each new game, depending on what enemies the computer puts up against you. Luck can still help or hinder you, but you will have time to work around obstacles and adjust your strategy. I rarely ever play on the impossible level anymore, unless I have come across a strategy so good it seems like cheating.

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It may sound like I've been playing this game every day – or at least every week – since 1994. It's not quite that good; there can go months between each such fad. A major problem is that the game wears down my hand, as do all strategy games because of all the moving about on the map. So I can only play it when my hand is reasonably good, and then I have to stop when it starts to hurt. Also there are some show-stopping bugs that tend to show up late in the game, after my strategy is bearing fruit but before I cash in my victory. In particular I have noticed a bug that only seems to occur when Ariel or Freya is in the game. I don't remember which of them, or if it is both. It happens around the same point in each game, with some variation, so I suspect this happens when they research or cast a particular spell. After such an end to my game, I tend to lose my motivation for a while...

But when it works, Master of Magic is a game to make you forget food and sleep. Not to mention housework... and on the bright side, it is a great distraction from things you can't do anything about anyway.

Before I leave you today, I will link to a site that has several interesting downloads. There is a good FAQ, the latest patch, and possibly the game itself. I have not checked whether this is the demo (which is legal to distribute) or the full game (which is obviously illegal). As with all downloads, make sure you have your anti-virus software updated and ready. If it is the full game, the site is likely to disappear or relocate without notice. But for now, Dragonsword MoM page.
Oh, and for the less hasty reader, you may want to follow the development of a functional MoM clone designed to run on modern computers. Bookmark Age of Magic.