Master of Magic Walkthrough (Life Magic, Impossible Difficulty), Part 1: The Beginning

Here's where I delve into Master of Magic (1994), another great classic of its era...a game I haven't touched in over a decade!

Impossible Difficulty is no picnic. The computer opponents start out with tremendous advantageous in their wizard skills and picks, and their cities all earn, produce, and research at over twice your speed! For example, in this game, I was facing Rjak's packs of Wraiths and Demon Lords whilst my best normal units were Priests, and my best summoned units were Unicorns! Swift and decisive strategy, not to mention a fair bit of luck, is needed to win.

Here I picked High Men, the default race that's fairly weak at the start, and go Life Magic and Warlord...obviously hoping to obtain Champion units by the endgame.

Weak, however, does not mean impotent, as I go on to show here. Rapid exploration is the key to the start of an Impossible-level game; a Magic Spirit goes far there, if you don't have a flying or water-walking race at the start. I quickly explore the entire land mass I'm on, and send my Magic Spirit across the ocean to check out the nearest islands...

This series of videos showcases snapshots of a game of MOM, highlighting various key strategies required to finish a game at Impossible level, and ending with a high Score!
- Part 1: The Beginning
- Part 2: Early Conquests
- Part 3: The mightiest wizard foe (Rjak) is the first to fall
- Part 4: Mass Banishment, starting with Rjak and Jafar
- Part 5: Mass Banishment, continuing with Oberic (the next deadliest foe after Rjak is permanently dealt with)
- Part 6: Mass Banishment, ending with Sss'ra
- Part 7: Nodes
- Part 8: Endgame, and The Spell of Mastery

(Note: this game was played on version 1.31)

(Addendum: to view another playthrough using multiple schools of magic, search for "Master of Magic Rainbow Walkthrough", or click on the Video Response in Part 8)

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• Magic

[Catnub]

I'm sceptical of exploring with your starting units, Magic Spirits are sufficient to explore your early surroundings. It costs you 4 gc per turn to have your troops out exploring, and you're at increased risk of an early attack by raiders or monsters. You almost did get busted here :) It would have sucked to have to cancel your settlers for extra swordsmen that you didn't really need.

[Carsomyr80]

@Catnub That's a risk I took. For what's it worth, I had another Impossible game that saw an Earth Elemental come at my sole city soon after the game started! Ha ha. (Even Elite swordsmen couldn't have done much there) Thanks for the invite, I may drop by sometime.

[Catnub]

@Carsomyr80 ouch at early Earth Elementals! I'm mainly concerned about the hit to your economy, though. 4 gold per turn from the start has significant ripple effects. A Magic Spirit only delays Just Cause a little bit (which just barely breaks even with a single city and low upkeep) or delay research (which is usually not that important in 1.31, you start out with plenty).

[Carsomyr80]

@Catnub True. 2 schools of thought among players who do Impossible-level games: Explore early or defend starting city+earn gold early. I belong to the first group; my style changes if I find another wizard's starting city nearby, because I might want to bust that wizard early on and hence aim for good military units, fast. Knowing what and who I encounter as early as possible allows me that flexibility. Fighting humans, of course, is different.

[masterjustin45]

even the lowlyest swordsmen buffed with life magic can kick ass

[Catnub]

@Carsomyr80 I agree fully with early exploration, but you have much more cost efficient means available to you: Magic Spirits. It is twice as effective as spearmen (moving 2 squares per turn) and uses up resources which are of less value to you early on (casting skill and mana vs production and food).

[Catnub]

Great videos! Come drop by Dragon Sword (google the web site, seems that I can't post the URL here) if you want to discuss MoM, we have a nice community established. There is also a tournament currently running where we play on the same map with different wizards, using editors. I'll comment more on the videos later.