Heh. What?

I'm not going to try to convince you to buy or like the game, but whoever said the races don't vary much was full of crap. Your entire game is different when you play, say, Grey Elves instead of Dwarves, or High Men instead of Draconians. The way you expand strategically; the role magic plays in your combats; your tactical choices; even your economy and what buildings you prioritize. No, there's no truth in that claim. Leaders? Ehh, by end game every leader is fairly well overpowered no matter how you began, so I can see some reason for that (though the beginning and middle of the game will be different.)

The only real way you're going to feel like every game is the same is if you, for example, go straight to a neutral city of a race you prefer, conquer it, and then start churning out that unit, regardless of your starting race. Then, yeah, it would all feel the same - because in that case you chose to make it all the same.

Thanks

They talk about it on their forums: Worlds of Magic fourms

Basically they're waiting to get a version that's either a) easily auto-patchable or b) fairly stable and not looking to need much in the way of features and bugfixes.

It sounds like an easy thing to do but they're a small studio and it takes some time. :/ They're really good at pushing out bugfix patches, but the content is coming a little more slowly, so it may be a while if they can't get it set up to work with Galaxy.

Can someone comment on the AI? That is the most important part of a 4X game, no?

Agreed

Definitely.Would like this as well

Thanks for the status update, OneFiercePuppy! I've been wondering why it hasn't been released here, so it's good to know it's because they're fixing up the game.

Well, I can give a player's perspective, if you want. If you don't, don't read this post XD

The AI isn't done yet, but right now it's good enough to be a challenge for people who aren't hugely into 4X games. By this I mean if you - like me - play these games on the hardest difficulty, micromanage production to optimize your economy, and take merciless advantage of AI weaknesses, then you're going to find that even on the hardest difficulty, you stroll through everything. But it has gotten better since beta, and the big AI patch hasn't been released yet (My guess is that'll be the 1.2 patch but there hasn't been any official word on the forums I've seen).

I would say the AI is a little better than the AI for Master of Magic, but not as good as the AI for Fallen Enchantress or GalCiv2 or Endless Legend. But for now, when I play WoM, I just make the world Colossal, enable all seven planes, choose 12 opponents, and declare war on them immediately so as to not take advantage of the rather weak diplomacy AI. That keeps me on my toes.

(incidentally - seven planes, colossal, should take you about 300-350 turns to explore, if you spread like a plague and have double movement enabled; probably 800 turns with normal movement [EDIT: add about 25% if you're playing High Men, and 33% if you're playing Dwarves, for a rough estimate of those "slow-moving" races]. If your computer can handle the map maxed out, you'll have a LOT of stuff to go look at)

Thanks for the insight. Does the AI "cheat"?

AI vs AI, yes. AI vs player, no. So the AI cheats to keep itself strategically competitive, which is pretty much the best kind of cheating. It's not terribly obvious, either, though there are a few, rare, egregious cases.

From the WoM forum:

05-20-2015, 11:13 AM

"The non-DRM version is drawing nearer. We've just had a lot on our plates and we wanted to make sure that the non-DRM launch goes as smoothly as possible. We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot (again, lol). We appreciate the patience and we're working hard to get it put out soon. " - Aaron (Moderator)


It might take a while until we see it here on GOG :/

How does this work? The AI knows more than it should about other AI players, but not you?

The AI seems to get combat bonuses when fighting neutral AIs (world features, wandering armies, and neutral cities). In one especially unlikely case, on turn 3 (maybe 4?) an AI sorclord army of one druid attacked a feature guarded by two angels, and won - which is a really tough sell. On turn 4 nobody should have enough spells, mana, and spellpower to swing a fight like that.

That sounds like a crutch treating the symptom rather than the underlying issue of how AI players expand vis a vis human players.

Does this game have a hotseat function?

One source I found said it does