Wall of text ramble incoming...
So, once again I've decided to give Master of Magic another chance. I set difficulty to Easy, two enemies, and world size to medium. Earlier I thought "the smaller the world, the easier the game", but then I read from the manual or FAQ that it may actually make the game harder or more tiresome, as it will just means loads of tiny islands where there is hard to move around between the islands. Playing v1.31 (newest official patch), not trying the unofficial 1.4n or 2.0(?) patches for now.
I get tired of reading the manual, it seems they use pages upon pages just to describe what each button in the starting menu does. Somehow I get a feeling I'm trying to read a recipe on how to make a cake, but the recipe explains where an egg comes from, what is its exact purpose in the dough, how flour is made out of wheat grains etc. Thanks, but what I'm really looking for is a step-by-step tutorial how to make the cake, or play MoM. :)
So I found this:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/564960-master-of-magic/faqs It seems pretty good in explaining what you should do on your first playthrough, what to build first and in which order etc. But even it seems to become too convoluted at some points, like giving dozen different, partly maybe even contradicting, explanations what kind of cities you should try to occupy, and which to pass. "Don't try to occupy Nomad cities because they will lessen your ability to do this and that..." and other such tidbits that for now make absolutely no sense to me. I guess I will eventually learn the "why"s through trial and error.
Still, I'm somewhat amiss what exactly I'm supposed to do now. I think I played it yesterday for a couple of hours, and all I did during that time was:
- Explore the tiny island you start on. Ok, there are two other cities there, but when I try to enter them, my small army of two dies. So I guess I shouldn't touch those cities, at least for now.
- After I've done exploring the whole 12(?) block island (took like 5 minutes), all I can think of doing is selecting the next spell to research, and the next city "feature" to research (granary etc.), and just keep clicking on "done" + "Next turn" a few dozen time, until I get messages that the new spell and city feature have been researched, and I pick new ones to research.
Sometimes some wandering soldier or spellcaster wants to join my ranks, I say ok. I have no idea where he/she came from and why, but I guess I am supposed to hire them.
Occasionally an enemy(?) army icon approaches my city, so I move my "army" icon on top of the enemy icon, and get some victory screen. Whee! Is this the only kind of combat the game provides, ie. no tactical battles on a battleground? Maybe that's just good, I didn't really like the tactical battles in e.g. X-Com.
So that's where I'm now, just clicking on "next turn" constantly while research is going on. I think I've clicked on "Next turn" a few hundred times already. I haven't cast any spells (no idea where and why I'd want to do that, since even combat seems to be fully automated and hidden from me), stuck to my tiny island. Apparently I am suposed to make a ship to sail to other tiny islands, but not sure yet how to do that. I already researched "shipwright" earlier, but not sure how to proceed from there.
Oh yeah I think I got some message that there is not enough food, and the game asked whether I should let some of my citizens die. I guess I should say no, but I am unsure how to try to rectify the situation. Madly clicking everywhere on the city screen didn't help.
So am I now on the right track, or should I be doing something besides just researching and clicking on next turn? I must be missing something obvious, I don't feel rest of the game should be like this. :) I hope to get through the initial learning curve soon.
I guess this reminds me how yesterday I tried to explain Dungeon Keeper gameplay to my gf. She was looking at my skeleton soldiers in the training room:
"I don't get it. What are you doing now? Where are you on the screen? What are those numbers popping up, do you get money?"
- "I'm just training my soldiers in the training room so they will fare better in combat. The numbers popping up are the amount of gold that it costs to train them. When I reach level 10 (shouldn't take many more hours now), I'll begin an assault through the eastern passage towards one of my enemies..."
(My gf shaking her head): "I'll never understand your games..."
Hey, I can't blame her, Dungeon Keeper was gibberish to me as well for quite a long time! I think I started to get the gist of it after mission 10 or so...