First, I just want to say that I’m looking forward to the discussion of Master of Magic. I fell in love with the game 20ish years ago, and still play it semi-regularly.
For anyone picking the game up on GOG, they will notice the DLC “Caster of Magic” available for sale. If you, like many of us, find that you like the core gameplay of Master of Magic, but also dislike some of the old school jank that comes with the game, then Caster of Magic could be for you.
Master of Magic has a number of game crashing bugs, and also a number of excessively exploitable strategies. 11 Death books Wraith-rush cannot be stopped by the AI on ANY difficulty setting in the basic game. Other strategies are just a bit too boring and predictable (i.e. High Men make Paladins, and also more Paladins). This is not to say that MoM is a bad game. It kept me entertained for literal decades!
Caster of Magic is a long term passion project by several modders, ultimately left in the hands of a single modder known as Seravy. The goal of the mod is to remove bugs, improve AI strategy, diminish exploitative strategies, and keep the focus on the magical spells and summons instead of letting a spammable normal unit rule the game (Paladins).
Caster Pros:
Faster start
Greater depth of strategy
Better performance
Actually useful diplomacy system
Major focus on the spellcasting aspect of the game
Quality of life improvements like queueing production
Caster Cons:
Can be punishingly difficult
Focus on spells/summons can be turn off for people who want a more tactical experience with normal units
A lot of rock/paper/scissors encounters where you have no chance if you didn’t prepare for various enemy abilities.
For anyone interested, I highly recommend the YouTuber “Hadriex.” He has a massive collection of MoM videos that eventually converts to a Caster of Magic playlist.
Seravy also has a Youtube channel, but he doesn’t speak while playing, and that is a major hurdle for myself and many others.
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