This is a game that I supported way back when when it was a kickstarter project. It's supposed to be a spiritual successor to Master of Magic, and based on what I've seen of the game so far, that's a pretty fair comparison. It's a lot more like Master of Magic than most previous fantasy strategy games I've played that also claimed the same lineage. That said, it's now on Steam early access. And while I think that this may one day be a good game, and maybe even a great game, right now, I can't yet recommend it due to the seriousness of the bugs. Don't get me wrong, I expect bugs in any beta I play. The problem is that currently, some of those bugs are quite bad. Units can become totally immovable, and unit pathing can make you wish that those units were unmovable, as your land units start tromping off across the ocean, completely out of your control. Anyway, I'm still hopeful about the game -- it's actually kind of pretty and quite promising. But it doesn't actually feel like a beta. For me, if basic movement doesn't work reliably, that's a game-killer.
A little bit of an update -- since I posted the above, there have been at least two patches. So far as I can tell, the movement issues have been resolved (they were not documented in the update descriptions, but then again, they did say that not everything that they had changed was in the description). I've been able to play through a few dozen turns without noticing any obvious bugs. Some important stuff has not yet been implemented (such as heroes, crafting, and a lot of the spells). Some special locations either don't seem to give rewards, or don't have a high chance of giving rewards. The magic system is a lot like that in MoM, with magic power, mana, etc. City management is easy, and also similar to MoM. But you have to manually allocate citizens for either construction or research (any non-allocated people go into producing food). The major thing I learned in my exploration of the game is that I haven't a freaking clue as to what I'm doing. I don't know what is sufficient force to defend cities from wandering armies -- whatever it is, it's more than what I've allocated. I think it will take a lot of time to get to the point where I can even have a single army stack capable of... well anything except simple exploration and looting unguarded locations. But it was kind of the same way in MoM. I think you need to expand a bit early on, to get enough food production going. Like MoM, there are different planes, but unlike MoM, which only had 2 planes (regular and Myrran), WoM has several (but only 3 are implemented currently -- the Plane of Air and Plane of Shadow plus the prime plane). When you start a game, you can select which planes will be in your game, as the existence of additional planes will add a lot more complexity. Movement is very slow, but again, that was also true with MoM. BUT, there is a game option for fast movement, and flying and other units will likely be faster as well (I was playing High Men, and we don't have any flying units. Anyway, you may actually want to check the game out now. I can't wait for heroes and summoning spells to be added. If you want to check out it's major influence, I strongly recommend Master of Magic (which you can still buy nowadays from Gog.com.
I've been looking for a modern Master of Magic for the longest time now. I loved that game so much, I've bought it multiple times as I've changed computers and misplaced physical copies and things. They certainly don't make physical manuals like the one that came with that game anymore. I purchased Warlock - Master of the Arcane and Age of Wonders III in part to try to recapture the appeal of MoM; while fine games in their own right, they were missing something undefinable. I couldn't really tell you what. Maybe it was the chunky Civ I / II pixel-y world map and icons. Maybe it was the square grid system. MoM was charming in a way modern games tend not to be. Anyhoo, for all those reasons, I've been circling Worlds of Magic since I heard about it through the Greenlight program. It sounds like the Devs and i wear the same nostalgia goggles when we think bout MoM. But I look at the rotatable 3d skirmish maps and something seems wrong. It might be something as shallow as my own nostalgia for the chunky pixels of my youth. So this might be impossible to answer, but how does the game feel to play?
Granted, a lot of stuff is still missing from the game (I think someone said that only about half the spells have been implemented, and that includes nearly all summoning spells, and global spells). Also, heroes are not yet implemented, which means that magic items and the creation of such also are not implemented. And a lot of work has to be done as far as game balance is concerned. The UI works but could be better (and the devs have been very responsive to a lot of concerns). Starting the game, you select, not only a world size, but a size and percentage of land for each plane that you have in your game (or you can omit any or all of the other planes). Then you either select a premade leader or design your own, in a fashion similar to how you did it in MoM, with the added ability to not only select positive, but also negative attributes. The positive attributes include ones that will be familiar to you (such as warlord) as well as ones that are new (such as lucky). The game also has a lot more schools of magic -- including obvious ones like fire, air, earth, but also protection, destruction, enhancement, summoning, biomancy, etc. Some spells belong to multiple schools, but you only need to put points into one of those skills to learn it. For example, Giant Strength, I believe belongs to Earth and Enhancment (and probably a couple of others). You spend points on attributes and spell schools, and can get a couple of extra points by taking negative attributes. Once you've designed your leader, you then select spells for each spell school you put points into. The number of points will determine how many level 1, 2 , (and maybe 3) you can get at the start (but I've never seen my wizard get any level 3 spells, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible, just that none of my designs allowed it). Given all that, the early game feels a lot like MoM in that you have to build yourself up, and explore. You aren't going to have an army capable of exploring most of the inhabited special locations for some time. You need to expand and build up your economy. Wandering armies (ie. independents) are a big concern, as they are in MoM. Unfortunately (and this is something that the devs are aware of), they are too many of them. And since it takes a bit to get going, it's literally possible to win the game before you ever meet your enemies (as they can be taken out by wanderers), as can you. I haven't gotten much further than that. Only 4 factions are currently implemented, but more are promised. The order in which factions are added has been pretty much up to the community. The factions are not copies of those in MoM, but there are similarities. MoM had no Undead faction -- they are unique, and have a really unique feel to them. I've also tried the High Men -- they are closer to an actual MoM faction. I haven't tried the other two yet (Grey Elves, and Draconians). By picking the undead, I was able to start on the plane of shadow. BUT, I'm not sure what would have happened had I not selected to include the plane of shadow in my game (I'm guessing it probably would have worked anyway, but it would have placed my starting city on a corrupted piece of land -- undead can only build cities on corrupted land, and nearly all the plane of shadow is corrupted).
I'm not a fan of tactical combat in strategic games anyway, so I usually use quick combat. I don't want to comment on it, other than to say that it isn't good enough to change my mind about that. I'm not actually familiar with the d20 system, although I've heard of it before. Maybe check it out in some let's plays?
BTW, there's still some bugs with regards to movement 8-(. I guess I had just gotten lucky that previous time. Also, there's a wiki: http://wastelands-interactive.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Main_Page Note that it includes features that are planned but not yet implemented.
Well, gave the game another try this evening, after downloading the latest patch. First try, my starting city was placed on an island, with a thin strip of water separating me from a continent -- nowhere to explore or expand to until I built boats (which would be far too long. Mentioned to the devs that the starting city should not be so isolated and quit. I started a second game then, and got a much better position. I'm now up to turn 54 with two heroes (who suck down far too much money per turn that I've had to put 3 of my currently 4 cities producing nothing but trade goods). I found a hut where I could recruit a couple of mercenaries (took a dwarven unit because they were cheap), started clearing out all the wanderers loitering around my cities (weak-ass spearmen, a scout, and some ugly looking ogrish type that wandered away before I could challenge him). So far so good. Anyway, my point is, that for the first time, it looks like the game is actually playable (so far). Granted, I had to restart it once, there are still tons of missing spells, some missing text with filler instead, movement still has its quirkiness (especially splitting stacks, and dealing with fortified and auto-fortifying units), confusion with income (you can watch the income turn positive and then negative while you are waiting for your turn to start) and although it's a bit better now, turns take too long once you get started (mostly waiting for the AI to move). But that's with 4 planes on a medium world.
I think this game could be something I really enjoy, and your posts confirm that. I'll keep checking back as development continues.
That's the only reason why I keep trying it. It COULD turn out to be a classic, like Master of Magic on steroids. But it's not quite there yet.
Here's an update: With the most recent patch, I finally felt comfortable giving the game an official positive review. Performance has been DRASTICALLY improved, as has stability. No more waiting and waiting for the AI to move, and I haven't had a game crash now in a while. A lot more spells have been added (still lots of them are missing). There are still a lot of bugs, and the AI is just about nonexistent. But the game is certainly starting to look good. Also, I've had very positive interactions with the devs, concerning both bugs and suggestions I've made. I've been playing my current game for several hours, on and off, and it has not crashed a single time. There certainly still are bugs. But in the current build, none of them have been so frustrating that I gave up and quit (as I had in testing several earlier builds). If you start playing now, you are not going to have a challenging time (once you figure out the basic ins and outs, that is). Ranged units on offense are OP (less so on defense) because attackers get to move first in combat. And because magic is key to the game (as it was with MoM), the fact that enemy wizards (nor their spell-casting units) actually cast spells, you can roll over them with easy (my favorite overused spell in my current game is a level 1 'Summon Zombie' spell). There's also some oddities when dealing with flying units. For example, all units can attack flyers, but only certain units can hit them -- so if you make the dumb mistake of having your level 5 swordsmen attack even a weak level 1 flying unit, you will do no damage, and the flying unit gets to take a free swing at the attacker. And diplomacy still needs a bit of work.
Here's a let's Play for a recent release -- this is not the latest build, but it's close. There's generally a beta release every Thursday, and an official release on Friday, so things are moving pretty quickly for the game. There's actually some rudimentary strategy and tactics in the game right now. Games for me have been following a really dark pattern. 1. Send my armies out exploring, while I build and expand a bit until I have between 3 to 8 cities or so. 2. Notice that wandering armies are becoming larger and more and more dangerous (Werewolves are the WORST!!!! i HATE THEM with a deep and abiding passion). 3. Shift from building and expanding to defense. 4. Lose a city, regain it a few times. 5. Wandering armies are big, with LOTS of ranged units. 6. Either lose the game or give up out of a feeling of utter futility. It's one thing to lose the game to other wizards, and quite a bit worse to lose the game to the equivalent of barbarians.
I'm still interested in this game, and I'll get around to watching those video eventually, but I'm a little concerned about your post - would you say combat balance is moving in the right direction, or is it less enjoyable than it was?
I have to assume that balance is generally the last thing that gets addressed with games of this type, especially considering that not every aspect of the game has even been implemented yet. For example, the Summoning magic tree is pretty barren right now, as is the Arcane tree (spells that are available to all wizards). I also have a game going right now that is pretty different than what I described. And if you watch the videos, the guy doing the Let's Play is actually doing quite well. Although that may indicate more the fact that he got extremely lucky with his neighbor, plus he's exploiting the fact that diplomacy needs a whole lot of work as well (he's playing orcs, and his orc neighbor is being outrageously generous out of an apparent feeling of orc brotherhood). There's also no difficulty levels implemented. If you recall, in MoM, things could go rather similarly to the way they were going for me, if you were playing on the hardest difficulty level (sometimes even on the second hardest). Difficulty levels have not been implemented yet If you've ever tried playing MoM on the hardest difficulty levels, you could quite easily get overwhelmed by neutral wandering armies. And lastly, although I play a lot of 4X games, I'm hardly an expert player. I like the genre, but I'm not exceptional at it. I was better for sure when I was younger. So just because I'm having issues doesn't mean that everyone is.
BTW, current game I'm on turn 189, I have had to recapture towns a few times, but it's more of a winning battle than a losing one this time. I'm playing the Draconians with a start on the plane of Air. I've built a powerful army of veterans (armies can have up to 16 units), managed to drive the Unhallowed/undead (apparently) off of the plane completely, I'm wiping out neutral cities without any effort at this point. I'm going to stick with the plane of air for now, until I'm built up a bit more, then move on to, maybe, the plane of Shadow (to finally wipe out the Unhallowed/R'Jakk). At one point, it did seem that I was in grave financial straits, due to my emphasis on building up an army, but I dealt with it by creating a few new towns near silver, gold and gem resources (Plane of Air is great for wealth, btw, but substandard for production). So either I've gotten a bit luckier this time, or I'm just playing better. I think I'm playing better, balancing defense with expansion, but I could be wrong, of course. It's only one data point, after all.
BTW, I made it to the plane of Fire... where I found a gateway to Hell (no joke). I'm afraid to open it lol. But for the sake of testing, I probably should. /edit BTW, I cleared the gateway and there's actually nothing special about it, other than some nice rewards for clearing it.
Well, it SHOULD be! Make a suggestion about it! ... looks like its way more playable now, I should play it again.
FYI -- I just downloaded a major update. Here you can see the patch notes: http://steamcommunity.com/app/265970/discussions/0/626329186816662646/ Biggest additions include Dwarves, the Plane of Earth, and 50 new spells.
I haven't posted an update in a few weeks, but I thought I might as well now that I'm having some downtime with the game. This week was a noticeable setback. But when dealing with early access, setbacks are only to be expected. The dev team has managed to maintain regular updates, even over the holiday season, which is kind of impressive. Unfortunately, the most recent update has brought a bit more instability into the mix. So this would be a very bad time to purchase the game if you are at all on the fence about it. Wait at least one more week and see what happens. As far as positive progress is concerned, there have been some noticeable improvements. The AI now actually does cast spells, and it does settle new cities. It's not all that aggressive, however, especially when compared with the extreme aggression of the neutral cities. And they are very quick to make offers for a truce if you act aggressively. Whether that's smart or dumb depends on your pov -- it's smart in that without a truce, I'd probably be able to quickly conquer them. It's dumb in that they don't act proactively by building bigger armies, and tend to keep a lot of fragmented forces instead, whether or not you accept their bribe for a truce. They also don't actively pursue neutral armies or cities or try to loot special locations. A lot more graphics have been added -- most spells now actually have proper icons. You can now purchase magic items at inns (formerly, inns were only good for recruiting new units and heroes and champions). I haven't tried it yet, but some special locations, once you clear them out, make particularly good locations to build new cities, since they give you free buildings (this was broken in past iterations, but it's been reported as fixed). It's a neat idea that I haven't seen before in games of this type. Also, some special locations give you bonuses when you base units there. Since unit maintenance is nothing to sneeze at, I'm not sure that doing so, except at occasional convenience, is worth the effort, but it's still nice. For example, some locations will give you bonuses to research for every unit you have holed up at that location. BTW, not withstanding this week's setback, i have been able to play some full games, beginning to end, including a few epic games. Granted, many of those games involved restoring from a save after a crash. But still, it's a very good sign. I have most of the achievements for the game (yes, they've added steam achievements) including one semi-tricky one to obtain, winning the game without casting a single spell. The trick to it is to win the game VERY quickly, and the way to do that is to play on a tiny map, with only a single plane in order to guarantee that any opponents will already share the same plane with you (because clearing out a planar gateway without the use of spells can be problematic, as gateway defenders can be on the truly scary side). Anyway, that's my update for now.
