In baseball, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.

In a computer game, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes Windows pops up a box saying the game has executed an illegal operation and will be terminated.

And that's happened to me the last two times I tried to play Heroes of Might and Magic 3. It rather takes the fun out of the game. Yeah, the game auto-saves, though I don't have the slightest idea how often, but that's no answer. The second time I was only about three turns into the game when it died. It isn't worth dealing with something that unreliable. (I'm also really tired of the game locking up for a second or two every time it decides to play a special sound. At least that's what I conjecture it's doing; I play with the sound muted.)

The crashes may not be the fault of the game; they may be the fault of the "high definition" modified-version of the game that I'm using, which permits me to run the thing at a reasonable size on my 1920*1080 display.

If I run the standard version, it goes into full screen mode, and the aspect ratio is crap so it looks weird. If I hit F4, which is supposed to switch it from full-screen to windowed mode, it tells me I can only do that if my Windows desktop is set to 16-bit graphics mode.

And I'll be damned if I'll change my display settings just to play this SOB.

There's one last chance here: I also have HOMM4. It was created later, and maybe, just maybe, it plays nicer with modern Windows computers. But I'm not really very enthusiastic about trying it. I'm feeling just a bit gunshy at this point.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 04:19 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 If you have XP Mode, it might circumvent these problems.

Posted by: RickC at April 17, 2012 07:07 PM (WQ6Vb)

2 I actually remember the game being pretty unstable when it was released.  Of course *everything* was unstable back then...  If I'm remembering right, it was pretty picky about a lot of things such as video driver version, certain processors, etc.  There was a period when XP was fairly new that I had three computers, and some games would only run reliably on one of the three, and which one it was varied from game to game.  I don't know how you'd correct for those kind of issues when trying to run such a game on a modern machine, although XP mode might help, and certainly couldn't hurt.  But I certainly wouldn't jump through that level of hoops when I could just move to the next iteration of the game.

Posted by: David at April 17, 2012 07:22 PM (Kn54v)

3 Sorry to hear about the stability problems. I suspect you are correct about the HD modification being the problem. I run the GOG version of HOMM3 in fullscreen with a lower resolution (which is how I remember the game anyway, so it does not bother me) and have had no stability issues at all.

Which as David noted is certainly a nice change from the original release, which was quite buggy way back when. HOMM3 had at least 4 patch versions that I remember and maybe more. (Just checked, and I still have the patches! )

I am not sure if HOMM4 would be more stable or not, as I have not tried the GOG version of it.

Posted by: haphazard1 at April 18, 2012 10:33 PM (9yBYR)

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It's pretty evident that I'll get nowhere in this game without the manuals. Of course, I don't have manuals. What I have is PDF files. So what to do?

Well, the obvious solution is to move them onto the Kindle Fire. Then I can access them while playing the game.

So I tried copying them into the "Docs" directory on the Fire. And then turned on the device, and there was nothing there but a message saying I should send documents to myname@kindle.com. (My actual name.) So I sent them there, all 23 megabytes or so. Took a LONG time.

And nothing showed up. I finally noticed a pair of buttons on top labelled "cloud" and "device". The default is "cloud". When I switched to "device" then they showed up.

Presumably eventually they'll show up in the cloud, too, but I don't really care.

By the way, they look great. But I have to use the Fire in portrait mode; otherwise the text is too bitty to read with my old eyes.

(If that hadn't worked, I could have used the Slate, of course. I may still end up doing that, because it has a larger screen.)

UPDATE: They did show up, but as potential downloads in the "Device" rather than in the cloud. Since they were duplicates, they didn't actually download. Instead, there were "x" marks on top of the icons, and clicking them deleted them.

Nonetheless, Amazon has made a tremendous mistake here, and eventually someone is going to notice and take advantage of it. If you know someone's Amazon account name (and while not exactly public knowledge it isn't really a secret either), then you can email graphical spam in the form of a PDF file to theirname@kindle.com and it will get downloaded onto their device automagically. I'm going to try sending a different PDF file to myself to see if it requires me to click to download it, or it comes automatically.

It doesn't really matter, though. How long before every Kindle owner's "doc" directory is loaded up with icons offering herbal drug-equivalents and get-rich-quick schemes and all the other stuff we all know and loath?

UPDATE: They have an app for it, but it isn't required. Ordinary email is all you need if you know the account name.

UPDATE: They download automatically. You don't have to approve.

This will end very badly. Good thing they can push firmware updates, because they're eventually going to have to. They've left a barn door wide open here, and it will get abused.

Actually, I don't yet know that for sure. It is barely possible that Amazon has connected my email address to my account name, and only accepted the document because it was mailed by me. One more experiment in the works.

UPDATE: I was wrong! They did think this through. Just now J did me a favor and tried sending me a PDF file. I got an email acknowledgement, but the file itself isn't on my Kindle.

So I tender my apologies to the folks at Amazon for doubting them.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 08:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It didn't last very long. I lost my hero in the first week, and gave up.

I don't quite understand what happened. I moved into a dwarven town, and the defending force was obviously too much for me, so I hit the "retreat" button. The popup said no one on either side lost anyone.

And then my hero and my whole stack were gone. There was some sort of popup about him being mugged, or something like that. So I killed the window.

The scenario is called "Arrogance", and I was trying to play it at the easiest possible setting. For all the good that did me.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 08:02 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 Hrrrm.  It's been ages since I've played any of the HOMM games, though I did spend a good bit of time on them when they first came out.  Don't know what happened there.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 12, 2012 08:06 PM (PiXy!)

2 When you "retreat", you do not get the hero back. Instead, the hero (along with artifacts) reappears in your tavern, to be hired again. All the troops are lost.

The purpose of the "retreat" command is to preserve a good hero in defeat, not to cancel out of a battle.

You can also "surrender" when fighting another player, in which case you must pay some ransom gold, but get to keep all troops.

Even in defeat, heroes are not killed, and they never lose their level and skills. They will eventually be available for hire again, but not necessarily on your side.


Basic advices:
Nearly everything in the game can be right-clicked for help or vital information.

The troops available for hire, whether in towns or in map buildings, are replenished at the beginning of each week.

Flaggable buildings on the map offer continuous benefits. Claiming them is essential to the game. These include mines (generate resources) or troop generators (which other than offering troop for hire, also boosts troop growth of the same type in your towns)

Much of the game is using your heroes to grab benefitial objects on the map. You'll need multiple heroes to do that. Later you'll also need to use idle heroes to ferry troops to your main hero.

Build town halls at the start of your game. They provide additional daily income.

There is no concept of maintenance or troop limits in the game.

The castle faction (humans) is for beginners. Inferno (demons) and fortress (swamp) are for advanced players.

Posted by: cuc at April 13, 2012 01:50 AM (ly+de)

3 Oh, I forgot:

When you start a game and hired one or two additional heroes, move their starting troops to your main hero. Only your main heroes need to fight battles and gain experience. You'll learn which objects on the map contain battles and which don't.

Posted by: cuc at April 13, 2012 02:04 AM (ly+de)

4 When assigning troops, use shift-click to split a stack.

During battle, you may want to turn on the hex grid and other displays. Click on the computer button at the bottom left for combat options.

No worry, HOMM is the easiest-to-learn big name strategy game ever.

Posted by: cuc at April 13, 2012 02:20 AM (Gze9f)

5 cuc covered a lot of good points. A couple additional thoughts:

- If you are defending a town, you can not retreat. (Unless that town is a Stronghold type and has a special Escape Tunnel improvement built.) So be very careful about defending towns if you don't have enough troops to hold it. It can be better to flee and let the enemy have it, rather than risking the loss of a well-developed hero.

- If you right-click an enemy hero or a stack of monsters, you get a summary of their strength. This can range from "A few" (1-3) to "A pack" (maybe 20?) to "Lots" (50-70) all the way up to "Zounds!" (500+). Check this information on everything you can see to decide who you can fight and who should be left for later. At the start of a map, there will usually be quite a few enemies who are much too powerful to attack. These are positioned to block expansion into new areas of the map or to keep especially useful things out of your hands until you are stronger.

- These early strong monsters may also prevent AI heroes from reaching you, giving you time to develop your forces. Sometimes it is a good thing to have a big stack of something nasty around.

- The random monsters around the map grow in numbers with each passing week. So a stack of Minotaurs (random example) that shows as "Several" in week one might have grown to "A pack" by week 4.

- Each of the random monster stacks around the map have an attitude factor. Some of them hate you and will always fight. Others will offer to join you in return for gold. Still others will agree to join you because they support your cause. There is no general way to tell which is which from the map, but there are some spells and hero abilities that can help reveal attitude and even persuade monsters to a more favorable result.

Oh, and that dwarf town: dwarves are s_l_o_w. Terribly, terrible slow. And your heroes' movement on the main map is determined by the slowest unit in their army. I tend to leave dwarves at home unless I have nothing else.

Elves are cool, though.

Posted by: haphazard1 at April 13, 2012 06:01 PM (9yBYR)

6 As for factions, I agree that the Castle town (humans with pikes, archers, swordsmen, etc.) is one of the easier factions to learn and play. Pretty good town improvements available at reasonable costs, a decent and balanced army at lower levels, and with excellent high-end units.

The Inferno (demons) is more of a mid-range faction. I would also include Rampart (dwarves and elves, magic forest town), Dungeon (subterranean critter town), and Necropolis (the undead) in the middle difficulty group.

The tougher factions, at least for my play style, are fortress (swamp town), tower (snow town of wizards, very magic oriented), and especially stronghold (orcs).

All town types can be powerful if you can develop them and learn to make good use of their creatures. But some are definitely easier to learn than others.

Posted by: haphazard1 at April 13, 2012 06:13 PM (9yBYR)

7 All this Heroes discussion motivated me to crawl into the depths of my closet and pull out the old media folders.  I have Heroes III and V, but not IV for some reason.  It will be interesting to see if I can get III installed and patched up to where it will play, or if your version has something special to it.

Posted by: David at April 13, 2012 06:32 PM (Kn54v)

8 Well, the HOMM3 which is being sold by GOG includes the Armageddon's Blade expansion pack and the Shadow of Death expansion pack. For whatever that's worth. (For me it was worth $5, which is what I paid.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 13, 2012 07:45 PM (+rSRq)

9 The expansion packs add a new town type, the Elemental Conflux, which is built around elementals and other "neutral" creatures. If I am remembering correctly, it also adds multi-part artifacts (such as the namesake Armageddon's Blade) and improves support for more elaborate quests. There are also new campaigns and maps to play. A pretty good deal for $5, if you like the base HOMM3 gameplay.

Another option to consider if you enjoy HOMM3 is Heroes: Chronicles, which I just picked up from GOG myself during the sale. There are 8 "chapters" each of which seems to be an 8 map campaign centered around one of the 8 town types. The whole thing is linked together as one big storyline. There are a few new creatures, but otherwise it is a standalone version of the HOMM3 engine that plays the new campaigns. (No additional maps or choose your own game options, just the campaigns.)

I have played the first 3 maps so far and have enjoyed it, even if the first chapter is about my least favorite town type: Stronghold. :-( Beware the might of my orcish armies!

Posted by: haphazard1 at April 14, 2012 12:40 PM (9yBYR)

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HOMM2 runs on this machine. But it's a DOS game, and it runs in full screen mode. Problem there is that this is a 1920*1080 display (i.e. 16:9) and they're using a 4:3 display mode (probably 800*600), so all the graphics are massively distorted.

The first one almost certainly is the same. So it looks like I'm going to have to dive into the series with version 3.

UPDATE: 3 is not a DOS game, but it too runs full screen, in a 4:3 mode. Looks like I'm going to have to check into the HD patch.

UPDATE: OK, that works.

But the tutorial is less than totally helpful. I guess I need to read the manual to learn how you end a turn. I can't find any button to do it, and since I assume the game is expected to be more than one turn, there must be a magic keystroke that does it.

UPDATE: Aha! There is a button! (but I had to reach page 20 of the manual to find that out.)

UPDATE: OK, and I have completed the tutorial game, which of course is ridiculously simple. I didn't bother with the tutorial manual, so it probably took me a lot longer than it should have. But it was fun, and I did enjoy it.

I won't be ready to advance beyond "Simple" for quite a while, though. And I didn't take advantage of everything I had. For instance, at one point I learned a spell, "Magic Arrow", but I didn't end up using it in the final battle.

Still, not at all bad. But the patch is pretty much essential, if you're running it on a modern computer with a display that isn't 4:3. (Does anyone make 4:3 displays any longer? Not if they're LCDs, they don't. My iPaq's display is 480*640, but it isn't a PC, and every other display around here is wider per height.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 06:17 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 You make me nostalgic for the days when manuals actually would *have* a 20th page. . .

Posted by: metaphysician at April 11, 2012 07:10 PM (3GCAl)

2 You make me nostalgic for the days when manuals actually would *have* a 20th page. . .

He makes me nostalgic for the days when manuals would actually be included in the box...

Posted by: Wonderduck at April 11, 2012 08:57 PM (PVVuW)

3 Generally speaking, your video card driver should have the option to "stretch", "retain ratio" or "center" when the resolution is lower than standard. Your monitor often has these options too.

The DOS games on GOG.com are all played through DOSBox, which means they can be windowed by alt-entering, or configured to run at double size (in case the details are too tiny on 1920x1080).

Posted by: cuc at April 11, 2012 10:31 PM (ly+de)

4

I'm using a high-power notebook computer. Strictly speaking, there is no "card".

I've heard about those settings in the past, and I've hunted carefully and found no such choices on this computer.

In any case, HOMM3 with the patch works fine, so I don't need any other solution.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 11, 2012 11:04 PM (+rSRq)

5

He makes me nostalgic for the days when manuals would actually be included in the box...

Not this time. The manuals are all PDF files. It was an electronic delivery. No box, no disks, nothing but bits coming down my pipe.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 11, 2012 11:05 PM (+rSRq)

6 The most likely place for the "don't stretch video" is in the bios.
Or if you were using an external LCD, it's menu might have such an option.

If you turn it on, of course, you'll get a tiny area in the center of the laptop's actual display, which is a different kind of just as bad.

Posted by: RickC at April 12, 2012 05:40 AM (Tn7Hp)

7 Why are you guys trying to solve a problem which has already been solved? Please stop.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 12, 2012 06:01 AM (+rSRq)

8 I threw extra money at the Wasteland 2 project on Kickstarter to get the "big box" edition with a printed manual.  I miss the days when you could weigh the quality of the game by, um, weighing the quality of the game.

You can still get 4:3 / 5:4 monitors if you hunt around (e.g. this Dell) but they tend to be expensive.  The iPad is 4:3, and the latest version is 2048x1536; I wish someone would make that panel into an external display.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at April 12, 2012 07:30 AM (PiXy!)

9 Magic Arrow is one of those spells that I find to only be useful in the very beginning of a map, when stacks are small and low-tier.

Lightning is better, but you have to get all the way to Chain lighting (Tier-4?  I can't remember) to get a go-to spell.

Posted by: BigD at April 12, 2012 07:57 AM (qLkdZ)

10 I find Magic Arrow least useful at the beginning of a map, because your heroes are also very weak at that stage. (Unless you have heroes carried over from a previous step of a campaign, which is a whole different ball of wax.) If you can develop a hero with a decent Power stat, or supplement it with a nice artifact, then you can do quite useful damage for very small mana cost with Magic Arrow.

Chain Lightning can be tremendous fun. Although you have to be careful with it.... Solmyr is one of my favorite heroes, because he starts with Chain Lightning as his special skill. It is completely unbalanced, and tremendously fun.

When my heroes are still weak and can't do much damage with direct spells, I usually stick to buffs/debuffs and try to get the most I can out of my troops. An occasional Haste or Slow on the right target can make a big difference tactically. Using Bless on a low-level unit that has highly variable damage is also one of my favorites ways to get value from heroes with minimal magic skills.

Posted by: haphazard1 at April 12, 2012 07:16 PM (9yBYR)

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I just bought and downloaded the first four HOMM games from Good Old Games. They were on sale, but that was just fortuitous.

I've played so damned much Master of Magic that I think I'm wearing out the bits. It really is time to find something else  I can enjoy. (Please note that this post is not a request for suggestions about other games besides these.)

So I decided to give the HOMM series a try. Way back, I bought the first game, and wasn't very impressed by it. But Wikipedia says that it was the second release where they really hit their stride, and that was the one that made a name for the franchise.

It must have been popular, since they just released the sixth one last year. But that alone doesn't prove that I would enjoy it.

What I found interesting was the size of the installers:

HOMM: 62 MB
HOMM 2: 283 MB
HOMM 3: 820 MB
HOMM 4: 948 MB

Yikes! #2, #3, and #4 include all their respective expansion packs, but still!

When I originally bought them, I figured I'd use the sequence to learn the system, so I'd play the first one until I got comfortable with it, then move to the second, and so on. But between my memory of finding the first one rather dull, and the Wikipedia statement that the second one was widely regarded as being vastly better than the first, I'm thinking about diving straight into #2.

I'm just worried about the learning curve. Anyone who remembers these games, do I really need to play the first one before trying to learn the second? (I solicit advice on this point. As long as it doesn't include the phrase "You might also want to consider...")

Actually, I'm considering diving straight into the third one. The first two games installed DOSBox, but the third one didn't.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 04:04 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 The second one is where the formula came together.  I don't see any need to play 1.  3 is basically 2 with a few extra goodies, but I don't remember anything really different in terms of mechanics; ISTR feeling it was largely milking the same formula for all that it was worth.  You'll probably be fine starting there.

I don't really remember 4 at all; it's possible I never played it.

It's vaguely like MoM, only strategic movement requires a (non-fighting) hero to lead your stack, and tactical combat takes place on a hex grid.  I found magic to be either too weak (most spells), or curb-stomping (certain spells like Chain Lightning, or Armageddon with a hero sporting nothing but Black Dragons).

It's been years since I played it, but the tutorial, followed by the campaign, should be enough to teach you the basics.  Basically, between the high move and low hero count, you have to constantly decide how aggressive to be.  Most maps reward a very aggressive initial game to gain resource sites (and one-shot hero-upgrade sites), followed by a retrenchment and buildup, defeating enemy stacks in the field, and then hitting their castles with high-tier units in late-game.  There are different ways to play, and some campaign missions force you to use them, but that always seemed fairly reliable.

Posted by: Big D at April 09, 2012 04:43 PM (qLkdZ)

2

OK, that's good to know. And it's also good to know that they included a tutorial game.

So I guess I will skip the first one. Probably I should pick it up with #2.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 09, 2012 06:32 PM (+rSRq)

3 I played several versions, but I forget which ones.  I know the first one I played was decent, the next one was better, and the one after that didn't hold my attention long at all.  I would suspect it was 2, 3, and 4, but it could have been 3. 4, and 5.

Posted by: David at April 09, 2012 06:42 PM (Kn54v)

4

According to Wikipedia, the first four were created by a company called New World Computing.

They were eventually acquired by Ubisoft, who created #5. A guy named Jon Van Caneghem is credited as the writer for the first three. Someone else wrote the fourth one, and then with #5 it seems to be an entirely different development team.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at April 09, 2012 07:25 PM (+rSRq)

5 It's not often that I feel qualified to chime in, but since I actually played games 2 through 5 as they came out, here we go:

1: Never played it, have never been told that I ought to, either.
2: Arguably the purest/best of the lot, this is the defining HoMM game. Everything that comes later is a refinement, tweak, expansion or re-jiggering of this one.
3: Actually my favorite, because I like many of the refinements, tweaks and re-jiggerings in this rendition over 2. Think of 3 as the "fun one" while 2 is the "pure one." If that makes sense.
4: I've a soft spot for HoMM4 while many purists loathe it. Introduces a "your hero gets down & dirty with the critters in combat" mechanic, in tandem with a "your critters can wander the countryside hero-less to pick up stuff" ability. Also, the hex-field combat maps aren't actually hexes, more of a free-form... thing. Kind of weird, but I like it.

And for chuckles...

5: HoMM gone 3D with a whole new publisher & everything. Surprisingly good, though the grand scale of the earlier games is chopped down to accommodate all the 3D-ness. All in all, I like it, but it's nowhere near as engrossing as the earlier titles. Combat maps are divided into squares instead of hexes, if that matters. (It really doesn't.)
6: Avoid like the plague, apparently... Ubi has saddled it with an "always-online" DRM scheme that is known to break your saves and do other random violence upon your hard-earned enjoyment. Sigh.

Posted by: GreyDuck at April 09, 2012 08:35 PM (Buiw/)

6 I am a big fan of this series, particularly the third one. Fun turn based 4x games.

I second most everything GreyDuck said. 2 is when the series really came together and established its identity. 3 extended the magic model significantly and added a lot of bells and whistles, and is my favorite. Although I spent many, many, many happy hours playing 2 and the expansions for 2, 3 is the one I come back to every 18 months or so to play some more, just because it is so enjoyable.

I was one of the people who did not like 4 as well as the previous games, although it is still interesting. Putting the heroes directly on the battle field changed many aspects of the game in ways I did not like much.

I enjoy the balance and trade offs of deciding where to invest your limited resources: more heroes to have more actors on the field, economy for more resources in the future, more units to expand now, building up your towns for higher tier units later, pushing magic to turn your heroes into army-killing terrors. It definitely has that one-more-turn, watch your empire grow, hey how did it get to be 3 AM feel that characterizes really good games.

Posted by: haphazard1 at April 09, 2012 09:33 PM (9yBYR)

7 Play Heroes III with the utility, Heroes 3 HD. Other than allowing higher resolution support, it also includes a lot of small bug fixes, and even some additional features, all of which are optional.

http://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/

Posted by: cuc at April 10, 2012 07:59 AM (yfVp2)

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Sid Meier has got the rights to XCOM, and Firaxis is creating a modern version.

It's still turn-based! But the graphics are beyond belief. Check 'em out!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 04:56 PM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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Does anyone know how to reset the Master of Magic Hall of Fame, short of uninstalling and reinstalling the game? I can't figure out where the thing is stored.

I noticed something interesting. There are ten Champions:

Mystic X
Aerie
Deth Stryke
Elana
Roland
Mortu
Alorra
Sir Harold
Ravashack
Warrax

And five colors of magic. It turns out that there are two champions per color, and you can only get champions as a function of which spell books you have. Mortu and Ravashack only appear if you have black. Elana and Roland require white. Warrax requires red. I'm pretty sure that Alorra requires green. I'm not totally sure about which colors the others are associated with, but I am sure that they have them.

I've been messing around with using Warrax as a board-clearer. Once he's up a couple of levels, and properly equipped, he can wipe out anything except that he's helpless against Sky Drakes.

UPDATE: I just did an experiment to check on this, and I was wrong. Mortu and Ravashack do require black, and Roland and Elana do require white, but the others don't align with any color.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 03:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Am I the only one who has noticed that on average about half the nodes are blue? Probably a code bug, but typically about a quarter green and a quarter red, with some random jitter.

My usual game lately has been to get Mortu, stack him to the ceiling with the best gear I can create, let him take out lairs to gain experience points, and then use him alone to wipe out all the nodes on Myrror, resulting in an obscene power base.

Today I tried something a bit different. Instead of Mortu, I decided to try Alorra.

I can't figure out whether Alorra is supposed to be a he or a she. Given the pink frilly shirt, something stuck in the hair, and big poofy lips, I've been assuming "she", but maybe that's just what elves are like, even the men. I've never met an elf; how would I know?

Anyway, it became apparent pretty early that the big problem was that Alorra only had 8 arrows, and for some battles that just wasn't enough.

So I got Mortu after all, and equipped him, and then let the two of the hunt together. And they are most impressive, I must say, laying a bloody swath through everything in their path. Even at "impossible" level, I don't remember anything that was too much of a challenge. For instance, when facing a stack of 8 Great Drakes, the plan was simple: Alorra puts an arrow into one Drake, doing about 25 points of damage, and then Mortu kills it. (Mortu has first strike and armor piercing.) Repeat until all the Drakes are gone. (Did I mention that Mortu and Alorra were both invisible and flying? The Drakes just float there, waiting to be killed.)

The only real problem with this plan is that it takes a hell of a long time to set it up. Between summoning two champions, and then creating a bow, a sword, two plate mails and two magic rings, you're looking at upwards of fifty turns.

But once you've got them...

UPDATE: I've run into another bug a few times recently: if an enemy wizard is banished, and casting the spell of return, and you're merrily marching around destroying his towns in order to defeat him, and he's down to one, and it's an outpost, then when you attack it the game crashes.

You have to leave it long enough for it to turn into a village, with one villager, before you take it out. Or better yet, be more careful about scouting the bastard before you embark on your genocide campaign, and make sure the last one you go after isn't an outpost.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 08:33 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I'm a cheater. I cheat massively at Master of Magic. Since it's a single-player game, no one else is harmed by it. But I thought I ought to confess.

When I play, I set the game up to Hard, four opponents, small land size, powerful magic.

I choose a custom wizard and use Tlaloc's image, rather arbitrarily.

Setting up the wizard, I go with 4 black books, 1 red, 1 green, 1 blue. Then I add Node Mastery, Artificer, Archmage, and Alchemy. For my initial spells, I choose Ghouls, Darkness, Mana Leak.

For my race, I choose the Nomads. (Why? Nomads can build Animist's Guilds and Merchant Guilds, and I really like rangers and griffins.) And I always use the blue flag.

So far, so good. This is the point where the cheating happens:

Once I'm in the game, I save the file and then use a program called MOMSaveEditor to modify it.

I start the game with 60 casting skill. My initial mana is 5000 and my initial gold is 5000. I give myself the following spells:

KNOWN (can be cast immediately) :

Summon Champion
Call Lightning
Pathfinding
Change Terrain
Transmute
Web
Corruption
Wraiths
Shadow Demons

LEARNABLE (can eventually be researched):

Regeneration
Iron Skin
Nature's Cures
Flight
Spell Lock
Pestilence
Warp Node
WraithForm
Black Prayer

And then kick in with playing. The result is fun but not particularly challenging, which I suspect is obvious. Initial exploration is done with Shadow Demons and Wraiths, who also take out all lairs and nodes on my initial landmass. All nodes get a Ghoul as garrison.

Once things have slowed, and I have the leisure to do a big summon, I start Summon Champion. I monitor its progress and when there's only one turn to go, I save the game.

If I don't get Mortu, I reload and try again. It tosses a random number each time, so you don't necessarily get the same one. If I get Ravashack, I keep him and cast Summon Champion again.

Once I get Mortu, I create a sword for him: +3 Attack, +3 Defense, +3 To Hit, Death. Cost is 1050 mana. Then I create armor: Plate, +6 Defense, +4 Movement, +6 Resistance, Wraithform. Cost is 1950. Usually I have to do some alchemy to get enough mana for that.

Then he gets Pathfinding, and off he goes to start conquering the world. As soon as they become available, he gets Iron Skin, Regeneration, Flight, and Spell Lock. And once my bank account recovers, he gets a ring: +4 Defense, +2 To Hit, +3 Movement, +6 Resistance, cost 2375.

If I find black spell books, then I create a sword which adds Vampiric. And if I get any blue books, sometimes I create a ring that substitutes Flight for +2 To Hit.

So I'm a terrible cheater. (Or maybe it might be more correct to say that I'm really good at cheating.) But who is harmed?

I think I might try this at "Impossible" some time just to see what it's like.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 02:17 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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1 I never played MoM myself, but I often find that when I play strategy games where a single round lasts very long, I simply don't want to play the (usually very slow) first stage every time. Or I want to play my battles with huge armies against extremely strong AI, but I can never keep up with how fast the AI builds up its economy at the start of the game.

I also recently used a memory editing program on Terraria, because I lost my character and world files, and didn't feel like investing another 100+ hours into getting back where I was before I lost them.

So I do enjoy occassional cheating in games, but only ever in single player. At times it just makes it more enjoyable.

Posted by: Jordi Vermeulen at January 04, 2012 03:08 PM (AJZdn)

2 I used to do that a lot back in the Doom II days, just for fun, and not until I'd played the game all the way through without it.  In MOM, I tend to backup to an earlier save point if my game goes south, but that's about it for cheating.  Everything else is as the game rolls it.  And who doesn't do that?

I've been playing a lot of HOI3 lately, and in that I use one cheat code only: "noneutrality", which lowers neutrality to zero and makes it possible to declare war immediately.  Of course, other nations are still hampered, and can't declare war for a while, but I don't do it with major countries; instead I play a minor country and use the head start to build up.  The time I conquered most of the world with Czechoslovakia was pretty cool.  Currently, I'm playing the Random player mod, which creates fictionalized countries/borders, etc across the world. 

Posted by: ubu at January 04, 2012 07:30 PM (GfCSm)

3 What does "HOI" stand for?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 04, 2012 07:36 PM (+rSRq)

4 Hearts of Iron 3  Sorry, it's a WWII grand strategy game in which you can micromanage global campaigns at the divisional level, research technology, deal with internal politics and foreign policy, and managed your economy.  Not for the faint of heart, a game can take weeks to play..  I've been thinking about doing a post on it, but haven't recovered all my posting tools yet.

Posted by: ubu at January 04, 2012 07:46 PM (GfCSm)

5 Hmm, sounds almost like War in Europe.

(We used to play that at USMA in the late '70s.)

Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at January 04, 2012 07:56 PM (Lbkvv)

6 Yeah, Hearts of Iron is for people who take their WW2 wargaming quite seriously. Lots of detail and, frankly, a learning curve up there with Dwarf Fortress.

Sounds like you've got the recipe for a fun romp in Master of Magic. For some games, there's very little space between "computer is smart enough I don't feel like I'm picking on special-education kids" and "computer cheats so much that taking it on from scratch is just punishing".

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at January 04, 2012 09:42 PM (pWQz4)

7 I used to play Diablo II all the time with a trainer to enable god mode, before I got into WoW.

I also had a lot of fun editing magic items to make them do ludicrous things, like the charm that gave whatever character carried it +461% experience for each kill.  Then I'd take a 1st level character, give him a weapon that could do some serious damage, and let him loose in "Hell" mode with that charm.

I'd go up 3-4-5 levels the first time I killed anything.  It was hilarious.

Posted by: atomic_fungus at January 04, 2012 09:49 PM (bRi+J)

8 ubu, that sounds rather useful--my first game, I played as the US (natch), and while I was able to pull out of the Depression, I despaired at getting anybody to attack me so that I could actually go to war.  Japan somehow shrugged off every provocation, and my pacifist citizens hog-tied me.

I finally gave up around 1946, and started over as Germany, where the only problem was in trying to grab as much land and resources as possible before the Allies wised up and declared war on me.

The one unrealistic moment came when my invasion forces broke out of Newfoundland and swept through New England and the Great Plains.  The US should have a dramatically higher partisan rating to account for the 2nd Amendment.

As for cheating in MOM, I have done some save-scumming, but I don't really bother anymore.  I can generally win with a custom wizard on Impossible/Large; if I'm going to fail, it's going to be within the first 50 turns or so, and more often than not, I'll just start over.  Ditto with MOO2; if I don't like the starting position, or space monsters/Guardian eat my scouts too soon, it's restart time.

Posted by: BigD at January 04, 2012 11:05 PM (u0/7E)

9 Yikes.  I usually play on Hard, but I don't think I've ever taken on MOM in Impossible. Well, not more than once...

Posted by: ubu at January 05, 2012 02:33 AM (GfCSm)

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Ready for a major-league time sink? 3 Slices is a flash-based puzzle game, and it's really well done!

UPDATE: I'm stuck on #14. Still working on it, though.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at 04:55 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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