Back From 1995: A Master of Magic Story

With Master of Magic going up on GOG.com this week ($6 and it works perfectly on my modern PC? Yes please!), I've been totally obsessed with it all over again. I adored this fantasy 4X empire builder when it came out back in the day, but does it hold up?

Given that it sucked me back in enough to write a gigantic after-action report, I think Master of Magic holds up quite well, thank you very much.

And so, without further ado: the first half of an iron man (no saving or reloading except on exiting the game) session on Hard difficulty using a randomly picked Freya/barbarian start. I'll try to explain the particulars of gameplay as I go along, but it's a complex game – I won't be surprised if people who never played it get a little lost.

The barbarians of this huge continent have wisely chosen me, Freya, to lead them. Apparently my promises of lots of cheap warbear meatshields resonated with the constantly drafted townsfolk.

Races in MoM are a key concept. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and your starting race plays a large part in shaping the game to come. Some races are strong warriors with little capacity for building advanced cities, others grow slowly but build fabulously wealthy cities and strong units, etc.

Barbarians are awesome. They can't build as much high-end infrastructure – universities, cathedrals, etc – as High Men or High Elves, but they grow very quickly and their regular troops get an additional thrown attack that acts as a first strike on offense and gives them a big edge over most other regular troop types.

My first act as despot is to crank my paltry fortress mana generation into my mana reserves – this is going to be key to fulfilling my campaign promises. In the meantime, I summon up some Sprites to assist my spears and swords in early scouting duty. I find a surprisingly low amount of unguarded ruins, which kinda sucks. On the other hand, there's a lightly defended hamlet of neutral High Men nearby to the south, so both of my scout Sprites head over to take it on.

In Master of Magic, you gain mana from various sources starting with your Wizard's Fortress. You can assign your mana income to three things: reserves to be spent casting spells later, research to discover new spells, and skill to be able to cast faster.

Sprites are cheap, summoned flying units with a weak ranged attack. They make excellent early-game scouts and ranged support, as ranged units typically don't come into play until a little later in the game due to building prerequisites and cost.

And lose. Sigh. Sprites aren't quite as good at killing crappy swordsmen as I remembered. The good news is that one of them survives and continues scouting as my regular army moves in. Supported by proper troops, I conquer the place without further issue. Also, my capital has a granary, at last! My already-fecund people start multiplying even faster, and my smithy goes to work forging swords for the bloody work of subjugating Lo Pan, who conquered a much larger High Man town to my west and has to be dealt with quickly before he out-booms me. 39MP Warbears are going to be a big help here.



Lo Pan has a couple of crappy heroes and some shaman (what is it with the AI and building a ton of shaman? They're way too expensive to use as the ranged backbone of an army), but spends his magic foolishly casting phantom warriors, which are easily dispatched by my sprites as my superior warbears and barbarian hordes chew through his ranks. The town is mine, and his capital follows shortly thereafter.

Enemy wizards are your rivals in Master of Magic. They have all the same powers that you do, and are ultimately the biggest obstacle between you and world domination. Fights against enemy wizards are much more dangerous than neutral forces, as they can fling nasty spells at your troops or summon additional units to the battlefield.

The battle for Lo Pan's house is probably the closest match I've ever seen in MoM, mostly because he casts a fire elemental instead of more phantom warriors and I forgot to alchemize myself some mana beforehand, so I can't cast much at all. I get a couple lucky rolls and make good use of my dudes (and particularly my barbarians' throwing attack, which they only get on offense, but is amazing).

Anyway, the point is that I prevailed, and now have three decently sized cities and a small one, which I have to imagine is a fairly sizable lead. The bad news is that I have no mana generation (I'm actually running a deficit with my mana slider maxed just from keeping up my summons) and a single crappy hero (Valana the worthless Bard) hanging out at my capital. Anyway, I use this breather to conquer the rest of Lo Pan's former empire and get a farmers' market and a few settlers built in my capital. I really want to raise taxes, but I need to get more religous infrastructure in place – going to 1.5 taxes, where I like to be, ends up with two rebels in three of my cities. Lame. The warbears get dismissed after finishing up Operation Lo Pan, since they're two mana per turn and I don't have any current enemies.

Heroes are a big deal. They can grow to truly immense power levels with experience and magical artifacts – but you have to keep them alive in order to do so. Bards are generally the worst type of hero, as they back up mediocre melee ability with slight spellcasting. Lame. I'd much rather have the drake-riding Draconian or lightning-shooting Warlock, but I'm at the mercy of random chance here.

Taxes are necessary to maintaining empires, just like in real life. Each building and most regular (non-summoned) units require gold upkeep, plus you can alchemize gold into mana or spend it to rush construction in towns. Having a strong economy is critical. However, the higher you raise taxes, the more unrest you have in your cities. Crank up the tax rate too far without religious buildings or strong garrisons to quell the unrest, and your productivity plummets as your people refuse to work.

Of course, three turns after I get rid of my bears Kali shows up with a bunch of halflings and heroes. Bad news. Really, really bad news. Fortunately, she is only interested in two things: taking my capital (which her stacks aren't quite big enough to do) and reinforcing her own. If she'd gone after my outlying villages, I'd have been in much bigger trouble, but I'm able to prevent any significant losses while swordsman production (every two turns, holla!) gets online at my capital.

My barbarian hordes are quite capable of defending my territory, notching several key victories in the field and capturing a strangely placed hamlet of Kali's to my north. The halflings are tough, but I've got a fairly serious numerical advantage due to my low swordsman costs – plus Kali's magic sucks on the battlefield. All she's casting is Life Drain, which is good for killing about half a unit of swords per battle – not a significant threat. Some time in here I remember that Nature is awesome for early-game barbarians: Giant Strength is cheap as hell to cast and buffs my thrown attacks in addition to melee strength. Once I remember this, I start kicking a bit more butt, as alchemizing the significant taxes from my backcourt empire of Men provides me with plenty of mana for slinging spells.

Throughout this whole ordeal, I'm able to keep my Men on infrastructure-building duty since my capital is pumping out so many swords. I'm getting my granaries, farmers' markets, marketplaces built all over the place, so I'm going to be in a great position moving into the midgame.

Eventually Kali's left with little in the field, so Valana leads a stack of bears and swords (and my single remaining sprite, who is still somehow holding on) in search of Kali's fortress. We quickly find it, and reasoning that I don't give a crap about any of the units I may lose, I throw the stack into battle.

Hoo boy, did that not work. Her shaman tear through two units of swords before I even get a turn. I foolishly advance, hoping that she was just rolling oddly well. Nope, there go the rest of my swords. Retreat is my only option here, and the random number generator takes pity on my stupidity and spares the immortal sprites and Valana. Clearly I need a new plan, as my astrologer doesn't think much of my chances if I were to call of the war now.



The remaining sword reinforcements meet up with Valana and keep Kali bottled up while my capital quickly erects an Armory and a Fighters' Guild. Berserker production is now online, and Kali's days are numbered. (As a side note, I investigate my spellbook and discover that Resist Elements gives +3 defense against magical ranged attacks such as that employed by shaman. Yeah, that might make a difference.)



RED POWER! My gingers rip through Kali's defenses like nothing. The RNG is fickle and keeps Kali's basilisk from falling into the cracks I call at its feet, but it kills all of half a unit of 'zerkers before falling. The red hordes do absurd damage against anything short of third-tier summons or heavily enchanted midgame units, as Kali finds out to her sorrow.



And that's where I stop for the night. I haven't even explored my whole continent, but I've defeated two rival wizards and built a solid infrastructure. Valana is about to go dungeon diving behind a sea of spiky red hair while my citizens crank out the buildings necessary to fuel the next evolution of my war machine. Even if someone's waiting for me on Myrror with a mature empire, I should be able to get Paladins online before it's a serious problem. Things are looking good.