Seriously, did Seravy or whoever is behind these patches even bother to play test this? Or are they so myopic in their high-level play that they forgot not everyone knows every little exploit and work-around for MoM?

This game in its current state is almost unplayable. The diplo-AI makes the vanilla game look mild mannered by comparison. Oberic declares war on me the first turn we meet. He refuses peace despite me kicking the ever-living shit out of him.

I take a few of his towns and he retorts with (paraphrasing) "You have refused my offers of peace and now you'll pay!" wut? what offers of peace?

Now I got Lo Pan in an undeclared war on me, his units chase my units all over despite no state of war. Asking for a Pact is fruitless, asking him to declare on Oberic is fruitless.

This is all on normal difficulty btw but I see the AI is still cheating its ass off with tons of units and plentiful magic to spam cast Corruption on my lands despite losing cities left and right.

Utterly ridiculous how anyone in their right mind thinks this might be playable or let alone fun (THE HORROR THAT A GAME MIGHT BE FUN! I MUST BE A GODDAMN CASUAL OH EM GEE /S)

If this is a sign of Slytherine's QA then I definitely will not be pre-ordering the MoM remake.

You might try to get a message to Seravy2 if you have some complaints. There's no guarantee that he will see it here.

The 1.52 Community Patch is a collection of bug fixes. It's not a balancing/gameplay patch.

If you want gameplay changes, you can try Caster of Magic instead, but I have to warn you that it's geared towards higher difficulty in general.
Caster of Magic for Windows should be more suitable as it has a lot of options added specifically to disable the parts of the game some players find "not fun", for example there is an option to ban curse type spells like Corruption or another one that forces the AI to not attack you unless you attack them first. It also had several small adjustments to diplomacy in the direction of making it easier as there can be more than 4 opponents. Also I'm currently working on extending the modding options so eventually you'll be able to fully customize the details you don't like, but this will take some time.

Hi Seravy!

All the work you put into this is amazing and congrats on making it into this GOG released version!

There are actually just a couple of specific changes I'm worried about as they would probably seriously irritate me. I've seen these commented on, but it isn't clear if they are in both the DOS and Windows versions, or if they can be disabled.

1. Units running away or flying units refusing to engage, making battles frustrating to resolve.
2. Reloading a save not changing the retort/spellbook rewards from encounters (I usually only do this when I get some totally useless retort, but I like to have this option)

Is there a version or configuration I can pick without these changes?

Thanks!

1. In CoM Windows, this can be disabled on neutral locations by playing with the "Dumb Neutrals" score modifier. Enemy wizards will always use this strategy unless you play on Normal or Easy difficulty in which case they don't use it at all.
In CoM DOS, the "Dumb Neutrals" option doesn't exist, neutrals act the same was as enemy wizards so you need Normal or Easy difficulty to turn it off.

2. I don't think this anti-reloading feature exists in any version other than Insecticide by Kyrub but I might be wrong. I mean, in every version except that, reloading should give you different items, books, or retorts, assuming it's possible to generate one.

Thanks for the quick and detailed reply! I just bought the Windows version - excited to give it a try!

*sigh* Look I may have been a little salty when I initially posted my comments. I apologize.

Honestly I probably wouldn't get so annoyed at these games but the cultish praise this game gets as "THE BEST 4X GAME OF ALL TIME" really rankles me because even patched this game is full of design flaws, broken gameplay balance and downright infuriating qualities that do not deserve to be praised.

I just rolled back to 1.31 and have been enjoying it on normal with lots of save scumming. However gameplay pretty much boils down to: acquire the most power summon unit you can get and roflstomp the AI, rinse repeat until you either conquer everyone or get the spell of mastery. So far conquering is the easier option because the AI is absolutely untrustworthy regardless of version.

MoM is a simple war game with fantastical units and magic.

So don't do any summons. Problem solved.

That's really besides the point. I'm not trying to make the game harder. I just find the game's balance and design to be unbecoming of the effluent praise it gets. Compared to MOO 1 and 2, MoM feels the most unfinished.

I can't remember the last 4X game I played that didn't have some exploity strategies. You think there aren't any tricks that let you dominate MOO?

This sound exactly like what they did. MoM is no longer playable. It's just so much trash now. Gog won't be around long, they are burning their customers at a rapid pace. People are not going to buy trash. Once Gog gets a well deserved bad reputation, it's game over for them. When you have the thought processes of a brick, this is what happens. Give it up dude, time move on. Gog has destroyed their business. It's dead, it just hasn't fallen over just. Two years from now Gog will be just a memory.

Life is too short to argue with jackholes on the internet. Have a great evening.

So who is the "Jackhole?" Saying not use a big part of the game like it's a real solution. I had your number at move one.

Hi! Since this discussion is rather recent, I use this topic to ask if this behavior is normal:

On normal difficulty, on patch 1.52.03, I can flee from any battle without losing units. Since the community patch should be just about fixes, does this mean the game is bugged? The manual says the following:

"The flee button allows your army to attempt to flee from battle.
Fleeing units (except for heroes) have a 50% chance of disbanding
in the attempt; heroes are immune to this at the Intro and Easy
settings and suffer a 25% chance of death otherwise. Note that
defending units that have fled from combat try to enter an
unoccupied map square; if they cannot find one, all fleeing units
die (including heroes)."

I really would like to have the flee penalty on normal difficulty, because it actually works on hard (I haven't tried other difficulties).
Also, I wish we could have an option in-game to allow neutral cities to have standard strength level even on normal. Penalty free fleeing could also be optional.

Additionally I'd like to report that the AI for some reason spams huge amount of 'triremes', the basic ship unit. This might be as it should, but it certainly is rather peculiar behavior.

UPDATE:

I have now tried different earlier versions of the community patch; 1.40n, 1,50 and 1,51 - all these have the same issue with fleeing. I very much like the community patch otherwise, especially the fact how cities are displayed properly without city walls, but I have to resort to play the original game on version 1.31 because of this bad issue of flee penalty not working. I'm surprised that such issue has existed this long without anybody noticing? Perhaps this means that almost everybody plays on higher difficulty than me. :oO

UPDATE 2:

I figured now that the difficulty levels differ naming wise between the base game and community patched version. In the patched version normal is original's easy I guess, so don't mind this post too much, because in the original you can also flee without worry on easy. I guess I just have to learn to defeat four AIs on hard then, even though I have problems with that even on normal, perhaps due to the improved AI (which is a great thing!). :S
I still wish for those mentioned options on normal though; flee penalty and standard strength of neutral cities.

Answer #1:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1146370/discussions/0/4143842265263791908/#c3123785722647853076

Answer #2:

[url=https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Drake178/Feature_and_Map_Generator_Customizer]https://masterofmagic.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Drake178/Feature_and_Map_Generator_Customizer[/url]

Take your pick...