Let's talk about Master of Magic

Ah, my favourite game of all time!

• Vastly diverse magic schools
• Not too complex, but not too simple city building and resource management
• The races were somewhat unique, in that each one required a different strategy
• Wizard customisation
• The exploring! Random maps == win
• The terrible AI.

• Race Choice * Wizard choice -> Insane amount of different starting options, that remain relevant for the entire game.

• Differentiation between the spell schools. You could specialize in spell schools, or be a jack of all trades, and that choice mattered because the spell schools were very different, and strongly themed.
  
• No spell copies. There was rarely the case of a spell being 'the same as another spell but better'. If you wanted a more powerful fireball, you simply put more mana in it. A more powerful spell, such as doom bolt or disintegrate worked fundamentally differently. Fireball: 1 attack for every figure in the enemy stack. Strength is mana dependent. Doom Bolt: 10 points of irresistible damage. Disintegrate: Insta-kills stack, only works if the modified spell resistance is less then 10. Although they all have the same purpose, killing a single enemy stack, they work differently, and having one does not make any of the others redundant.
• The ability to fight powerful neutral stacks (in nodes, ruins etc) for either loot or a long term strategic advantage.
• End game spells that make you feel very powerful. For example time stop effect: No upkeep, except for the time stop spell itself. No city production. No conventional mana or gold income. All enemy and neutral players skip their turns until you end the spell. With sufficient stockpiles, you could use this spell to cast the spell of mastery, or conquer both worlds, before the enemy had time to react.
  
• Tactical combat that allowed for both quick resolution and fun use of spells.
• Unit differentiation by giving many of them special abilities of some sort, especially the summons.

• Different factions that played different.
• Turn based. Really.
• Heroes (that we had them and who they were).
• Item creation.
• To be able to create my own wizard and have a very nice list of perks to select from.
• Angels and Archangels.
• Different types of magic that played different.
• Two different planes that... you know. (memory issues or not)
• Simple interface where it was easy to find everything.
• The utterly horrible diplomacy encouraged you to go to war.

• Tacitcal battles (thats what made the game so great!)
  
• Random Maps as said above
• Building buildings that produced better units and they replaced the older building in the city screen.
  
• Taking over citys that had a different race, allowing you to specialize a city.
  
• Floating island spell.
  
• Goodie Plots (caves, towers etc...)
• Ability to create your own ruler with a mix of magic circles.  As said above
  
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  Specialists that came to you randomly and you could appoint them a governor.  They would increase food/production/gold/unit ex when built. They would also lvl up during the game by themselfs over time.   (I think that more of a Master of Orion 2 but the games were so similar)  It would be great to have that incorporated.

• Heros that came to you randomly to lead a small or large army.  That was also a winner becasue you had more than one and could appoint them to any army you would like. 
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  The familiar your wizard had giving you the announcements of the changing moons or events that were happening.

• Games varied fantastically from a few simple setup choices
• Continuous overland spells
• Noncombat casting time based on caster strength and spell power
• Item creation
• Decent number of distinctly individual champion units
• Turn-based tactical combat

• Unique heroes that you truly grew attached to
• Artifact creation and how we could give them names
• Tactical battles
• Merchants and mercenaries
• Powerful beings that gave you that "Oh S#*%" feeling
• The fact that a nation would still exist even if you destroyed their wizard

• Deep wizard customization.
• Deep spellbook.  All of the unit enchantments opened up all sorts of possibilities, global enchantments were very cool, as was being able to pummel enemy units in combat with spells from afar (limited by your casting skill).
• The fact that you were the wizard himself, and not an invisible guiding hand.
• The distinction between your personal power and the power of your empire.  You could send forth your armies and sacrifice them taking nodes in order to enhance your personal power.  Or you could focus on just building and enhancing your conventional military might.
  
• The implementation of mana itself.  You could divert the mana flowing into you in a variety of ways, all useful.  You had to make a strategic choice between using it for (a) research, (b) improving your skill so you could cast spells faster and use more spells in combat, (c) storing and (d) supporting summoned beings.  It made mana addictive - you always lusted for more!
• Tactical combat.  All of those cool unit enchantments would've been pointless without it.  The combat had enough complexity to make it interesting.
• Item crafting.  Very, very cool.

• Exploration was great due to world size and randomization.
• Unique Heroes that you found each game. it was like bumping into an old friend .
• Apocalyptic end game spells besides the Spell of Mastery.

Most of what I could think of was already covered so I won't bother repeating.

• The one thing that sticks out in my mind was the spellbook system and player traits. Simply put, nothing else in the game had anywhere near as much of an effect on your gameplay. There was so much wonderful contrast between playing as a wizard with 11 spellbooks of a single colour. And a wizard with NO spellbooks and a bucket load of useful traits.
• As a "pure" wizard you had access to every single bit of magic your school posessed. And you really got to "feel" the power at your disposal as you shaped the world with your spells.
•  As a wizard with NO starting books you had to rely more on your units and tactics. But the sense of accomplishment as you fight tooth and nail to gain new spellbooks combined with the sense of discovery as you research the books and learn what spells you got was just amazing. And you could end up with some of the craziest combinations. I remember one game where I ended up taking over the world with wind-walking shadow demon armies.
  

Just using quotes,

Sum it all up as, each game felt unique, and you always felt like you were advancing towards victory.

EDIT:

I think it also helped that the actual combat mechanics were very complex and difficult to follow, but at the same time could easily be estimated by looking at how many swords/shields each unit had. Kept folks from easily calculating who should win, which meant battles could be suprising.

It runs on DOS!  

And I was younger!!

Great observations.  My additions/clarifications to those above:

• The distant wizard’s ability to affect the battle before (unit pump-ups) and during made every combat unpredictable/winnable.
• Ability to get an increasing variety of units by taking over other cities allowed experimenting with combos [not locked in by original race for whole game]
• The Heroes ability to affect army strength, army movement, magic castable per turn if in home city, etc. made for lots of variation per game

What would have made it better…

• smarter AI, especially looking for patterns. If you take 3 towns with Ultra Elite slingers, the other mages should start putting Guardian Wind on everything
• ability to keep learning spells (unlimited spell learning, not locked in)
• multiplayer
• ability to interfere in other battles “in your view/domain”. Wouldn’t it be mean [fun] if you could help out another ailing wizard’s army to defeat a common foe’s army even if you didn’t have units involved?

For me:

• The further away from your tower the more mana it cost to cast spell in battle
• The fact that you could gain a different book of magic in battle. Which added new spell to your book
• New maps every new game
• Sand box mode
• Tons and tons of spells
• Turn base tactical battle (no continious nonesense)
• Tons of ruins and caverns where you could find goodies. (wish some would respawn after time)
• Customazition of the main wizard. (almost no limits to how many char you could create)
• The ai was terrible. it was too bad
• Two plains with different charracteristics
• Tons of different monsters

That's pretty much it.

1. heroes were distinct individuals with differing abilities (some unique). I really liked that there were some book dependent heroes. e.g. roland + priest for life, ravashack + mortu for death
   
2. many equipment slots for heroes gave them a real rpg flavour
3. creating artifacts. Instead of having to rely on 'ancient artifacts' created by some lost power, YOU could become powerful enough to create comparable items
4. distinct races
5. special minerals that had a real passive effects (mithril and adamantium)
6. chaos channel! gave a unit a random permanent alteration with no upkeep (wings, firey breath, etc). one of my favourite spells, it felt like i was conducting magical experiments on my own people, twisting them to my own ends!

I agree with almost everything posted so far.

One thing that I think will be a challenge for Elemental is that because there will be many non-traditional elements, it will rely very heavily on it's back story. MoM didn't need any kind of backstory because they used all the usual lineup of races that we all knew from DnD manuals/ancient mythology. The advangtage there is that each game played had it's own unique fantasy story created by the player, without too many spoonfed ideas on what should happen or what the players goals should be.

Though the races used were the standard types, there were so many of them that you usually didn't see them all in one game. This is something that really makes for some great replayability. It would be very good for Elemental to have so much content that it would be discovered over many games, with many map resources and creatures only appearing in maybe 1 in 4 games.

• Customizable Avatar with special abilities
• diverse selection of spells
• complex magic item creation system
• multiple planes, both with its own unique atmosphere
• dynamic city screen (it automatically adjusted as you built things, rather than having pre-determined building arrangement)
• numerous factions each with plenty of unique units and sprites
• colorful terrain and animations (I still enjoy looking at it, where many other games of its time bog me down with bland UI colors)
• special terrain features like nightshade and mithral that has subtle but important effects.

Simple Civ style city management. Nothing complex to understand but allowed for easy and strategic planning of the economy. Civ 4 with BUG mod is great example.

The spells. There could have been more, look at Dom 3.

Variety in the races. Not well balanced but so much variety.

Tactical combat. Expand the complexity of this in Elemental. MoM crossed with Dom 3 = Awesome. Keep units, not individual soldiers in mobs. Allow units to have heros attached, not heros as individual units. Keep the simpleness of the tactical combat but expand on the options to make it more complex, if that makes sense.

Here's a brief summary of some of the reasons why Master of Magic is chief among my favourite games of this genre.

• Combinatorial explosion of wizard spellbooks, races and retorts (skills) (especially Myrran, which unlocks some of the more unique races)
• Huge variety of spells (over 200) with nearly all of them being unique and useful in different situations (to varying degrees)
• Insane variety of buffs including (but not limited to):
  • Heroism (buffs a unit to elite experience level)
  • Lionheart
  • Stone Skin/Iron Skin
  • Flame Blade
  • Flight
  • Invisibility
  • Magic Immunity
  • Guardian Wind (immunity to missile weapons)
  • Regeneration
• Very large number of units (hundreds if you include all the racial variations)
• Combinatorial explosion when you factor in all buffs and all units and the varying degrees to which specific buffs may benefit/not benefit each unit and the fact that multiple buffs can be stacked on a unit to achieve incredible combos:
  • Flying, Invisible, Magic Immune War Ships
  • Regenerating Great Wyrms
  • Guardian Winded, Heroic, Iron Skinned, Lionhearted, Adamantium Halfling Slingers with Flame Blades
  • Black Channeled, Wraithformed War Trolls with Cloak of Fear (Cloak of Fear didn't work properly, but the idea is a good one)
  • Guardian Winded Sky Drakes
• Large number of heroes that may also be buffed to produce incredible combos
• Huge number of magic weapons, armor and other magical items to augment your heroes and compliment the buffs placed on them

  Frogboy, I really thank you for asking this question(since I think for many of us think it is the penultimate fantasy wargame--after patching of course and minus the AI, and I think this is where you probably will/should make the greatest contribution.  The question you asked gets to the heart of what that game meant to all of us and what we hope Elemental: War of Magic will become.

•  Super flexible and easily identifiable custom Avatar options which allowed for great depth of play.  Whether you wanted to be destructive, secretive, creative(as in can make items), or any number of combinations.  Taking into account that you were truly a powerrful wizard and altered time and reality through spells, spell books and character skills like Warlord, Artificer, Runemaster, etc..

•  Spell variety(with all the different schools of magic available it was wonderful to be able to summon creatures, make magic items, cast spells of variable power from the weakest or introductory level to vast global and dimensional power spells that changed the landscape or altered its use.

•  Racial variety(yep not species for me cause thats a little too much like a modern subset or sci-fi to me; plus I think Gary Gygax and co were great people)  If you want to call them something else I suggest a new name all together and one not bound in current era politics or deragatory aspersions.  You are creating your own universe and license so this would be a good idea I think.  It might help us players for a more immersive and satiisfactory experience.  I can live with you calling all the variable 'races' Fallen but it somehow seems lacking.  It seems to me this discounts good vs evil creatures and lumps them all on the side of the Fallen which has a negatory conotation.  Of course, I am not completely up on all postings so I could be off here..

•  Having fun places to explore like caves, towers, nodes, multiplane existense with Myrror(somehow just having one map; even one as massive as you invision seems limiting to a true power of time and space)

•  The Heroes and Villians-Toren the Chosen, Mystique X(my personal favorite), Warraxe, etc..that would help lead your armies to battle.

•  The tactical possibilities and decisions right from the very beginning which allowed you to influence and heighten the PERSONAL experience of gameplay from beginning to end. 

  Things I wish were in your game from the beginning-

Multi environments and planes of existense:  Water based creatures and combat to include an underwater component as well as surface components and creatures who live in the clouds(Sky Castles anyone?; flying

For cloth map mode that the figurines to represent heroes etc., took their stylings from Ral Partha miniatures-The ones that were professionally painted, had the lil diarama grass, wpns, treasure on ground at heroes feet and the magnetic tape on the bottom for keeping them safe from harm..

A small text note ability for those truly epic long games in single player where you would like to paste a note on specific points on the map for those of us who can't remember everything and return to a saved game(ala Elder Scrolls or something like it)

  I too think(et tu Brudii?) all the other comments are valid and worth at least a little contemplation and are an accurate summation of MoM.  I would highlight the comments made by

 Cauldyth on mana-

"The implementation of mana itself.  You could divert the mana flowing into you in a variety of ways, all useful.  You had to make a strategic choice between using it for (a) research, ( improving your skill so you could cast spells faster and use more spells in combat, (c) storing and (d) supporting summoned beings.  It made mana addictive - you always lusted for more!"

and Cerevox

"I think it also helped that the actual combat mechanics were very complex and difficult to follow, but at the same time could easily be estimated by looking at how many swords/shields each unit had. Kept folks from easily calculating who should win, which meant battles could be suprising."

Tim4fun

Solam

and lastly Netriaks comment on why spells in MoM were so good(one example at least)

  And if you read this Frogboy, then I know you are a true genius cause you must of made multi clones of yourself already that you can be in all places at once..Seriously thank you for your investment and effort in making this game !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

• many different options at setup that made for truly different gameplay
• a large spellbook and most spells had truly different effects
• a good number of meaningful random events, but balanced so that you would not have a victory stolen by RNG
• nice (for the time) brief cutscenes at significant milestones
• Useful, well written documentation. The boxed version should have more than a readme file
• You may laugh, but I loved the midi "soundtrack" - I can still remember the music
• Nice variety of units and interesting how you could get new units by taking over another race's city

• Channeller customization
• Spells variety (and not just a firebal, an iceball, a poison ball, etc. that are just the same spell with different color)
• Channeller customization
• Race diversity
• Channeller customization
• The magic way to win
• Did I say channeller customization ?
• Great Worm
• How about channeller customization ?
• magical beings, lot of stuff to summon
• Last but not least, channeller customization

• Wizard Customization
• Item Construction and Customization
• Random Maps being generated for every game
• Having Two Full Worlds to Conquer (Magical plane of existence to explore and conquer after the primary)
• Having Cities of Different Races controlled by the same Empire (this allowed you to mix and match races in armies)
• Spell Book Customization (play two games and chances are you'll have different spells then you did in the first game)

Nostalgia.

 at the above post.

• Player versus world.
• Diverse winning conditions.
• Simplicity.

Master of Magic's great appeal was its diversity. The races didn't really add much on their own, but combined with the customizable spellbooks, retorts, magic items and heroes, it gave you some really interesting options for victory.

Of course, there are some pretty nasty bugs that prevent some of those options being as viable as they should... which is a shame.

Oh and the AI is utterly atrocious... and cheats like hell. Meaning that some of the options were completely pointless, or even counterproductive (some of the high end chaos/death spells, which are supposed to wreck the world and cripple your enemy's economy only really end up hurting you!)... which is also a shame.

I think that in spite of those negatives though, the fact that it's still held up as a benchmark for fantasy strategy is a real tribute to its strengths.