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[Kagus]

I suppose there has to be a few yahoos in this 'ere community who have played this classic Sierra title...  So I might as well do something about it.

For whatever reason, I've been dreaming about this game recently.  When I finally couldn't take it anymore, I rummaged around in my stash and managed to find the old CD for Lords of Magic: Special Edition (with the brutal Legends of Urak quest pack...  ARRG) and revved it up again.

...then, shortly afterwards, I found out how to hack it so I could get 800,000 extra points for building a character...   How was I supposed to know/remember that red dwarf thief lords of fire weren't a good idea for beginners?

Anyways, this game is everything I remember it to be, plus a little more (I've been playing without cheats now, something I never did before...  Are you seeing a pattern here?).  Thematic setting, environment that lends itself to some gorgeous areas, an AI that is fantastically equipped to annoy you in a dozen little ways, and a few decidedly unflattering character portraits.


I've been messing around with a few different faiths, just trying to find something cool enough to hold my interest, while still being viable.  Out of love for the Earth, I decided to cook up a dwarven warlord and see how far he could get before he died.  As part of my custom setup, I gave him a couple axe throwers, a group of hammerers, and the obsidian armor artifact.

Yikes.  I had no idea what I'd just created.  Dwarf lord + Osidian plate = DEATH TO THE TALL FOLK.  I mean, crikey, this dude was badass.


The armor enhances the already-imposing dwarf lord's armor to a level that is nigh impenetrable.  Most attacks won't even scratch him.  Furthermore, he'll regenerate any damage that somehow does make it through, and it will top off his health after every battle so he can just keep on steamrollin'.

I soon found out that the extra troops I'd hired were pointless.  I sent them off to scout for a little bit, then just told them to stand guard while my dwarf lord went on a killing spree.  At level 5, he managed to clear out both levels of a level 4 large estate by himself.  I was racking up loot and levels like no one's business.

By turn 35 or so, I sent him off into the Swamp of Death® to fight Balkoth (so I could unlock the dark elves for messing around with).  He soloed all the standing armies, then massacred Balkoth's personal guard.  This was all around character level 8-10, and he hadn't picked up any other artifacts (that he could use).  No healing potions either.

I had a little tussle with Balkoth, whereupon I slammed him down to 6 health points in two hits.  The big batriding bugger then turned tail and fled the battle before I could catch up with him.

What followed was an incredibly tedious and annoying period, wherein the aforementioned Artificial Idiot showed what it could do.  Every turn, Balkoth would cast pestilence on my "party" (still just one dude), and then attack.  However, since he still only had a few health points, he would immediately leave the battlefield.  I was in unfavorable terrain and, after all, a freakin' dwarf, so I had no chance of catching him.  He'd do this one or two times each turn, until he managed to restore enough health that he felt he could attack me.

Then he would enter battle, throw 3-4 daggers at me, cast curse twice, and then run for it (sometimes stopping close to me for long enough for me to get a thwack in, thus causing the cycle to repeat).  There was nothing I could do aside from just stand there and take it.

Beyond the pointless skirmish with the "Arch Demon of Death" every turn, I sent ol' Kilrud (the dwarven warrior) around on a shopping errand of smashing all of Balkoth's holdings.  I couldn't take the capitol, as the forces there were actually strong enough to take me down (almost the only ones in the entire world), but I could sure as heck turn all the guilds to rubble and then solo the great temple.  For a spot of fun, I also sent him into a level 8 tower.  He barely batted an eye.

Fast forward a very, very long "Age of Fruitlessness" as I tried to give Balkoth the one mighty smack that would finally put him down.  Back home, I've had a couple gnomes putting their impressive noses to the grindstone in researching a couple interesting spells...  Then, finally, once "Codename: Snail" was fully researched and ready for deployment, I sent the most experienced gnomish mage out into the swamp to meet up with Kilrud.


A couple raging battles ensued, and I had the little red-capped fellow unleash the might of Codename: Snail on the dark lord.  As expected, the SLOW spell greatly increased our ability to hit the bastard...  But not enough.  He somehow manages to get away again.

A couple pestilence spells take their toll on the frail gnome, and we launch an all-or-nothing attack on Balkoth (who was flitting around the boggy countrysides by himself at the time).  He's still heavily injured from the last fight, but there's no chance in hell that Kilrud can catch up with him...   The fate of the world rests on the diminutive shoulders of our dearest gnomish mage.

A few castings of rock sling later, the dread lord explodes into fragments...   About a second away from the retreat flag.


Aw, man...  I can't tell you the relief I felt after finally sticking it to that bastard.  All those turns of just pointlessly harassing Kilrud, of constantly avoiding his inevitable death, and for cheating like a flimsy little blaggard.

The one thing that made all these attacks so annoying was that I had to sit through all of them...   Balkoth had fixed the "autocalc" option, so that regardless of how few health points he had or how much damage I'd just managed to shred him, he would always win.  I could either sit around and wait for him to leave the map, or I could lose.  Even when I had my gnomish buddy backing me up, the result was still the same.  Instant loss.

Balkoth did actually managed to kill me one time...   But that was a fluke.  His scythe has a 5% chance of automatically killing a unit, and I just happened to get smacked by one of the extra-special shots one time while I was waddling over to him.  Full health -> Dead in a flash.  Bogus.  Ruddy coward...


But yeah...   Dwarf lord + Obsidian plate.  And that's using just the points provided, no cheating necessary.  Badass little sucker, he is.  He's a few points away from level 12 now, should hit it while conquering the rest of the world.


However, there is one thing which has been plaguing me for a while...   Almost all the characters I set up have a weird problem in regards to artifacts.  If they start off with something in their hands, then they'll use it just fine...  But they can't interact with their inventory at all.  I can't remove the item, I can't give "loose" items to someone else, I can't equip a different item, I can't view the details of an item, nothing.  And this affects all the heroes I have, so nobody can equip so much as a mana potion (speaking of which, mana potions will disappear when used, like they're supposed to.  But good luck grabbing a new one).  Items that are traded away will disappear, and loot is gathered as usual, but that's as far as interaction goes.

I have no idea what's causing this...   I've started out a couple characters who have been utterly untroubled by this, but everyone else is hit, even Zefnar from the quest pack.  Kilrud the dwarf somehow managed to clear up his case of it later in the game, but I don't know what he did or didn't do in order to accomplish that.


Yeah...   Well, that ended up being quite a few more words than I'd expected, and I haven't really said anything about the game yet...    Unfortunately, I can't be arsed to do anything more than give a Wikipedia link right now, as I've spent a wee too much effort just yammering on about that dwarf. 


I welcome everyone to share their tales from Lords of Magic, and maybe give me a little help regarding these damnable sticky items...  Blargh!

Link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_magic

[x2yzh9]

Eh, where can you get the game? I heard there was a Strategy element to it. Is this true?

[Spiral42]

The special edition - including the expansion - is available at gog.com here:
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/lords_of_magic_special_eddition [sic]

[Morsigil]

My games usually go something like: run around and kill a bunch of level 1-4 stuff, run into Balkoth wandering alone for some reason, and kill him.

I enjoyed this game the first couple of times I played through it, but the fact that Balkoth eventually wanders off on  his own and the static map forced me to lose interest.

[Farce]

I've still got my disc, but a while back I tried to install it again.  I'm not sure if it was on my XP or my Vista comp, but it refused to work. 


I sucked at it anyway.  Mostly I just cheated my starting artifact score way up, so I could kit out my commanders with the cool stuff on the start up buy screen that cost like three times as much as your starting points.

[Kagus]

Well, I'm running Vista, works for me...   And yeah, artifact wanking is great fun.  Hex editing is easier and gets you more points, but shuffling items just makes you feel like you earned it somehow...  Also, it serves to kinda-sorta prevent you from going completely over the top...  Like I did.


As for Morsigil's concerns, well...   Yeah, Balkoth is something of a twit, but playing as death can be fun.  Just play as the dark elves, then there's no chance of you running into a wandering Arch-Demon!

And as for the static map, I'd have to agree...   Some sort of randomized map would have been awesome.  But, hey, there's always the map editor.  And you can make some pretty cool stuff with that, like a dragon who lives in a palm tree at the top of a mountain.

[Morsigil]

And you can make some pretty cool stuff with that, like a dragon who lives in a palm tree at the top of a mountain.

Haha. I like this idea. That's the other thing: most of the scenarios are either fucking ridiculously difficult or relatively easy. I think it might be fun if a couple of us made maps for each other, but I think they'd be restricted to scenario style endeavors simply because the AI is wanting at best (Not just Balkoth, but other lords suicide themselves on your massive armies).

I did/do like this game though. It has an atmosphere I enjoy. I especially like playing the Water people and wandering around collecting loot.

[Jude]

Looks interesting. The wikipedia article blows though, there's no description of gameplay and it's just a list of all the units in the game.

[Kagus]

What used to annoy me was the trading system...   The AI would come up with the most hilariously lopsided deals, and then expect you to go along with it.

For example, I was once asked to hand over most of my ale and the hydra (which had just been summoned), along with a smattering of mana crystals.

...in exchange, they would give me a seagull.


For whatever reason (might be the unofficial patch), I haven't seen too many ultra-weird deals going down lately...   And the AI seems much more likely to initiate trade than before. 

I still ended up with one storm giant trying to trade a few of his mana crystals for a few of mine.  Not sure what he was trying to accomplish with that.


And I'd love to delve into the mapmaker, that thing just cries out for mucking around.  Unfortunately, any sort of rules or quests would have to be "soft", as I don't think the editor allows for any kind of scripting to occur.

...and it also doesn't let you place resource buildings.  Bit of a nasty one, that is.

[Nadaka]

my LOMSE disk works under windows 7. I plugged it in recently and played for a bit. The only issue I had was that the screen would scroll impossibly fast if my mouse approached the edge. I guess it was the only thing they left CPU limited.

I had a horrible time figuring out how to equip artifacts though. I don't think its the problem you have though. I simply could not figure out how to do it until I brought up the unit tab in the party on the world map.

[Paul]

I played this game a lot when it was released.

Good times I still have my disk.

This is actually the game where I picked up my other internet nickname which I use over on the Mount&Blade forums and several others - TheMageLord. I used to *always* play a mage, usually air (chain lightning for the win!) or fire (infero? or whatever one it is that hurts *everything*). One guy I played with would always say "the mage lord is here" when I logged in, since he always knew I would be playing a mage lord, and the name kinda stuck.

[Kagus]

Firestorm is the one that damages everybody.  Although impressive, I have to wonder what the practical application of a battlefield-wide 2 damage spell is...   Chain lightning, on the other hand, is just badass.

Well, King Kilrud has spent a fair amount of time leveling up the darkelven barracks, so now I can recruit halberdiers and dark warriors at level 5.  He made it to level 12 recently, so I'm going to be using his training abilities to make my dwarven hammerers into awesome little blighters (moreso than they already are).

However, my other areas are a bit lacking...  My one experienced gnome was killed off a while back (stupid assassin archers...), so everyone's level 1.  I just hired a couple darkelven necromancers, and I've got one of them tagging around with Kilrud in order to suck up some XP.  I'm going to be using the dwarf king as a sort of training wheel for the necromancer until he can start ripping stuff up on his own, and then I'll shove him off to impart his knowledge to the gnomes. 

I really like gnomes...   They're just so damned cute.


I've been trying to get into the hang of chaos magic recently, as I've seen a couple guides ranting about how awesome it is.   I can kinda see where some of the spells can get powerful later on, but general use is kinda tricky (especially early on...  How was I supposed to know that "crash" was meant for your own troops?).  Also...   Shamans are ugly.

That's one thing that kinda bothers me...  I like chaos, thematically speaking, but they don't really have any good lords.  The chieftan is powerful, sure, but that white tiger just looks ridiculous.  The shaman queen has a wacky portrait, but she works out well enough...  The only thing that really bothers me is her voice.

The only really cool lord for chaos is the huntress queen, who looks quite dashing.  Unfortunately, she's also the weakest of the three, and can't impart any useful knowledge to the troops (huntresses are just lesser versions of their queen, and stickthrowers are amazingly pathetic).  Thieves are kinda boned for most of the races, but this is just sad...


I'd really like to see thieves be more useful...   Scouts can handle reconnaissance, burglary and spying have fantastically poor success rates and barely yield anything, prisoners are difficult to nab successfully and don't serve a huge purpose (they are fun though!), they generally don't have the range or power necessary to serve as a real support unit (at least not in comparison to mages), and they usually won't have enough experience to make a big difference for your ranged troops!

Unfortunately, they also happen to be almost universally badass.  I mean, look at the fire thief lord (ranked as worst thief in the game), with his(her?  Sounds female, but looks male-ish) snazzy red garments, nasty-looking crossbow and jaunty cap.   Now look at the other fire lords, with the sorceresses' wonky staff and unappealing-yet-scantily-clad figure, and the warrior lord's absurd red apron (and sword, and face...). 

So the coolest (in my opinion) fire lord is the dwarven thief...   Who is ranked as worst thief class in the game, and can only impart experience to the badass-yet-weak rockhurlers.

Actually, fire seemed to get the short end of the stick for quite a few things...   They're the only faith in the game without their own infantry type.

[LordBucket]

I suppose there has to be a few yahoos in this 'ere community who have played this classic Sierra title

Have played. Still have. Could get it out...

Yep, there you go. In my left hand as I type.

I don't usually throw out old games. Five-inch-thick cd cases are nice.

I found out how to hack it so I could get 800,000 extra points for building a character

How? (On a related note, I always thought the game should have been designed such that you could carry your character over between games.)

I've been playing without cheats now, something I never did before

I've never used cheats for it. I don't remember it being very difficult.

I welcome everyone to share their tales from Lords of Magic

Hmm. Well, first time I played I made it about two minutes before dying. Water wizards are pretty weak to begin with. After a couple more deaths I started figuring out to keep my wizard in the back doing nothing much but gain experience, how buildings and resources work, and eventually the "great tree" thing. Then I simply made an army and wandered around until I found Balkoth and killed him. Then was disappointed that that's all there was to it.

Uninstalled, reinstalled it a year or two later, beat it on the first try. Was never really impressed with the game. It seemed like it had a lot of potential, but it just wasn't a lot of fun, and the learning curve, while moderately steep...was extremely short. YOu have no clue how to do anything for the first hour, and then you know the game and beating it is trivial.

[Kagus]

Killing Balkoth is only the tip of the iceberg...  Getting rid of that doofus is more just to keep him out of the way while you go about your real work.  Which is, naturally, conquering the world.

I basically just wander around, building up my forces at a leisurely pace while exploring the world and the people in it.  I try to find cool stuff I can do or find, and I generally just enter combat when clearing out a dungeon or getting some AI dweeb to piss off of my land.

No, the game isn't particularly deep, and I certainly wouldn't say it's my favorite...   But it does offer a few things which are very atmospheric, and it's kinda fun building up a character to the point where he can mess with the enemy forces with near impunity.


As for hacking, I just used a hex editor.  Find byte 00000320, change the values to 6a 01 80 00.  Found this through a Google search when I tried to find the details for artifact wanking again. 

So, I didn't so much "find out" as "read about".  I've only used it a couple times though...   That's just way too many points.


Addendum:

Okay, so shamans may not necessarily have ugly character models...  I mean, I've seen worse.  But the profile pictures do tend to throw me off, and I'm having a devil of a time getting that magic to work out right.  This time I used a spell that was supposed to be targeting the other guy, and ended up hitting myself...  Nice going, Five-talon.

And Chaos doesn't have any really badass artifacts like some of the other faiths.  The Axe of Chaos is nice, but it has a chance of actually lowering your stats, and it's not exactly exceptional...  And the Polymorph Staff simply crumbles in the face of things like the Staff of Drowning.  The Amulet of Fate is nice, but it's thief-only, which brings back those good ol' huntress problems from before.  I've mostly been using the Ring of Anything, as it seems to be the most generally useful for a mage.

Speaking of artifacts, I just found out that Fire Sorceress Queen + Staff of Incineration = Freakin' Badass.  I've just been ripping it up out there with nothing more than heat metal and a fire elemental to keep me warm at night (dead now, rests in pieces).

Sorcha is currently maxed out on character levels, and has been singlehandedly obliterating all incursions into the fiery lands.  I'm playing Hardandfair II, so there's a pretty big distance between capitol and temple, but with a casting of Trailblaze she can walk from one side of the desert to the other.

Since she's a fire giant, she's got excellent overland movement and pretty good combat stats (for a mage), including health.  However, I got stupidly lucky and managed to find the Eternal Flame inside a level 5 crystal mine, so she's been tanking quite a few fights.  Man, I just can't get over healing artifacts...   Damn things rock.

Only problem is, they got gipped on the mana reserves.  Well, the staff helps with that, so she's clear to cast heat metal to her heart's content (don't have a whole lot on the offensive panel just yet).  It also helps out in its special little way whenever someone makes it close enough to start playing meanie in the face-to-face.  Still though, it's the access to Backdraft that seals the deal, what with its ability to take out huge chunks of chaff before they even think about getting close...

[Obsidean_00]

I was unfortunate enough to buy the game before they added the quest pack and as such I only have the original game, but after all this time I do still actually have the original manual.  I used to have the poster that came with the game but recently it was too damaged to keep.  The patch for the original as I recall allowed to to summon dragons with cheats among other things, but that made it too easy.  I still am very fond of the game even though compared to the time the graphics weren't great, the gameplay was nice though.