Saw this in the new Game informer magazine. I just got the original MoM working on my Win98 laptop. I'll gladly buy an update I can play on XP

Oops. My mistake. The correct link is
http://www20.brinkster.com/kadirclan

Tougher nodes did typically give out better goodies. Sometimes an AI would hit a tougher node in my game and wear it down but not win. Then I would go in, kill the last couple critters remaining and it seemed like I still got the value of the original group of monsters. I think node difficulty is covered by how big it is (how many squares are covered by the shinies emitting from the center of the node.). They also seem to stock more monsters over time although the little ones may have a much smaller unit cap than really huge ones.

I'd recommend building your own wizard. It's a lot more gratifying. Try Warlord with life magic. Casting heroism on units and the level bonus alone will take you very far early on. My favorite races are lizardmen and halflings since they grow/build fast and get their specialty units quickly since they don't develop their cities as thoroughly as Elves and High Men. Elves and HM are great to capture but it takes a while to get their juicy stuff.

Also, Halfling slingers are easier to get and are slightly stronger than longbowmen which are the second best physical ranged unit of the game (by a small margin), although slingers carry 2 less ammo. It doesn't matter though. Ultra Elite Slingers kill most normal units in 1-2 hits and I don't think anti-arrow specials and the spell warp apply to them (not sure on that though).

Lizardmen Javelineers are fantastic units. The ability to swim makes it easy to raid no matter where you start and they are very strong in missile and melee combat. Don't bother more than one city with them. Their cities suck and they work best when used to capture races that are better builders. Even towards endgame when all the really nasty stuff comes out, pure lizardmen armies can be quite strong, although they unfortunately can't benefit from Mithril or Adamantium. I recommend 5 javelineers, 3 dragon turtles to act as meat shields and 1 shaman for healing.

love the original, waiting for MOM 2

That raises another question that I haven't seen answered on any MoM website (probably because it's in the original documentation, which I don't have). Does your city have to be built directly on top of a mithril or adamantium deposit to get the weapon benefit, or does it just need to be within 3 squares of it?

~SDC~

I picked halflings for my current game. With the slingers and a couple of heroes I was quickly able to pick up 4 high men towns. The slingers are great units. I still have 2 wizards to conquer, but with my high men cities working towards paladins it's only a matter of time.

~SDC~

The original MOM is still one of my favorite games. I have an old 386/33 sitting in my house just so I can still play it with all the sounds and everything. Needless to say, if there was a new MOM coming out, I would definately pre-order it.

Your city can use any mithril, adamantium, gold, iron, nightshade, etc., that falls with your city borders, which you can see in the upper right-hand corner when you right-click the city. It looks like this (C=city, U=usable square, X=unusable squares):

XUUUX
UUUUU
UUCUU
UUUUU
XUUUX

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You need an alchemist's guild (I think that's what it's called) to get mithril or adamantium on your weapons. Otherwise, I think it just serves as a mana bonus. Consequently, some races can't get the magic weapons. I wouldn't bother waiting for the paladins. It's nice to have some kind of a meatshield against certain types of enemies but a group of five elite slingers can take on just about anything the AI will throw at you and ultra-elite (attainable with Warlord) slingers are just ridiculous.

An alchemist's guild gives your units magic weapons if there isn't mithril or adamantium nearby. Magic weapons will allow your units to hit units with weapon immunity. IIRC they also add +10% to your chance to hit.

Halfling slingers are affected by missile immunity, however with magic weapons and an additional +20% to hit (lucky and skill) and 8 slingers per group, they typically do enough damage to overcome the 10 or 20 point shield bonus offered by missile immunity. It is pretty obvious that they are affected if you look at slingers attacking priests and slingers attacking magicians. The magicians last a heck of a lot longer.

Much as I love slingers, they can't do anything against missile immunity, which gives *50* shields against missile (and bullet) attacks. At 30% per shield, the chances are less than 1% that those shields will block less than 6 hits. I've never done any damage with slingers' ranged attack against skeletons or demons, for example.

And that's why slingers were so good - you got them early on. I can't remember the exact terms were but - elite? adamatium? slingers were awesome. Early game they allowed you to clean up, then you could back them up with paladins and/or hero's for the mid2end game.

One alternative I liked was using Wraiths - you had to sit tight early on to get them, but then once you did - well - they flew, were non-corporeal (web's couldn't stop them), immune to weapons and had life stealing attacks (which mean't more often than not, you gained control of the enemy units you killed!).

MOM was one fun game - my favourite strategy game in fact. So many variations - some relatively easy to play, and some really hard.

Count me in for any remake / sequel.

Slingers are affected by warp.

I sure would! Send me an email if you decide to make it!

Heck yeah I would love to have a sequal to MoM. Even if all you do is refurbish the old MoM so it is usable on windows systems and it is multiplayer that would be great. I know there are ways to set it up through dos and make it multiplayer but the game tends to be buggy. I have several friends who would also buy the game and I am sending them info now about signing this forum.

You probably didn´t find anything in the node, because you killed the enemy in parts. I guess in your final attack the elven lords had to fight only 1 or 2 air elementals. If most of the enemies in the node have already been killed, you don´t get a reward for clearing out the last enemies.

My favourite wizard is an archmage/warlord/alchemists with rest in life books and barbarians as your race.
cast a magic spirit, then just cause.
Raise taxes and then rush to berserkers, after building farmers market. Buff them with your life spells(heroism/holy weapon) and conquer everything with ease.

I saw your article in GameInformer and shot straight over. Master of Magic is one of the all time greatest games in my memory.

I'll get straight to it. No, I do not trust Stardock enough to pre-order the game.

Still, you have my attention. Make it good, hype it up, let's see some eye-candy, and you never know. I am 31 years old and have only pre-ordered one thing in my life. That was the Sony PS2.

Everybody thank Reiner for getting them to put that news bit in GI. Thanks Reiner.

I would pre-order a copy.

where's frogboy?

Sleeping with a sassy young Atari Executive hopefully. Uh.. unless he's married of course. That would be wrong.

it would be wrong, but if it gets MoM done...

I am sooooo excited I read the GI article and litearlly pooped my pants. I have spent the last half hour trying to find this forum and I am here now to say I have played this game since its inception and still play it to this day. I find this to be even more fun than starcraft or AoE and Empire Earth. I will preoder this thing no doubt.

Personally, I'd like to see a few more "alternate realities" and races added to the game.

I'm not talking a ton of them, but, perhaps a "Plane of Fire" with a fire theme (seas of sulfur, volcanoes, lots of random fire monsters, etc), Plane of Earth, Plane of Death, etc. There could be 1 for each major greek element (Earth Fire Wind Water), Each Japanese Elemental (wood, fire, earth, metal and water), or each spellbook (maybe a very high spell for each "type" would open a portal to their repsective planes, whereas the others would have to capture a portal from the map). Maybe spells would have different effects on these planes -- Some wouldn't work, some would work differently, etc. For example, Wood spells wouldn't work very well, if at all, on the plane of fire; or Fire Golems would get extensive bonuses to their stats on that plane.

Perhaps that could even be extended further, with an "extended mode" where AI opponents could start on these various planes. Would be interesting to have some ancient necromancer's forces start spilling into "reality" from the Plane of Death in the middle/late game, for exmaple; or perhaps a "Planar Cold War" between several warring mages covering several planes.
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I remember one game where I went into a node and the battle was a tie - everybody on both sides died. The next time I encountered the node, a message came up: "You have found a nature node." Then it told me about the item I found (I think it was an artifact). So I got the node goodies without having to fight.