Master of Magic Hint Thread

[Chowlett]

quote: Originally posted by Chaos Warrior on 03-08-2001 06:16 AM only 3K, LightEning? ever heard of msdos.sys, fellows? and autoexec.bat? and config.sys? I take it most of you are scared by DOS names for files...

Look, I have no qualms about editing my Windows system files. I have done so whenever I need to. I have edited the registry and know my way around it fairly well. I have written registry keys to assosciate file types with programs I have written. I have dabbled in (not extensively, admittedly) Windows API calls. Basically, Windows doesn't scare me. However, I don't have the knowledge to reliably do certain things. Arranging for DOS programs to run under windows properly is one of these things. If someone were to tell me then I would have no problems doing it. As yet, the only reply I have been given has not worked and possibly caused my machine to crash due to a version difference. If you would tell me what to do I would do it. Don't insult me by insinuating that I would be "too scared".

[Chaos Warrior]

LOL!!! no offense intended... it's just so hard to have a look into the files

My serious post for today:

Generally there are 2 ways of getting MOM to work: using EMS in DOS (for which you have to edit the MSDOS.SYS not to get windows started at every reboot) and getting the memory sorted out in WIN. to prevent windows from starting automatically, edit the hidden file MSDOS.SYS on your main drive (probably c:\)... search for the following lines:


[Options]
BootMulti=1
BootGUI=1
DoubleBuffer=1
AutoScan=1
WinVer=4.10.1998

change BootMulti and BootGUI from 1 to 0. Now windows is not automatically started after booting


DOS:

To get the memory set to EMS in DOS you have to edit CONFIG.SYS and add the following lines to the file:

DEVICE=c:\windows\himem.sys
DOS=HIGH,UMB
DEVICE=c:\windows\emm386.exe RAM D=64
DEVICEHIGH=C:\CDROMDRV\ATAPICD.SYS /D:CD003

actually, these are the ONLY lines your CONFIG.SYS may consist of! Better make a copy of your former config file! in the 'new' file, you're loading: HIMEM.SYS to get the high memory. DOS=HIGH,UMB to ... something with high memory, I don't know ... and EMM386.EXE which eventually allows you to use EMS.... by NOT typing NOEMS in the end of the EMM386.EXE line, you prevent it from loading the XMS memory... I'm sure those of you who already use the file are loading XMS though.... well, the last line is for the CD ROM drive... if you use the HD version, you don't even need that

the AUTOEXEC.BAT should look like this (the terms in brackets are only for commenting, don't type them in! ):


SMARTDRV (cool memory thing)
SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T2 (sound card)
SET SNDSCAPE=C:\WINDOWS (sound card)
... (dos sound driver, depends on your system)
LH ... (keyboard file... you don't need it when in the US)
mode con rate=32 delay=1 (keyboard setting)
LH ... (DOS mouse driver)
LH ... (DOS CD ROM driver)

these settings are optimal for EMS memory... now MOM should work just fine, you have mor ethan 600K of free memory when using the right files for keyboard mouse and CD ROM.... the high memory is the clue...

WINDOWS:

make a shortcut with the magic.com on your desktop... open it

when I had less memory than I have now, I used to set the "Memory" setting in the shortcut's properties menu to a certain value... I had 64 Megs of RAM and set the EMS option in the Memory option (properties menu for magic.pif) to the highest possible value... it was 16384, I think... nowadays I have 192 Megs of RAM, so it works just fine...

But there's one important detail: for the winodws start, you must not load any drivers and/or devices into your autoexec and config files than you need to play the certain dos game in windows... actually, if you are playing the HD version, your config.sys can be EMPTY!!! the CD ROM device is the only necessary tool, if it is... the autoexec only needs sound and mouse driver, perhaps a keyboard driver. all the stuff that is loaded in those files is only needed for DOS programs, so it's only slowing down windows...

[Chaos Warrior]

actually, my DOS advice should be similar to what the "Boot Disk maker" does...

boot disk maker...

[Ari Rahikkala]

OK, as we should really be talking about MoM, well, here goes a "bug report":

I got Sir Harold offering to be hired, I would have got this for 10 mana/turn and 250 GP:

Super leadership
Super legendary
Blademaster
Constitution
Noble
Construction ( -> can construct roads)
Pathfinding
Plane shift
Create outpost
Invisibility
Land corruption ( -> may corrupt any square after being there for more than one turn )
Wind walking
Regeneration
Purify
Summon demons * 2 (Demon lords have summon demons * 3)
Caster 0 mp (What good is it then?)
Fire, Missiles, Magic and Death immunity
Doombolt spell (No umbrella, tho)
Cause fear spell
Resistance to all
Armor piercing
First strike
Automatic damage ( -> Half of his damage would have been doom damage, i.e. it would have went over each and every armor, hit and resistance check)
Destruction ( -> Causes the target to either make a succesful resistance roll or be disintegrated... This one would have been fun with a few artifacts with high spell save penalties)
Illusion

Even if it would have been quite a good deal, I respectfully declined to keep the game from freezing.

[pchang]

with 11 spell books in Death, you can start with the summon wraiths spell. You can get 1 wraith as soon as you can accumulate 300 manna points. With 1 wraith, I was quickly able to conquer most of arcanus (and defeat 2 enemy wizards on hard level). I just attacked their cities and left monsters, ruins, and nodes alone. It was early enough in the game that the enemy wizards had not developed any really nasty units (like paladins). In addition to taking cities very easily, you leave behind a huge horde of undead troops to guard your new conquests.

[Chowlett]

Sorry, a little confused. Basically my options are to:

1) Create a DOS boot disk with the necessary gubbins on it
2) Alter my startup routines to give the equivalent of 1) every time I boot
3) Adjust my Windows boot to enable it to run.

While I could live with the first, I'd rather have the third, but I kind of lost track of what I needed to do for that one. Could you explain again?

[Ari Rahikkala]

Ah, battles of DOS wisdom. Now these I do love .

First, about the boot disk maker: Whatever you might think, CW, it's quite good. Or, would you try to beat this with your configurations:

Modules using memory below 1 MB:

  Name           Total           Conventional       Upper Memory

  --------  ----------------   ----------------   ----------------

  SYSTEM      16,496   (16K)      9,792   (10K)      6,704    (7K)

  QEMM386        784    (1K)        784    (1K)          0    (0K)

  WBUF           480    (0K)        144    (0K)        336    (0K)

  COMMAND      6,256    (6K)          0    (0K)      6,256    (6K)

  CTMOUSE      3,440    (3K)          0    (0K)      3,440    (3K)

  XMSDSK         688    (1K)          0    (0K)        688    (1K)

  CLOAKING       832    (1K)          0    (0K)        832    (1K)

  VIDE-CDD     5,024    (5K)          0    (0K)      5,024    (5K)

  ZENO         1,120    (1K)          0    (0K)      1,120    (1K)

  SETVER         464    (0K)          0    (0K)        464    (0K)

  ANSI         4,320    (4K)          0    (0K)      4,320    (4K)

  FIX27          192    (0K)          0    (0K)        192    (0K)

  SMARTDRV    19,328   (19K)          0    (0K)     19,328   (19K)

  MSCDEX       2,608    (3K)          0    (0K)      2,608    (3K)

  PERUSE       4,112    (4K)          0    (0K)      4,112    (4K)

  REALDEAL     2,240    (2K)          0    (0K)      2,240    (2K)

  FCSH         2,688    (3K)          0    (0K)      2,688    (3K)

  DZ           1,920    (2K)          0    (0K)      1,920    (2K)

  ESCAPE         352    (0K)          0    (0K)        352    (0K)

  KILLER         400    (0K)          0    (0K)        400    (0K)

  Free       758,928  (741K)    644,544  (629K)    114,384  (112K)



Memory Summary:



  Type of Memory       Total         Used          Free

  ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------

  Conventional          655,360        10,816       644,544

  Upper                 177,408        63,024       114,384

  Reserved                    0             0             0

  Extended (XMS)     65,817,344     2,591,488    63,225,856

  ----------------  -----------   -----------   -----------

  Total memory       66,650,112     2,665,328    63,984,784



  Total under 1 MB      832,768        73,840       758,928



  Total Expanded (EMS)                 66,174,976    (63M)

  Free Expanded (EMS)                  63,225,856    (60M)

  Largest executable program size         644,528   (629K)

  Largest free upper memory block          94,880    (93K)

  MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area.

Anyway, even if I use Techw0rm, I can't get the sounds to work under DOS (I have SB16, and no auto-detection programs for under DOS), so I have decided to use Windows. But anyway, now my problem is that MoM doesn't detect the EMS for some reason... I could barely get 573K conventional memory under Windows by disabling the side frame of EMS, but seems like the side frame is needed, so I don't know what I can do under Windows.

And yet, just because of looking smart:

- You forgot the lh before smartdrv... Now you don't want a 28K program taking up your conventional memory, do you? (*prays that Smartdrive, which is a HD/floppy/CD read/write buffer manager, doesn't auto-load itself to upper memory*)
- DOS = UMB means that all the DOS stuff outside programs (e.g. global variables, system information) is stored in upper memory, DOS = HIGH means that DOS coordinates the usage of high memory. Note that whatever you do, don't put DOS=SINGLE into config.sys... not that it would damage anything, but you can't use Windows with it .
- I prefer to have BootGUI = 1 , because I mostly use Windows anyway... BTW, if you want to save 512 bytes of hard drive space (or, in some cases, even more!), delete enough of those x's so that your msdos.sys is exactly 1024 bytes. (Now everybody goes and says "Wow, I've just saved half a kilobyte of HD space! Praise LE!)

Again, do not call me a Windows nerd .

(EDIT: Added preformatting tags to part of the post, looks better now)
[This message has been edited by LightEning (edited March 09, 2001).]

[Chaos Warrior]

erm... I don't know... there IS a reason why I don't load smartdrv into himem... hmm...

[pchang]

getting back to the game, my record time for winning was 1412 (does the game start in the year 1400?) on hard level. This was done using the 11 death book and summon wraith strategy. What is your speed record for winning and how did you do it?

[Ari Rahikkala]

OK, Chowlett, here's the instructions for #3 in nutcase, in fact this is almost the same thing that Andz said:

1. Make backup copies of the files named autoexec.bat and config.sys, they should be on your c:\ directory.

2. Remove everything but the rows containing "himem.sys" and "emm386.exe" from config.sys (Win doesn't work without himem and you need to have upper memory, so you can't just strip everything away) (Note also that if you don't have the game completely on HD, don't delete the rows that refer to the CD driver).

3. If you have MoM completely on HD, delete everything from autoexec.bat. If you don't, don't remove the row that refers to mscdex.exe (or to other CD driver).

4. Pray.

5. Reboot.

6. Execute MoM from Windows.


And if this doesn't work, be a good boy and post here the contents of your autoexec.bat and config.sys - files and we veterans can give more precise instructions.
[This message has been edited by LightEning (edited March 09, 2001).]

[Chaos Spawn]

I went to gaming depot to get the version of MoM to download to my HD (with the hopes of running it with a bootdisk - I can't get the CD version to run even with techworm - I get a CD not found file error), and was unable to locate the download version of Master of Magic.
I found Master of Orion in the strategy link, but no MoM.
Then I put Master of Magic in the search field, and only came up with a link to the download version of Colonization.

Any ideas where I might find it?

I think if I can find the HD version I have a good chance of getting it to run with techworm. I am getting my vacation days in April, so now would be the perfect timing... =P.

- Chaos

[pchang]

http://www.redrival.com/lackaff/momrc/download.html
Try looking here.

[Richard Bruns]

I downloaded it and finally got it to run, and I am really impressed. I mow realize that the other fantasy strategy games that I liked, such as Warlords III and Heroes of Might and Magic, are merely imitations, and rather poor ones at that. This game is really good. In some ways, the city management and economy systems are better than Civilization. The battle system is great, far surpassing that of every other empire building game I have played to date. Overall, it promises to be a fantastic playing experience.

The only problem was the lack of sound. I have an integrated soundcard that absolutely refuses to work with any DOS-based game. But I recently found and downloaded the MIDI music files, so I can run them in the background while I play. I am playing that music now, simply going down the playlist. This music is good. If you are forced to play without sound due to some settings problem, I highly recommend this tactic.

That said, I'm not doing too well. How am I supposed to expand in the early game? Founding new cities is horribly slow and costly and the space requirement makes it really hard to find a good place to build anyway. All the neutral cities seem to be packed with good units, typically hordes of halberdiers. On Normal diffuculty with Merlin and High Men, I am surrounded with tough cities, tougher lairs, and impossibly tough nodes. My starting units are hopeless, so I have to wait until I build up. I'll send in a hero and several groups of pikemen, and maybe a couple summoned beasts, and they all get clobbered. I wasn't able to do anything but sit in my city until I built up a pack of paladins and beefed them up with spells, and even they eventually got clobbered by a few fire giants in a lair.

I read the manual and FAQ, but they don't help much. How am I supposed to get an empire started?

[Richard Bruns]

Thanks, pchang.

I must say that I found that Heroism is often quite pointless when you are a Warlord. After a string of battles, I happened to notice that I had several super-elite units that were being "helped" by this spell. Apparently that's a bug in the game; when the units are altered by the Warlord skill, the spells didn't go away on their own like they was supposed to. Since they can easily come out as Veterans and then raise to Elite rather quickly, It seems that the spell points are better used for other things.

Horsebowmen are now my favorite unit. I get to recreate the battle of Carrhae every time I take a city. With careful manouvering, a few of them even took out two Earth Elementals and a horde of War Bears without getting scratched.

I love life magic. My starting spearman was out scouting the map, and it ran across a city defended by only two swordsmen. I pumped him up with spells, charged him in, and added Exeter to my empire. It was actually the first city I took that game.

I have erased another warlord and now control a thriving continent. The only problem is that the two Wizard Towers on that continent each lead to one square islands, so I haven't been able to do anything on Myrror yet.

It seems that this game was a lot nicer than earlier ones. There were several lairs and ruins with nothing in them at all. Maybe I just got unlucky in those first games.

It seems like the best strategy is to start with a race that expands quickly, and capture races that have good late-game units. Most of my cities are High Man. I am almost ready to churn out Paladins from Exteter.

[pchang]

Try using a custom wizard with WARLORD. This gives an immediate boost to your units. In addition, early on, units with ranged attacks are extremely valuable. Highmen units aren't very good except cavalry, pikemen, and paladins. Boost your units with heroism as an Overland spell whenever possible. In fact, boost units with Overland spells whenever possible instead of boosting them in combat. As an alternative, try starting as Nomads and using horsebowmen. Also, don't worry about boosting the tax rate. Population unhappiness in this game does not have very severe consequences (compared to civilization). Marshall law always works. 2 units pacify 1 unhappy citizen.