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Author Topic: Master of Persistence  (Read 5014 times)

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Classic

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Master of Persistence
« on: May 10, 2011, 07:23:20 AM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tRk7W7CBMc#

Welcome to the Master of Magic LP, where I intend to exploit you for various builds and general strategies. We'll explore the ins and outs of Master of Magic together like it's high school all over again.
As I inevitably bring ruin to entire civilizations through my own incompetence and inability to plan ineptly chosen wizard builds I'll go back through your suggestions looking for combinations that the boards think it would be exciting to watch me fail with. On that note, it's time to lay some of the technical groundwork all one of you care about.

For starters, I am in fact running this shit through DosBox, from an originally floppy install diligently transferred over from machine to machine as my old workhorses got retired. Yes I should probably support GoG.

For seconds, here's the new game screen!

With my default settings that I have yet to claim a victory on!


Anyway, this game has a pretty awesome help system relative to it's era. A quick right click means I get information even on the most stagnant, offensively stupid topics!

Yeah. I might've clicked that when I was younger. Don't judge me.



Ideally, we'll be promoting me gradually through these ranks so that you can watch me flirt with success before the bitter reality of how terrible I am at games the impossibility of some strategies bears down on me!



Land size is one of the options I'm actually leaving to your discretion. Yes, larger landmass does mean more area to occupy and expand into, however there are elements of population dynamics to consider. It turns out continents will have one majority race present on them (including races already chosen by a wizard, I've had games where I only met dwarves and hobbits) with a smaller chance of a minority race. This is the only way to get access to the races not "given" to you by your computer opponents. This also means its very easy to make species extinct. Which is no fun.

More continents means more majority races, and a larger chance of supplementing your empire with servitor races that you like.



This option also isn't exactly up for debate. The magical power afforded to nodes not only effects how much a player stands to gain from them, but the strength of the enemies guarding them and the miscellaneous rewards for liberating the node in the first place.

Next update I actually hit the "OK' button. Trepidation!









For those of you wondering why the above video's music isn't a load of midi ass, that's because I'm borrowing without permission someone pasting the Master of Magic soundtrack over the Midi-fied version. Here's the opening in it's original midi glory, sadly, sans the opening credits scroll.

Master of Magic - Intro

Thankyou mega zed.
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Mothra

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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #1 on: May 10, 2011, 07:42:40 AM »

Difficulty: Impossible
Opponents: Max
Land Size: Medium
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #2 on: May 10, 2011, 08:28:21 AM »

Now I suppose I should show off all of the opposing wizards we might be chilling with, but likely none of you care. Because there's one wizard objectively better than all the others. Who we'll logically be saving for last.









They also all have right-click descriptions for them. For example, pretty boy Horus is actually a prodigal sorcerer! Freya is a sylph! It really doesn't matter. You mostly only care about these guys and how they can make the greatest wizard in the worlds, Custom, look!
Today, Custom is taking on the mantle of the sexiest public drunkard alive.

Oh Frocto! Why have you abandoned us? We need your sucking down margaritas with your huge lips to keep going.
Focus Classic, focus!
Don't think that those pictures are just there to give you a chance to stare into virtual Frocto's creepy, dreamy, pixelated eyes. The portrait you choose for your wizard eliminates the default wizard from the opponent pool. If for example, we had made Frocto a terrible dragonlike creature, like Sss'Ra, he'd be guaranteed to be the only wizard in the world with the Myrran retort.

That +5 mana means that Frocto gains magical energy that can be channeled into his magical skill, research, or crystallized to power future spells, equal to 5 spellbook picks.

Retorts are, in fact, astoundingly good for their cost. Although balance apparently wasn't very carefully built.

Magic weapons give a +1 to hit, and normally take a high-cost high-prerequisite city structure called the alchemist's guild to build and some races simply cannot create alchemists guilds, nor can they hire outside contractors to get shit done for them. To make matters worse, just like in old school D&D, there are monsters who are functionally immune to nonmagical weapons.

On the not-so-awesome end:

10 Fame might be nice to start out, but there are spells which do exactly this and you gain fame for doing basically anything you want to do (except perhaps slaughtering hobbits).


On the left, lies your current build. On the right top, the "retorts" you qualify for which we'll get into on a case-by-case basis. Some retorts demand a certain amount of life or death magic. Other retorts demand at least 4 spell ranks of a chosen type. The Sage Master retort requires spell picks in two different categories.




And in case you were wondering:

No, no we cannot do that. Life and Death spell picks also determine how wizards react to you initially. Life wizards are always more popular at parties and death wizards are always the ones who burn down the prom in a fit of vengeance.




We can discuss the joys of specializing and the strengths of individual schools when we get to it.
Next post, we discuss racists!


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Büge

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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #3 on: May 10, 2011, 08:33:40 AM »

Simtex sounds like a condom brand.
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #4 on: May 10, 2011, 08:40:54 AM »

I have it on good authority that it's what the Sims are given by their weird socialist, post-scarcity state to help control the rate of idiot sim children.
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #5 on: May 10, 2011, 08:42:13 AM »

Because Frocto obviously comes from a dangerous and magically overcharged land, he has the option of choosing one of the five almost-always-in-every-way-better Austr Myrror races. Tooltip dump go!







Or importing one of the dumpy Arcanus races to Myrror to have guaranteed access to at least two different species.










Since we already have the tremendous Frocto, I'll be exploring his initial adventures leading his hot harem of dark elves to do various acts of whatever the hell he wants as per Kabbage's prior requests.
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Mothra

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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #6 on: May 11, 2011, 06:38:08 AM »

Dark Elves Dark Elves Dark Elves

Or Klackons (Stag beetles are how you win this game)
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #7 on: May 11, 2011, 06:52:09 AM »

You just want to grind my testicles into a fine virility restoring powder, don't you?
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #8 on: May 11, 2011, 07:14:59 AM »

If there is one thing I have learned from cartoons, it's that barbarians hate wizards. So you should pick them.
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Mothra

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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #9 on: May 11, 2011, 07:17:47 AM »

Again, I've never been able to pull off a victory with the Dark Elves, though it seems like it would be fucking awesome if I did. For every new citizen you get, your mana gain goes up by one. If you can get a few cities running with these little rascals, you have enough raw magic to summon any damn thing you want. It's the only way I can really think of to get a magic-based army in this game.

HOWEVER, they grow at a rate that is slow as sin. By the time you're in any shape to start pumping out monsters, everyone else on the map has expanded far beyond what you can make up for. I'm sure there's a way to pull it off, but I've never found it.

Klackons, on the other hand, I have always won with. They're a bit slow on growth too, but you just tech up to Stag Beetles and you win the game. Also, engineers! Roads!
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #10 on: May 11, 2011, 10:41:40 AM »

Ah, so that's why you've been keen to try the elves so much. Well... that plan won't work for our boy Frocto.

I'm hoping to cobble together a race/spell schools/retorts list of stuff you'd like to see. As well as names and portrait choices. And if there's one you particularly want to see, tell me you want to watch them suffer my "strategies" and it'll be done.
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Mothra

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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #11 on: May 12, 2011, 06:14:11 AM »

Get on with it you cad!
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #13 on: May 12, 2011, 11:40:23 AM »

Man, I wake up from a tragic bar trivia showing for this? Shit. Well there's no time like the present to fall on your own sword.


As you can see, I play this game a lot and have a naming scheme that makes sense. Total sense.

Anyway, today we're continuing the adventures of Frocto! The magicless wizard! First off, let's check out our starting city.


As you can see the game gives you a default name for your cities that's the same as the name pool for neutral cities of that race. As you can also see these are 1995-Style dark elves from an era before being dark and brooding was completely tapped out.



Here's the city display screen, pretty much identical in layout to Civ1. Our townsfolk produce 4 resources and each character represents a thousand souls apiece (rounded down). Gone are the special jobs, so all that remains are the roles of farmer, worker and (ugh) rebel who produce 1995 era counter-culture and Let's Plays.

Left clicking on a production row gives us a breakdown of what's being produced and where it's coming from.



The watchful among you may have noticed that we had not one, but two deers hanging out in the Myrran forests directly to the up and up-left of "Fellwood" and those bonuses stack.

Food, as you might imagine is kind of a big deal. Every city must produce at least one food for every citizen icon it has. And the excess food produced by cities feeds your military demand. Usually a military unit will need one food per turn, but we can worry about upkeep a little later, when wild game can't sustain us.



And here's the first reason everybody loves Dark Elves.
Magical power and magical research are two related things that cities can produce for us. Magical power can be distributed in our magic screen, but research cannot. Research is still useful but research is the only magical resource that will ever become obsolete.



Here's our magic screen!
Those four, dull, grey gems exist to show us the other wizards we're competing against. The three staves show what percentage of our power base goes into which of our magical resources. Mana is something we would want pretty badly, except at the moment Frocto has no spell picks and so cannot summon any interesting monsters. The interesting summoned monsters he might acquire usually have upkeep costs in the range of 2-5 mana, with some going over 10 a unit. For now, it's probably best to stockpile our mana and gold, which are actually the same thing, thanks to Frocto's alchemy retort!

Skill isn't immediately obvious however. Skill represents the amount of mana you can channel into magical effects over the course of a turn or during a tactical scenario.

Currently, Frocto's got no magical skill to speak of and cannot cast even the simplest spell. The cost to increase skill by a level is the rank of that level. When your skill surpasses the amount of mana required for a spell, casting that spell is an instant. Finally, during battles there is usually a distance multiplier to tactical spells you can cast ranging from 3 (the other plane) to 0.5 (your fortress).

Before we quit the city screen, I'm going to point out how huge a hard-on I have for the granary.

Yeah. Check out that boosted population growth rate. More relevantly, it helps delay the need for committing townsfolk to farming where they only produce half a production point. The downside (if it can be called that) is that it ramps up the pace at which we need to worry about rebels mooching off of our cities. Oh, and it costs a gold to maintain, a gold that could be spent paying for awesome non-magical units. Speaking of:



Here's our unit of spearmen! They're the default crappy unit that everyone can build! They've got two... "advantages". First, they don't cost any gold and are cheap to produce in general. Second, they benefit "the most" (by percentage) of any unit from city upgrades, unit levels, and enchantments. In part because those bonuses are flat and also because they've got the most individuals in a unit. That's right, those little guys there aren't just for show. They're an accurate representation of how much of the unit's current strength remains, and the stats above are PER INDIVIDUAL. So these spearmen are throwing out a 16 dice melee attack.
Don't ask what that means exactly.



Here are our cute swordsmen. They only travel in units of a half-dozen. But they're still pretty cheap. You may notice this unit has 2ep under its belt. That's because I forgot to get a snapshot of them in the first turn and now they've trained a little on their own. In addition to gaining xp from combat, units drill constantly. Working until they reach the acme of their martial prowess. You may also notice that they've got...

Spells x 4


Tooltip go!
In contrast to spearmen, who apparently have an unlimited ranged attack, swordsmen only have enough juice to fire four blasts. Also, because it's a magical attack it is beaten back with the resistance of the unit in question, not the defense. This also eliminates the bonus of this perk...


Which is effective only against physical spells (I think). In all honesty, the bonus is pretty minor because of how quickly you can close to melee range. However, I'm pretty sure that +2 is a bonus on the die roll, not to defense dice. We'll probably be getting into combat rules next update, where we'll see why a +1 on a roll is almost always better than an extra die.


Don't worry, next update is coming a bit sooner. Hopefully it'll also contain information on how to rename cities. I don't want Frocto's capital city to sound like a venereal disease.
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François

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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #14 on: May 12, 2011, 12:37:48 PM »

Haha, Dark Elves live in treehouses. :glee:
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #15 on: May 12, 2011, 12:42:06 PM »


Info menu. Let's go through these things before we move on to the serious business of making lamentation happen.


This is the mirror. It shows us Frocto's pretty lips, his retorts, and his empty spell book library. It also see, at a glance, what heroes he's managed to get fighting under his banner. Heroes, why they're awesome, and whether they're hot or not is going to come up, hopefully soon. Thanks to Frocto's Famous retort.



There is also the option here, to confess that you have brain damage.



The tax collector screen. You may also vote on this if you somehow feel that I should be suffering more.


The chancellor, which is basically only useful if you've been away from the game for a while. Unfortunately it only records the events of that month. So even if there were an auspicious alignment of stars, or a plague of zombies that happened two months ago and is very much still a concern, he wouldn't remind you about it.



The astrologer and historian screens, which aren't terribly likely to be interesting.


And the apprentice page. I also lied when I said Frocto doesn't have any magic. All wizards start with the spell Magic Spirit, and access to the full array of universal school spells. Which includes The Spell of Mastery. The Spell of Mastery only appears when you've researched all other available spells. So by having no spellbooks, Frocto will be able to research The Spell of Mastery that much faster.
Successfully casting The Spell of Mastery wins the game, in much the same way that a colony ship wins Civilization. Except in this case the instant you start casting the spell, everyone knows, everyone hates you, and everyone does everything in their power to ruin your shit.
As you've probably guessed, Frocto is currently researching Awareness, which will make it that much easier to make intelligent expansion decisions. Also the spell you're researching has a cool glow effect on it that I realize I miss nowadays.


The last item of interest on the info bar is the Surveyor, who can tell us the effects of a spot on a city the controls it, as well as the maximum population and summed bonuses of a city a space, or the base bonuses a city would have if built there. Here it's showing us a vein of mythril ore. It gives +1 power, and if an alchemists' guild is built will add one die to the melee attack of any unit. It's good, but not as good as adamantium ore, the ore unique to the Myrror plane.



I'm sure all of you civ pros noticed this little 1/2 in the down-right of the city landscape, indicating that tile has split control between two cities. Obviously, we're going to explore this way first.



"Deathford," really guys? Well, whatever. The good news is that they have both a builder's hall and a smithy, meaning that they can already build all of the things... Capital City can. They're also guarded by only one unit of swordsmen. To battle!



The battle screen. There's a lot going on here, that isn't really relevant. All we really need to know is that there's a whole lot of elves here and they're going to settle things the only way elves now how.



By flinging pixie dust at each other.
When the pixe dust settles, we get this screen:



Razing a city generally makes you lose fame. Among other things that make you lose fame are losing cities and losing battles with huge numbers of casualties. The benefits of razing a city aren't entirely clear to me either. It's the easiest way to clear a city space and make room for a city that can better capitalize on the resources there. There's no point in having say, barbarians, who cannot have alchemists guilds, monopolize an adamantium or mythril mine. On that note: There is no penalty for colonizing your non-native plane (as far as I can tell).



Oh yeah, I can just feel their lamentations.

I'm going to need a moment.
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #16 on: May 12, 2011, 12:46:10 PM »

I'm not sure what you just did, but I am glad that you are fucking bitches and gettin paid.
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #17 on: May 12, 2011, 01:28:46 PM »

Here is our new hamlet of... "Deathford" ugh.

Worse than "Fellwood" in everything but its name. You should remember to investigate a newly captured city as soon as you get it, otherwise the city will produce, by default, "trade goods". Not a bad thing to produce usually. Certainly better than treehouses. But when you acquire a new town it's usually in need of either serious development or pillaging. You can also sell off built structures for a pittance, but anyplace that can supply us with an extra gold and food is a good place.


Even more exciting, Deathford has a road attached to it. Roads in the tactical map and on Arcanus make movement over its terrain cost .5 movement allowing travel twice as quickly. Roads in Myrror however, function as though they have been enchanted (by the Enchant Roads spell). Movement over them costs 0, except in combat where they behave like normal roads.. Roads are also usually connected to another city!



Gold ore has its merits, but compared to extra magic power it's kind of disappointing. Still, armies cost money. You'll also notice that there's lots of deserts here. If we had a lot of nature magic we could terraform this area into something more hospitable, but it's not to be.


EUREKA!
Unfortunately, this town is built on tundra, the worst land type. Its production bonuses are weak, and its maximum population, while boostable, is always going to be a fair bit lower than any city we might care about.
Wait... Craagut? What the hell kind of name is that for a dar-



Huh. I didn't know I could get excited again so quickly. A prosperous hamlet of trolls defended by what I suspect are two swordstrolls. Unfortunately...



Either we cannot, or I've forgotten how to check out the stats of units inside city walls. Well, there's two of them, and there's two of us, and we're all hardond warriors here. I'm sure we can handle these guys.


Defense gets the first move, so let's see what we're up against exactly...

Huh. OK. They've got 20 attack dice, 8 defense, 16 hits, and a functionally infinite amount of magic resistance. To make matters worse, they have regeneration.



What this implies is that units without regeneration can heal outside of combat. Indeed, they do, and heal faster inside of cities.
What this doesn't imply is that if an individual in a unit falls its hits can still be restored by healing or regeneration. So in short, although our valiant warriors manage to chip off a troll from this unit.

That swordsman is back up and swinging the next round.

I'm also convinced by this battle that large shield adds a +2 to a roll, not to the dice, even against magical ranged attacks.


Don't cheer you lousy shitheads. We lost!


Anyway, here's the gist of how combat works. During an attack action, each attack symbol is a ten sided die which succeeds on a roll of six or higher. In short, a 50% chance of scoring damage. With a +1 bonus representing an additional 10%. Defense is then rolled either by armor or by resistance (in the case of magic) and successes on these rolls negate damage. After damage is calculated, retaliation may occur, and barring effects like Breath weapon, thrown weapon, or first strike all damage is applied simultaneously.

Oh well, time to rebuild the army and start exploring.

Here's Frocto's spellbook, and because he's an artificer he can create artifacts.
Unfortunately, because he doesn't have any other spell choices his artifact options are kind of lame. But these are relatively high ranked spells and can be used to butter up rivals if you're desperate or as trades to bolster your starting spell pool.
Frocto is going to cast Magic Spirit.



You need magic spirits to tap into the power of nodes, but more important to Frocto now that his starting units have been crushed


Incorporeal means that the magic spirit can fly, and treats all land as though it's a road. Ideal for scouting, and relatively cheap in terms of upkeep.

Unfortunately, it's shit for fighting, barely able to serve as cannon fodder.


Exploring to the left of angst capital, Frocto's loyal magic spirit catches some Iron ore. Which is pretty useful to Frocto as he's basically magical beast-less. Note also the tower to the up-left of the spirit. Those towers exist on both planes simultaneously and are the default mode of transfer between the two.


Hydra are pretty potent on their own, enjoying, amongst other things, regeneration and a breath weapon. To make matters worse, scouting only shows off the single strongest visible enemy. That hydra could be backed up by a legion of sprites and we'd be none the wiser until we sent our poor magic spirit off to get slaughtered.

Progressing a little further to the left-down we find this:

An old temple! The surveyor is also kind enough to keep track of which areas are explored and what we've found there. Once we loot this abandoned temple (occasionally guarded by Life creatures) it will disappear and a city can be built on the spot. Though there's not really a compelling reason to do so just yet.

Next update: I search in earnest so I can stop typing Fellwood all the time. The temple gets explored and, most likely, I chicken out from capturing it.
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #18 on: May 12, 2011, 07:34:31 PM »

I'm not sure what you just did

I'll make DosBox capture a video of a battle and... Hopefully it will make something that resembles sense. I've had my voice likened to a chimpmunk (going through a meat grinder), though in my defense that mic sucked. So either I'll need to invest in a not-shitty mic or subtitles.

Preferences and advice are welcome.
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Re: Master of Persistence
« Reply #19 on: May 12, 2011, 08:15:36 PM »

Hey, that didn't stop The Majestic Mumblo.

(That's me, by the way.)

(god what was i thinking)

So yeah real men talk because subtitle production is the number one cause of Unexpected Ovary Syndrome in males aged 18 to 35.

Also I assume that you are fluent in spoken English so you've got that going for you.

Worst case scenario, chipmunks are notoriously funny, and chipmunks leading a nation of dark elves doubly so.
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