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[LoSboccacc]

I always customize, because I want the cool ones and not the ugly looking wizards 

[Neonivek]

I like how Master of Magic wasn't afraid to actually throw super powerful spells into the mix.

Mind you it could easily break the game... but look at Command and Conquor for example. Every game that comes out the Super weapon gets weaker and weaker. (I will ignore Supreme Commander, since by all means all its super weapons were super)

It really made the idea of super powerful wizards fighting over large distances, shaping and molding the world to destroy eachother.

[Alastar]

MoM lets you feel the power because the basic things remain relevant. In the Civ games, old units cease to be relevant and eventually can't be produced any more. That the lategame ones have vastly superior statistics doesn't feel like power escalation because the bar is raised with the capabilities.
In MoM, top-of-theline units usually don't displace lesser ones entirely. Barbarian spearmen for example remain useful from turn 1 until the game is over because they make great use of buffs (8 figures + thrown weapons).

The "balance of cheese" also works quite well. 11-book starts are powerful, but so are trick builds like
Artificer+Runemaster+Archmage+mostly Death Magic: profit on artifacts, Archmage and Drain Life boost power for more of this.
CNSSSS+Sorcery Master+Conjurer+Node Mastery+Archmage: Cheap Phantom Warriors that allow us to take neutral cities and nodes... and we get double/quadruple power from those

In my opinion, there are only 2 real balance snags: Starting wraiths, and halflings as a starting race (peerless diplomacy on top of the strongest economic boost on Arcanus and excellent units including a contender for best unit in the game - and it's early).

Regarding older games being better because they weren't overly ambitious technology-wise: That sounds like a selection bias to me, games have always been successful on the basis of cheap technological thrills but those that try tend to be forgotten as soon as the gimmicks become an old hat. I recall a lot of hideous visuals from a time when 3d was in but couldn't be done well. Or ghastly gratuitously garish CGA/EGA when colour was exciting.

[nenjin]

I just think mechanics are now an afterthought to many designers compared to the laundry list of things they need to have working. Just read some of the Elemental dev blogs. They put all the pieces there thinking that they would connect themselves in a logical and fun way, and turned their attention to stuff like optimizing performance, getting the cloth map to do what it was supposed to....

So by release we had a lot of faceless, generic things in game because someone didn't sit down and really experience what it was like to play the game under those rules, to their logical conclusion.

I feel like the internal mechanics and vision of older games are so much tighter...like they were devised by three guys who knew each other very well and they ironed out their vision before they ever started programming. Whereas today, it feels more like people are working from a blueprint of expectations and feeling their way to the vision by release.

[Sergius]

I have to say MoM is one of the best strategy games since the first Civilization (arguably better, I think the same thing about Alpha Centauri vs Civ). What often kills remakes is that they try to deviate from the formula instead of improve upon it.

I tried AoW a few times. They kept hyping it like some sort of MoM homage or remake, but I don't know at which point of the process they removed the Civ-style terrain map with some sort of Heroes of Might & Magic mechanic where you have roads connecting premade cities and there are all kinds of crap lying around like random monsters and mines and farms and...

IMO, Elemental comes pretty close to keeping the spirit intact. What it lacks is, well, any kind of polish... it's just... incomplete. Like they forgot to add 50% of the code to the game.

This Warlock Master of the Arcane game for instance, seems to respect the original MoM a lot more. It's an example of a change that doesn't remove from the game: hex maps. Some people might not like them, but at least it's still a large scale map: all I want is a mountain here, a desert here, gold resource there. If I want to build an outpost, I'll place it. None of this "this is a magic tower, claim it for magicks each turn! And that farm gives extra food!" nonsense. (not talking about nodes here)

EDIT: Wow, just saw the Warlock teaser, the guy sounded a lot like the narrator from Majesty. Then... Ardania? Ok, isn't that from Majesty? So a bit of Google later... well, apparently, it's based on the same fantasy world.

[Viken]

Sergius, that's because the narrator is the same guy.  And the game, Warlock: Master of the Arcane is based within the Ardania mythos and game serious.  Its just a 4X offshoot.

Mwhahaha.   

Still should be pretty awesome, though.

[ductape]

Warlock is not going to scratch the itch, no way.

From the website: "Use the forces of three races, along with summons and wild creatures".

So, a whopping 3 races, eh? I dont think thats going to make me happy, the abilithy to make trick builds is forgone for balance, as usual. Once again, I think they have missed the point of MoM as most attempts have.

• lots of choices
• game breaking trick builds

Did I miss something? Other than the above, its mostly just a simplistic civ game.

[nenjin]

I'll have to wait and see what players say about it. One thing a game like Dominions 3 shines in is variety and options from variety. Sure, races can be a little too similar to each other at times, but they make up for it with special units, special spells and traits that encourage you to use Dominion in different ways.

But yeah. MoM offers a lot of replay that other TBS/4x games don't get close enough to, because the upper level benefits offered by races boil down to essentially the same things. And they're often lacking in flavor too, which is kind of the biggest sin to me. I'll play a race I don't even like in Dom 3 just to see what the back story is on their sacred units.

[Sergius]

Sergius, that's because the narrator is the same guy.  And the game, Warlock: Master of the Arcane is based within the Ardania mythos and game serious.  Its just a 4X offshoot.

Mwhahaha.   

Still should be pretty awesome, though.

Yes. That's what I said.

[catoblepas]

I love this game. So much freedom to explore. Death trolls have already been mentioned, of course. Another personaly favorite of mine was the levitation spell. Perhaps not as exceptionally powerful as death trolls, but I thought a lot of the spells could add a lot of customization to your forces that really added to their character. What game today would let you have flying invisible death trolls, after all? Master of Magic and Master of Orion are definately two of my favorite games, despite their age. Did anyone else notice that the Klackon are races in both games? I guess the 'canon' ending to Master of Magic is that the Klackon won....somehow.... and took to the stars.

[EuchreJack]

I find it more plausable that the Klaxons from MOO fell into a black hole and ended up in Ardania. 

[Detoxicated]

Hmmm, how do i customize my wizard?

[LoSboccacc]

there is a custom button in the select wizard screen

[Alastar]

Missing if you play on the lowest difficulty though.

*

Oh, another classic: Flying invisible warships. Late and more gimmicky than useful, but amusing.

[Neonivek]

I'll have to wait and see what players say about it. One thing a game like Dominions 3 shines in is variety and options from variety. Sure, races can be a little too similar to each other at times, but they make up for it with special units, special spells and traits that encourage you to use Dominion in different ways.

But yeah. MoM offers a lot of replay that other TBS/4x games don't get close enough to, because the upper level benefits offered by races boil down to essentially the same things. And they're often lacking in flavor too, which is kind of the biggest sin to me. I'll play a race I don't even like in Dom 3 just to see what the back story is on their sacred units.

Plus it isn't like Dominions doesn't have its own faults.

I once heard someone describe Dominion 3's largest fault is that it tried to trick you into creating/purchasing uttarly useless units. Mind you a lot of these units that are useless are doing it just to show how useless they are.

Dominions is one of those "Boobytrap" strategy games where a lot of learning how to play is to ignore large swaths of the content only made to distract you.

Warlock could pull it together simply by making the strategies you can enact with those three races/factions diverse.