Friends, could you give me some advice. How does this game relate to Master of Magic. Would you call this an evolution of MOM, or a MOM clone with more accessible UI?
Thanks!!!

It's very much the spiritual successor. When it came out many compared it to that still legendary game HOWEVER it's NOT Master of Magic - the overall structure is different though they share quite a bit. You still have the town building aspects, combat is deeply strategic, & you're very much at the head of your empire. However it's primarily combat focused so much of what you build & do is meant for the purpose of aggressive military expansion. Diplomacy is involved but it's not the main way you'll win games nor are economic victories realistically viable. It's the closest "modern" game to the Master of Magic formula but it's still not close enough for long time fans.

It's worth the purchase - if you're an MoM fan it's hard not to enjoy the title. Most compare this to the Might & Magic series (justifiable) but that's too simple really. AOW took a lot from what made Masters of Magic work & spun its own, well "magic" from it.

Enjoy!

Your "spiritual successor" description sounds about right, at least by what I can tell from the manual, the tutorial, and a short scenario played last night.

Some differences so far:

- magic doesn't seem to have the same amount of focus as it does in MoM.
- wider variety of unit special abilities, tho I'm not sure how useful some of them will turn out to be.
- leader and hero customization as they level, instead of preset advancements.
- not sure if the captured towns grow over time. Haven't read that far into the manual since it plays so similar to MoM.
- resource management is simplified, as you don't adjust worker levels to change resource gathering.
- no specific buildings erected in your cities. Instead, there are generic city levels that you buy to gain more units.

Cities do not grow.

The income of a city depend on how many cultivated fields it have around it. That and size, bigger city more space around it to cultivate, are the only things that affect city resources.

As with most 'Modern' games, it's simplified to almost a fault. (Which seems reversed to me.)MoM Has a great deal more depth and oddly enough a much prettier (if bit dated) GUI.

However, it's easier to mod, and I was somewhat annoyed with the whole 'Magic Domain' bit. No common unit is a stack anymore. (For example, the common swordsmen stack in MoM was a group of units that attacked and defended as a collective. Each 'hit' killed off a part of that unit lowering it's overall effectiveness.)

The spell skill limit is a bit tiresome too, but even with all it's faults? If you liked MoM at the minimum you're sure to find AoW agreeable. If you like AoW? You're sure to love MoM if you're not too jaded to enjoy a old DOS game. (Though AoW fans find the 'Spell of Mastery' a bit odd.) I still to this day play MoM.

"As with most 'Modern' games, it's simplified to almost a fault."

Complexity can be a bad thing, especially needless complexity. Most of the complexity in MoM was not depth, but feature creep. This is, doubtlessly, why the game was so unplayable on release.

---edit---

Wait christ, MoM. Wow. I even wrote that in there.

Sorry, never played MoM*. I was thinking HoMM3. HoMM3 had a lot of 'complex' elements such as seven or so resources and upgradable units, but I never felt like they added much (gold was almost always the most important resource, getting control of map structures never struck me as HUGELY necessary because there wasn't any upkeep, upgradable units were just a linear betterness progression, etc.)

Still maintain that complexity isn't something that should be desired outright. Depth is desirable. If complexity serves depth in that case, it's good. If it doesn't, it's bad. It's all about how everything comes together. You can't just do a feature by feature "Game A has X, game B does not" sort of rundown.

Warlords 1/2/3 are actually the least complex of the hero-driven turn-based fantasy games I have much experience with and I think they're some of the deepest because they rely on simpler rules interacting in interesting and often emergent ways.

* I don't know how MoM compares to AoW in terms of complexity, as such, and I'm not fond of doing feature by feature rundowns. One thing I do notice is that it uses food instead of/in addition to money as upkeep, which might swing as an interesting 'complexity' point in MoM's favor. On the other hand I think AoW's combat looks more interesting, in terms of terrain features + cover mattering, how projectiles are handled, multiple parties being able to join combat (Does MoM have that? I can't tell from the videos I'm watching), etc.

It plays differently from MOM, but, if you're a fan of fantasy strategy games, I'd say grab AOW: Shadow Magic at least. It's a fun game that does a lot of things right. Only a few other fantasy strategy games can really make that claim, imo.

IMO, AoW is much deeper than MoM, since it's not quite as old. Races have different specialities, but it's not like some races simply sucks. The overall collection of units is also useful, and while the AI cheats, it doesn't cheat as crazy as in MoM.

MOM is deeper and more complex than AOW for two big reasons.
It's basically Civilization but with magical units and an important extra feature, magic. You can influence a lot of things with magic, it can win or lose games and by that I don't mean the Spell of Mastery.

AOWs city and empire management isn't even close to Civilizations.
Not sure if magic is as potent but I can say that I have won many games of MOM by heavily relying on magic and have never done it in AOW.

I agree that MOM doesn't have a good AI but the other things you list are up to taste. Actually the things you list as bad are some of the features I like the most.