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[Kagus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Magic:_Special_Edition
Or "LOMSE", if you enjoy using acronyms that sound funny if you try to pronounce them.

Lords of Magic (I'm not even going to pretend that I have any particular familiarity with or sympathy for the players of Lords of Magic: Not-special Edition, so I will no longer feel the need to specifically make note of the difference.  You can all just assume I'm talking about Lords of Magic: Actually Somewhat Playable Edition, or LOMASPE if you prefer) is a Sierra strategy title from 1997, combining aspects of role-playing, turn-based strategy and real-time strategy, all in a non-traditional fantasy environment with incredible atmospheric potential (particularly for someone with some amount of imagination or creativity), although perhaps not the most fascinating realization right off the bat.

The game is buggy, cuts a few corners in production, is hilariously unbalanced, and boasts an AI which is at times artificially infuriating and at others simply an artificial idiot.  Also, I'm rather enamored with the whole mess of the thing, and it's one of those titles that I just dig out from time to time, like Dungeon Keeper or Sacrifice.


I just recently pulled this item out, dusted it off, and started making a fool of myself again with twelve different games running simultaneously in various configurations and setups with the lord/faith combinations.

My first win of this latest round was, interestingly, Chaos.  Chaos, which is generally considered to have gotten the exceptionally short end of the stick when the balancing truck came around (this point made all the more interesting by the nation's ranged units, being stickthrowers, who indeed grasp the short end of the thing).

I'd been probing my massive intellect (and the game's mechanics) to try and find SOME build that would give those barbarians a decent start that would secure me a moderately acceptable midgame...  After a few different messes with huntress queens and beastrider punching bags, I decided to play the chaotic and go gamble with a funny build.

The setup was a shaman queen with the ring of anything, a couple bands of goblins, and reincarnation (this was done on medium difficulty).  The idea here is that reincarnation is potentially a somewhat useful spell, especially seeing as the Chaos magic unit, the goblin, comes in groups of three individuals rather than one single beefcake.  The ring of anything would help alleviate whatever crystal upkeep I'd run into early on, and I figured I might be able to snatch a shambler or a will o' wisp from the goblin corpses, and just build up an almost-free army that way and increase my forces.

That's a decent enough idea on its own.  However, it gets better thanks to reincarnation not just being a somewhat broken spell, but is in fact a HYSTERICALLY BROKEN spell.

After rolling over a couple level 1 caves with no losses, I experienced the inevitable death of one of my chaffy minions.  Crossing my fingers and hoping for a fire elemental, I used the one casting of reincarnation I had the wizzy-juice to pull off.

Oh.  Hello, storm drake.  How are you today?


Fast forward a bit.  I've steamrolled everything nearby, liberated Earth's great temple to the north, obliterated Air's armies and taken their capital to the south, and I've got a giant crazy army of beasts following my shaman queen around on a wild hunt for pretty much anything.  And I've still got those goblin packs from the start.

By turn 50 or something, I've trounced Death's standing army and stolen their capital too.  I've now got a storm drake, a rock troll, an ogre, a demon, and a pegasus plus that same damned pack of goblins from when I first started out (one of the groups was, sadly, lost in the fray).  All just from reincarnating something or other, that being the only spell my shaman knows.

It took me around 25 more turns to kill Balkoth though, due to him being a cowardly twat with nutty pathfinding that makes him almost impossible to hit with ranged attacks and huge amounts of armor, so he managed to run away pretty much every time I caught up to him.  Then he'd attack one of my mage towers or do something similarly odd.

Still though, I'd beaten the game.  There was really no power left in the game that could take me down with the kind of versatility I had thanks to one crazy spell.

So...  Yay me!  I found something that actually made Chaos pretty dang powerful!  And with the ability to create multiple powerful groups, rather than just being a one-trick pony like the fire giant + dragonscale armor shebang, which is even worse than the water priestess + staff of drowning because Fire generally has junkheap units, taking the worst from Chaos and combining it with some of the most pathetically disappointing thieves guild units in the game (the scouts are the most impressive, really...  I do love me some imps), whereas Water gets slightly more well-rounded selections.

I'm also trying to figure out fun things to do with Air...  I've managed to figure out some of the one-trick pony lords for Water, Earth, Fire and Death now (plus Chaos, sorta), so research is dedicated to finding amusing ways of cheesing everyone else in some way too.


Anyone else play/remember this thing?  Care to share your experiences, tactics, amusing happenings?

[IronyOwl]

Definitely one of those "awesome concept, but RIDICULOUSLY UNBALANCED" type things. Not that steamrolling everything with nothing but elven archers isn't amusing at times, but...

So yeah, a proper sequel could have been awesome, and I'm not aware of anything that quite matches it spiritually (though several are similar).


As for stories and such, not really. I did once manage to speed-beat Balkoth (I wanted to unlock Death) with nothing but a mad-dash horde of level 1 elven mercenaries I couldn't afford to pay, if that counts.

Also, I guess my obsession with the Spawn Cave spell could be worth mentioning. I loves me some leveling up, but at some point you run out of conveniently-located, level-appropriate caves for that purpose. Fortunately, with the Death spell Spawn Cave, you can simply generate new baddies, albeit only in that one particular cave model (another example of bizarre corner-cutting/oversight). I'm sure it's not the only way to turtle in that game, but it's probably one of the more efficient ways to turtle while gaining experience.

Oh, and I loved the Lich mechanic. Less so on the only-1 part, obviously, but the fact that it was a transformation was really cool. In a similar vein, I was disappointed that undead spawned from units, notably heroes, were not transformations in any form, and I'd often name shades after the heroes they came from.

[Kagus]

Oh, and I loved the Lich mechanic. Less so on the only-1 part, obviously, but the fact that it was a transformation was really cool. In a similar vein, I was disappointed that undead spawned from units, notably heroes, were not transformations in any form, and I'd often name shades after the heroes they came from.

Haha, that's a pretty cool idea...  I'd never thought to do that.  Adds a little flavor.

They could potentially just have used some variation of the graphics they put together for that INCREDIBLY and HORRIFYINGLY overpowered Lost Soul spell.  But that would have required quite a bit more work, I'd presume.

I'm actually fine with the one-off things in the game...  Having a bunch of liches running around would kind of take the thrill out of it, and you'd be less protective of the skinny little bastard.

I was going to test out at one point just how much you could cheese the combination of Raise Shade and Embrace of Golgotha after a fight...  Still haven't really gotten around to it yet.


And yeah, spawning is fun.  One of the cooler and more interesting spell concepts I've seen, not just in this game but in general.  I've pondered a couple times about the theoretical offensive capabilities of that spell, sending a high-level necromancer out to cough up a bunch of really high-level encounters next to an enemy city so that they start pumping out raiding parties...  Fun idea, probably not the most effective though (considering the other nasty things a high-level necromancer can pump out).  But who cares about efficiency anyways?

[Paul]

I played this game a lot with my friends when I was a kid. It was one of the first multiplayer games I ever played over the net. I still occasionally talk to a guy I used to play it with back then.

This game is actually where I got the internet name I use on most other forums (and used to use here, but some kind of forum change swapped my username to my first name at one point several years ago for some reason). I played with a group of guys a couple times a week, and every game we started I'd choose the mage as my element's lord - to the point that one of them started saying "The mage lord is here" when I showed up. So I wound up going by TheMageLord on a bunch of sites for the last 15 years, haha.

The game is definitely horrifically imbalanced - some of the spells are nuts. I remember one game I played as a fire mage and got a ring early on that gave me extra health, let me cast heal, and restored health after battle, and I then went and researched until I got the inferno spell. Then I cleared out a bunch of high level dungeons with nothing but me and a warrior/thief, got some crazy powerful artifacts, and got so much XP that I was then able to max the training level in all my buildings really really fast. I just had to use inferno and heal my buddies and use inferno again and even a full party of tough enemies in a high level dungeon would drop like flies. While the other guys I was playing with were like level 6 I was recruiting armies of max level troops and conquering all the AI cities.

The only time I ever played anything other than mage was a few games where it was decided that mages were too overpowered and we all had to be rogues or warriors. I remember one of those games playing a fire warrior and picking up that armor that hurts enemies when they hit you and taking out entire armies solo just standing there defending myself.

[Kagus]

Hey, I remember reading a post you made on the Imperials Lords of Magic forum...  That deal about the story behind your name.

Hah, yeah, a bit of luck with the right artifact and you wind up with some hilarious stuff.  And yeah, the dragonscale plate-fire warrior combo is just crazily effective.  Another good one is the darkelf warrior lord packing the ebony plate of the void, or whatever that shield is called.  10% chance to cast Decay on striking enemies, which drains 2hp a second up to 40hp.  Only decent at low levels, but once you reach higher levels it starts getting an AoE that can easily infect the whole group attacking him.  And those guys actually have decent armor to start with, unlike the fire giants.

Another fine piece of fermented curd, although not quite as cheesy as either of those, is the earthen warrior with the obsidian plate.

That's it.  Nothing fancy about it.  It's just that the dwarven warlord has massive enough attack and defense values to start with that he can solo most things on his own, and he has very decent attack and recovery rates.  But tack on the (disturbingly cheap) obsidian plate, and he gets even higher defense, some magic resistance, and in-combat regeneration.  If he ever starts taking damage, just tell him to defend himself (which can, after just a couple levels, reach 30+ values of defense when he's parrying) and he'll eventually grow it back.  Otherwise, he'll be speedy enough to hack people to bits just by attacking regularly.

The armor of righteousness for Order just doesn't seem to have the same kind of effectiveness though...  By the way, there are a couple ways to synthesize a "poor man's cheese" in that same vein with a warrior + mage combo in a few different faiths.  Fire can use Burning Skin, which deals half of the warrior's level in damage to striking enemies, and Air has the awesome Lightning Charge which is even more zappy.  I think water's got some lowbrow version of that combo too.

While it removes the dependency on artifacts, it does tend to require decent mana levels on your mages, plus you need to find some way of protecting your squishy magic-man.

[Bluerobin]

So.. I played this years ago but I don't remember anything about it. If anyone has screenshots to complement their stories that'd be great (mostly so I could remember how the game worked and what it was about).

(insert "c'mon put some actual information about the game in the OP" post here. wikipedia's a small start, but at this point the thread's a big question mark to anyone who hasn't played it.)

[varnish]

I played this game a lot. A lot. Never much good at it, and I never put all that much thought into how the game was played, but I still had fun with it.

I think the first time I beat the game I was playing as chaos, but I leaned pretty heavily on life archers for my army after I conquered their city. I'm trying to remember what kind of soldiers chaos actually had. There were stickthrowers, barbarians, guys riding tigers and... was that it?

It's funny, I haven't touched the game in years, but I still remember some of the building selection sounds. "Any dwarf can wield an axe, but it takes a true warrior to make it sing its melee melody!"

Or something like that. Good times.

[IronyOwl]

It's funny, I haven't touched the game in years, but I still remember some of the building selection sounds. "Any dwarf can wield an axe, but it takes a true warrior to make it sing its melee melody!"

Or something like that. Good times.

"We always welcome more into the number of our guild! But beware, not many survive the trial by fire!"


As for Chaos units, their warrior was the tiger rider, their melee was barbarians, their cavalry was barbarian horsemen, and I forget what their boat was. Their thief was the huntress, their archers the stickthrowers, and their scout cats. Their mage was the shaman, their summon goblins, and their higher summon... er... I forget.

So, yeah. As far as useable troops went, pretty much berserkers and horse berserkers. And I suppose goblins.

[Kagus]

(insert "c'mon put some actual information about the game in the OP" post here. wikipedia's a small start, but at this point the thread's a big question mark to anyone who hasn't played it.)

Haha, I know, I honestly could have put quite a bit more effort into the OP to make it more non-user friendly...  But to be honest, this game is so old and, frankly, quite niche.  I kinda figure that for most people, if they haven't played it already they probably aren't going to anytime soon.  Especially what with it having been discontinued.

Spoiler: The turn-based overland map (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The realtime combat map (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: The parley screen, for bartering with other faiths (click to show/hide)

Never taken any screenshots personally, although I probably should to make things clearer than Gamespot..  But that'll have to wait until later.  As will a more detailed explanation.

Speaking of the parley screen, the AI comes up with some of the most bizarre and lopsided deals I've ever seen.  No, actually, I *don't* think it's particularly fair to trade a brownie for a storm drake, even if you are offering me 17 tankards of ale to sweeten the deal.  Here, have 30 gold instead of the incredibly powerful army-stomping drake.  Happy now?  Good.

I think the first time I beat the game I was playing as chaos, but I leaned pretty heavily on life archers for my army after I conquered their city. I'm trying to remember what kind of soldiers chaos actually had. There were stickthrowers, barbarians, guys riding tigers and... was that it?

Chaos has Siegfrieds and Roys (beastrider champions), horseriding raiders with axes, Conan impersonator troupes (barbarians with two-handed swords), stickthrowers, ninja chicks with razor frisbees, cats, and sorta-kinda-longboats.  Plus the magical side of things, which included shamans, packs of goblins, two-headed ogres, rock-hurling cyclopes (doesn't really make that much sense to me for a one-eyed person to be a ranged specialist, but okay) and the hydra.

Most of Chaos' units were...  Pretty undesirable.  All their melee units packed huge damage values coupled with nonexistent defense, which meant they'd die like flies and still cost too much.  The beastriders could be micromanaged so they could tank using the parrying mechanics and their great health, but it's still a rather sorry statement when a bunch of guys throwing sticks are actually some of your better military investments.

The creatures were sorta decent though, goblins could hold their own in early fights, ogres packed a mean punch and cyclopes... Never hit anything.  The hydra was quite nice though.  Chaotic magic is really tricky to use though, and kinda relied on high-level mages to get the best effects most of the time.  A single spell could either be one of the most effective and powerful ones in the game, or on another casting send your own forces down the poop chute.  Great fun.

It's funny, I haven't touched the game in years, but I still remember some of the building selection sounds. "Any dwarf can wield an axe, but it takes a true warrior to make it sing its melee melody!"

Or something like that. Good times.

That, good sir, was verbatim.


EDIT:  And yes, actually, I do remember all the units to all the faiths offhand...  Quite sad really.
EDIT2:  No, wait, that's a blatant untruth.  I just realized I don't recall what the boats were called for either life or order.  I have shamed myself with wildly exaggerated boasts.

[Satarus]

Did anyone ever roll a custom water mage with the legendary staff of drowning(i think that was the name).  You can cast drowning twice a day for massive AE damage.  You can easily clear low level caves and liberate temples with it.

Air thief lord/champion can easily exploit terrain against enemies with no/limited range attacks.  Add to that a scroll/artifact that gives a defense against ranged attacks and you can easily level up max level and then train some level 5 range units like the life archers.

Also anyone check out the GS5 mod?  It fixes some balance (stick throwers actually usable), but I think makes lords and champions a tad bit OP.  Standard units can pretty much only be used for hit stun against high armor lords/champions since they won't do any damage.

[Dariush]

I did once manage to speed-beat Balkoth (I wanted to unlock Death) with nothing but a mad-dash horde of level 1 elven mercenaries I couldn't afford to pay, if that counts.

I haven't even played the game (or heard of it up until today, for that case), and that still sounds hilarious.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Ah, Lords of Magic, I remember this game well. Of course, that doesn't mean that I was ever any good at it, but still...

Anyways posting to watch.

[EuchreJack]

Most of Chaos' units were...  Pretty undesirable.  All their melee units packed huge damage values coupled with nonexistent defense, which meant they'd die like flies and still cost too much.

That most assuredly was not my experience with them.  See, with the large damage of the barbarian horsemen, they tend to kill minor foes with the first strike, and they can close the range with archers quick enough not to die, especially if I bait the AI archers with one of the more useless Chaos units.  My first win was with Chaos, and it was mostly due to barbarian horsemen + damage/attack boosting magic.

Charge my minions!

[Kagus]

Did anyone ever roll a custom water mage with the legendary staff of drowning(i think that was the name).  You can cast drowning twice a day for massive AE damage.  You can easily clear low level caves and liberate temples with it.

Air thief lord/champion can easily exploit terrain against enemies with no/limited range attacks.  Add to that a scroll/artifact that gives a defense against ranged attacks and you can easily level up max level and then train some level 5 range units like the life archers.

Also anyone check out the GS5 mod?  It fixes some balance (stick throwers actually usable), but I think makes lords and champions a tad bit OP.  Standard units can pretty much only be used for hit stun against high armor lords/champions since they won't do any damage.

Heh, yeah, the staff of drowning is a classic trick move for Water to pull off...  Quite fun.  Can even be used to great effect later on in huge melees because the drowning spell has the opposite effect on all water units caught in the AoE, meaning that you'll heal all your guys at the same rate you're hurting them.

Faeries are notorious for exploiting terrain like that, and the Air thieves are far better at it than the standard grunts thanks to their being able to stealth and throw off ranged attackers.  One interesting point is the artifact you can pick up called "pixie dust", which makes every hit on an enemy reduce their ranged attack range by one.  This is great against single critters because you can just keep hitting them and they'll never get a chance to launch their own volley due to always having to move a little bit closer.

I've heard about GS5, and I like the concept, but I don't like some of the things it does.  Some aspects are nice, and at times sorely needed (like a few restrictions on Lost Soul), but the rest...  Eh.  I guess I'd have to actually sit down and play the thing before forming any particularly strong opinions though.

I'll have to disagree on you with the stickthrowers being useless though.  They've got junk range and damage, but surprisingly high health for an archer and they have one of the fastest firing rates in the game, allowing them to spew out a rain of branches and stunlock enemies.  But, as is apparently the case for most things, your mileage may vary.

Speaking of which...

That most assuredly was not my experience with them.  See, with the large damage of the barbarian horsemen, they tend to kill minor foes with the first strike, and they can close the range with archers quick enough not to die, especially if I bait the AI archers with one of the more useless Chaos units.  My first win was with Chaos, and it was mostly due to barbarian horsemen + damage/attack boosting magic.

That primarily only works if you've got some sort of numbers advantage (which is important in a number of cases, but particularly here), because otherwise they'll get swarmed, stunned, and locked down while their moderate health and abysmal armor send them plummeting off their horses.  It's a good thing that Chaos units have such awesome health recovery, because you'd better be willing to lose a few pawns in most cases thanks to their vulnerability.  And you just have to be extra careful about that last dude in the group to make sure you don't lose out on your investment, because Chaos units aren't quite cheap enough to warrant full-out cannon fodder tactics.

I'm still just running around with that shaman queen that defeated Balkoth, and ran into a nasty marauding party that looked like two parties had bumped into each other in the same place.  My only defense in that area was one level 4-5 beastrider, a pack of level 3 raiders that had been through the arena, and some level 1 fae slingers.  Trying to take on that bandit group (two centaur groups, two wolf groups, 2-3 sprite groups) was just hopeless, but I needed to kick them out  before they did some serious damage.  In a fit of desperation, I recruited two groups of level 1 eagles, since this was down in what used to be Air's territory.

Eagles, regarded as being pretty much just a cut above elven staffmen as far as lackluster melee troops go, had far greater survivability than the raiders even despite a 2 level difference and the arena bonus.  Sure, they didn't have anywhere near the attack power, but they had 130% of the raiders' attack speed...  Not to mention moving quite a bit faster.  And, well...  Flying.

But I can see what you mean, and the arena bonus should help out even more in pumping up the barbarian horde mentality...  Suppose I should give them a little more grace before writing them off.  I've just never really had that much luck with them, much as I'd like to.

[Duuvian]

This game was my favorite through my childhood and still is one of my favorite games. I still have the old manual and the last few pages that were to be used for notes I used to write down my thoughts for making a LoMSE mod for Mount and Blade that I never made.

I've beaten the game with all the faiths by now. An epic story of mine was when I was about 13 years old. I was turtling with Earth while Death stomped around killing faiths. Eventually it was my turn and I saw Balkoth move in to the edge of the screen so I hired a bunch of mercenaries to throw at him when he moved in as I couldn't afford to keep them around as capital guard. I did that with predictable results (total slaughter and Balkoth raised some of them into Death Shades.) After that Balkoth just sat outside my capital where I had hidden all my non-merc troops. The Earth Lord was a Gnome Geomancer and there was no way I could escape on the overland map so I earthquaked him. So anyways Balkoth sat there for about the next turn and that turn second full death army led by a fire Sorceress shows up, moving in from out of view, and attacks the capital.

In the capital I had some one unit of Earth Cavalry (Dark Horsemen), one or two units of Axethrowers, one unit of Dwarf infantry, the Geomancer lord, a dwarf warrior, and most importantly a Stone Giant.

Death had at least 2 Dark halberdier units, two Dark Elven Horsemen, 2 Javelineers, a death shade, the Fire Mage, a Fire Warrior, and some others I can't remember.

The axthrowers and the Stone Giant moved to the wall and killed off a lot of the infantry and javelineers before succumbing to the remaining Javelineers and the death shade. The Stone Giant especially performed well. The Fire Sorceress cast that spinning fireball thing and killed the dwarf infantry and dwarf warrior. The Earth Lord (due to using Earthquake the previous turn) only had enough mana to cast a single Sands of Sleep on most of their ranged troops to delay a cohesive attack which was what allowed my ranged troops to kill most of their melee; except for a unit of halberdiers and the Fire Warrior that stayed behind to guard the Fire sorc, and a few Javelineers and death shade that killed them in return.

This left me with the Dark Horsemen and the Earth Geomancer lord. Death's melee part of his army was so badly mauled that the ai didn't want to send in the Fire warrior and remaining two halberdiers. The 1 or two Javelineers and death shade remained outside the wall as well.

I sat and waited for a while and then I decided to open the gates. This caused the Fire Warrior to charge, and my cavalry swarmed and stun locked him. For some reason Death's ranged only sat and watched. After that the cavalry dashed out the gates and killed the Death Shade, then ran away from the halberdiers, looped around them and took out the Javelineers, losing one and sustaining wounds to the other two. These two seperated the two halberdiers and took them out one by one, then charged the Fire Sorc and I won with exactly my Lord and 1/3 of a military unit.

After that Balkoth retreated for some strange reason despite my armies being depleted and started to pick on another faith. Maybe he's coded not to throw himself on a capital after one of his subordinates dies on it.

EDIT: I really like the GS5 mod and I think it really improves the game. In the basic game some lords are too strong (Death Warrior with the Soulstealer sword artifact+Death's armor artifact; you can get both with the Lord generator if you don't take troops and the Death Warrior lord can solo level 1 or maybe 2 dungeons and Soulstealer gives like a 10% chance of an instant kill that gives the wielder +1000 exp which lets you gain lots of levels; he can solo up to level 9 or 10 dungeons at max level) while some lords like the Chaos warrior or the Air warrior are really weak. Air's barracks troops are also really weak in basic LoMSE while Air doesn't have much outside of their Legendary or a really high level mage to offset it. Compare that to Earth where pretty much everything is at least decent.

With GS5 for example the Chaos cavalry can throw their axes an extremely short distance. This sets them apart from the Fire Cavalry that they otherwise are very similar to in base lomse including sharing the same model. In another example, Air's Eagles are a lot better and benefit from improved defense and fast, moderate power attacks instead of fast, weak attacks. Mages, mana pools, and spells are also greatly improved, not to mention artifacts. It seems to be harder to solo as Thieves as well since stealth adds a large defense penalty so you have to dodge incoming ranged attacks when you restealth to reposition. I think GS5 really improves the overall balance.

EDIT2: Also if you've never played the game allow me to recommend it for it's audio if nothing else. It's absolutely outstanding, from the voice work to the Faith's musical selections. 'Many seek to join the numbers of our guild, but BEWARE, not many survive the trial by Fire!'

EDIT3: Here is the stupendous Mantera's website, through which you can find the GS5 mod. http://mantera.xorgate.com/website.html