My wishlist for MoM

Take up the role of a great wizard, wield powerful spells, command fantasy races and challenge your rivals in this remake of a cult turn-based strategy classic. Do you have what it takes to become Master of Magic?
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TalonThorn
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My wishlist for MoM

Post by TalonThorn »

I have a few suggestions for features. These are typically features found in war games but would fit well with MoM.

1. Give units a zone of control (ZOC) in combat and on the overland map.

If you haven't heard of "zone of control," it is a feature typically of strategy war games, but would fit well with MoM as well. Basically zone of control is where an army stack has awareness of the six hexagons around it (or 8 squares for square grid maps). Any enemy that moves into one of the hexagons adjacent to the army stack has to stop movement. The army stacks do not have to actually attack each other (and since in MoM they are not in the same location, they don't), but ZOC adds a layer of movement control to the game, whereas without it there is no control on the overland (or combat) screen.

Thus, if an army stack moves into a ZOC of an enemy, that stack must stop there for the turn. On the next turn, that army stack may move again until it enters an enemy ZOC (meaning the army stack could slowly move past the enemy without attacking, if there is a path which contains no enemy stacks).

ZOC can also have varying "levels" of control. A footman unit could stop other footman units, but might not be able to stop a cavalry unit. Similarly, neither footman nor cavalry could stop a flying unit. This is an extended layer of control that could be added for even more strategy/flavor to movement in the game.

The reason I suggest adding ZOC is because in the original MoM on impossible setting I found it to be very annoying that the enemy (wandering monster or wizard) can just walk past your units. It was impossible to stop fast units from moving past army stacks into a player's land. Even if the player placed multiple stacks along a path, the enemy could pass through by using diagonals!. This making it practically impossible to guard your borders or blockade an enemy city, or other interesting strategies.

2. Add flanking to combat.

Currently there is no advantage in attacking a unit from more than one side (flanking). The only features of the game related to flanking are retaliation (once or more) and having several units beat up on one enemy unit. Having flanking as an advantage in combat would greatly expand the strategy in combat.

3. Unit supply/logistics.

This one might be a stretch to add to the game, but would add a significant depth to the game. There are at least two aspects to supply. 1) A city that is cut off from other cities has to rely upon the food it creates locally. 2) Army stacks that are cut off from a city can not be supplied, meaning they will have a reduced combat effectiveness.

4. City siege - enemy units on squares/hexagons around a city prevent the city from collecting or benefiting from the resource(s) provided by the square/hexagon.

Thanks for working on MoM, and for reading my wish list. I'm a fan from when the game first came out, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you will do with it in your next version.

-TalonThorn :)
TalonThorn
Private First Class - Wehrmacht Inf
Private First Class - Wehrmacht Inf
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun May 23, 2021 9:12 am

Re: My wishlist for MoM

Post by TalonThorn »

As an alternate to ZOC, it would be nice to be able to set an army stack to intercept any army that moves next to it, as if that army had actually moved into the same square/hex. This would address my issue of being able to control one's territory by stopping enemy (or any foreign) units. It was very common in original MoM for my armies to be circumvented, as they would bypass my fortified city to attack inner cities that had less defense.
TalonThorn
Private First Class - Wehrmacht Inf
Private First Class - Wehrmacht Inf
Posts: 9
Joined: Sun May 23, 2021 9:12 am

Re: My wishlist for MoM

Post by TalonThorn »

I wasn't being thorough in my suggestions above. There are additional tactical combat features that could be added to MoM combat to enhance it, but only if you feel it won't make the game too complicated for casual players. Generally, I believe the added tactics from tactical war games would add considerable depth but might pose a problem for AI. Thus, additional combat tactics could be added as an optional feature if it falls too much into a gray area for the game goals. (Being optional would allow purists to play the game more closely to how it originally was designed.)

Note, however, in the existing MoM game, if the attacker in combat finishes off the defender, the attacker advances into the defender's square. Thus, adding additional tactics wouyld not be completely foreign to the game's design.
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