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The following is a list of conceptual ideas on the future additions or changes to the rough workings of the original Master of Magic. Wether these will be implemented or not isn't really known, though it is fairly certain they will find their way into the final product in some way as I think they can at least offer even a small additional change to increase the strategic depth of the game. I'd be interested to hear what others have to say and any ideas I find particularly interesting may find themselves place in this list for review at a later time, feel free to let me know anything you thought was good or bad in the original Master of Magic on the contact page.
This is a fairly broad concept, but the general idea is to define most of the game information using XML files. Above all, this would create a world of opportunity in terms of game modding. Too often players wish they could tweak this or that value for some in game entity as they feel the developer didn't quite balance something just right, or made something else a little too weak or other such cases. By defining the data via XML files, the player can tweak the game to their liking, very easily. This presents issues that would need to be tackled regarding security and cheating in scenario competitions, but in the long run its probably a good idea. I'm thinking to define Units, Buildings, Races, Lairs, Creatures within easily definable XML files. Spells will likely not fall under this because they are far too unique to be generalized into standard XML markup, I think anyway. I'd rather have varied and unique spells instead of takes on the same 'genre' of spells. Further thought needs to go into this regarding spells though as something else may be able to be done.
4/25/07
This is currently in progress. Units are fully customizable and extensible
via XML definitions. This basically means that whole new units can be designed
by the player and that the standard core definitions for all units in the game
can be modified to suit special game scenarios and setups. I plan on striving
very hard to incorporate the same abilities into the spells and hopefully later
into abilities. (These are very unique and varied so though it will be challanging,
I believe its worth doing). My focus is to move as much data to XML definitions
as possible, ultimately the more that can be captured in such definitions means
the more power the player has over modifying and extending the game to suit
their needs. We all love games that we can tweak, so this is of utmost importance
to me.
This is a sticky concept for a variety of reasons, but the idea is to design out the game in such a way that multiple rules DLLs or rules configuration files could be supported. In this way, the game could play out quite differently dependant on which rules file/dll is 'plugged-in'. This is a general take off of the XML definitions above, only for the rules of the game. What's interesting about this is that were this to be done, and done well, the possibility exists for the engine to support a variety of different turn-based game types. Again this would be great for modding, but what I am really after is having an 'Original Master of Magic' rule file, and then supply the 'Extended' rule file that would incorporate all the additional changes, as I know I'd like to have access to just the core rules when all is said and done, even after my personal extensions are added. Technically this is probably not feasible to be done and would require a ton of work even if it was, but again I think in some regard, such a feature could be very useful.
I've never been a fan of implementing pretty graphics for the sole purpose of having pretty graphics. Therefore, I'd like to integrate the power of 3D graphics beyond the traditional benefits (animation, camera movement, etc). In some ways I've incorporated the 3D graphics, in that combat will now use height values for the rougher terrain, this adds the new element of height to combat, instead of a flat battlefield. However, I'd also like to take the generated segment geometry and apply it to the resources and benefits the segment provides to an empire. For example, a very mountainous segment with very high peaks, should probably contain more minerals or metals, just because there is simply more mountain while smaller mountains should contain less. In this way, the pretty visual reference on the overland map is not just to please the eye, but also physically means something in the game. Furthermore, adding weather systems, this may have an effect on the terrain. For example, if it consistently rains over a desert area for some time... the desert should probably change to grassland or swamp or something. This is probably unrealistic because real evolutionary terrain changes shouldn't occur over a normal game length, but it could be interesting at the very least, its a game, it doesn't have to be completely realistic.
A very interesting idea that is probably largely pulled from what's being done in Dwarf Fortress, is to track and make use of historical events within the various overland terrain segments. As stated above, weather affects could make changes to the landscape over time, but other historical things could have various other effects as well. For example, a segment in which many soldiers have lost their lives could coalesce into a graveyard point of interest or other interesting evil structure. This would keep the ruins and lairs from being explored early in the game never to be seen again and also create some immersion in the history of the lands. Similarly anything that can happen to a segment could have an effect on its historical perspective. At the very least, adding history to the game in some tangible way would go a long way to making a long game seem much more cohesive and realistic to the player. After playing on a map and knowing all of its history... there might be a reason to continue to play on that map later.
The ability to create an army as large as you wanted in Master of Magic as long as you could afford the upkeep (gold, food, mana) was a little unrealistic and usually created massive amounts of unit stacks late in the game (by the AI) would slowed the game down a little too much. I'm thinking of requiring an amount of the population in the city a unit is trained in, be required to make up the actual unit being trained. For example if there are 6 figures in a unit, perhaps it should require 600 citizens be taken out of the population and into military service. This would definitly create a stronger influence on the well being of a city and also assure that the maximum population cap for a city not simply be reached and rest at that point. The city would likely need to keep regrowing, and if in war a lot of military was created, it would have a negative impact on the population of the empire globally and specific city locally. I think overall this would lower the amount of active units across the board in the world and would also change the dynamics of the game in favor of more strategy and less brute force. Still however, careful cultivation of a strong economy and population base would still allow for very large military organizations in the game, it would just require more careful attention later in the game.
Taking a page from the Heroes of Might & Magic and Age of Wonders games, I think it would be very fun to create quests for the game, or at least have the possibility there for specific scenarios and modding. Heroes were in the original game, but they were really just pumped up units, they generally didn't have any other purpose than to go around stomping on everything else, yes fun, but not fully realized I don't think. Therefore, since we have heroes, our heroes should probably be going on adventures or quests for the empire. A system of simple scripting could be included and be user defined through a scripting language like LUA (which is implemented and supported currently). This would be an oustanding addition to the game. Scenarios and full campaigns could be created around plot points and expressed through quest scripts, to give more meaning to the game, other than 'conquer all'. Above all, heroes would have an actual purpose in the world as only they could complete quests.
Experience was implemented into the original Master of Magic but I feel like more could have been done. Certaintly heroes progression was probably done just fine, but the standard unit should also have a little more going on than wether or not they are veteran or elite units. I think in certain experiences (and this is coupled with History from above), a unit that manages to survive some ridiculous attack, or overcomes some intersting obstacle, should be noted and commended for it. This might come in the form of a medal or new special unit ability. The goal here is to put more emphasis on holding onto one's original troops and being more careful in the strategic decision making in combat. You'd really not want to lose certain troop regiments that have excelled in combat in the past. I don't want to go too much further than the original game as there's no point in treating regulard units like heroes (let alone the added micromanaging for the player), but in certain circumstances a historical bond would be nice to have.
This might be too realistic but I think it would put a new strategic spin on diplomacy. In most strategy games like Master of Magic, diplomacy is regarded as a global communication link, always available once you've met your opposition. I think this is a little absurd in a setting when most units can't instantly travel back and forth. Therefore the creation of a special emissary unit (or ability that certain units would have more likely) would be required in order to handle diplomacy with another empire. The emissary would need to travel to the city of interest and conduct negotiations as needed. This would allow for more responses (such as capture or kill the emissary, fun way to start wars) and also throw a new strategic element into the fray. Diplomacy would only be avaible when an emissary was sent with a specific order from one of your cities and sent to an enemy or neutral city. All kinds of obstacles would now need to be handled, such as protecting that emissary from attack as well as timing the diplomatic meetings around specific player identified points during gameplay.
Alignment - Politics
An intriguing element to a game of this nature would be the incorporation of some kind of alignment system, that would strech from being very good to being very bad. The most obvious effect here would be on White vs Black magic. Since black magic typically deals with the morbid raising of undead armies and dark rituals etc, many of the depraved and vile things within the dark arts are generally despised and looked down upon by most other empires. The other side of the coin is the white magician who specializes in healing and beneficial practices that is generally looked upon as something good and useful. If playing a rather evil ruler, you should have more dark choices available with regards to running your empire. For example, lowering taxes shouldn't be the only response to dealing with unrest. Certaintly improvised witch hunts or other evil enterprises should also be available, though with consequences in terms of the politics of other empires. A lot of this is up for debate and further fleshing out. Note, although many games make you explicitly choose to be good or evil, these would merely be options and choices available to the player, not necessarily forced upon them. (Credits to Tom, you can help flesh this out when the time comes)
Reactive World - General Gameplay
The original Master of Magic seemed to be played out in phases. The first phase was building up your first few cities and gaining some power, exploring your surroundings and dealing with pesty monsters and netural cities. The next half was focused on further expansion of your empire and gaining more power and cleaning up the map of its lairs, holds and nodes. Finally the last half was unleashing massive attacks on whoever remained. This is a little too formulaic for my tastes (though fun all the same). I'd like the game world itself to be far more alive and reactive to events in the world.
For example, monster lairs should not simply be something to 'clean up' in the early to middle stages of the game, but should appear due to things occuring in the world (again based on History above). If an abnormal amount of fantastic units have died in a spot, or have been summoned, etc, then it might be a good place for a new keep to rise up from the ground (or other such logic, to create new points of interest throughout the game). If you have unrest in your city and you fail to deal with it for many years, they should rebel and when they rebel they might attack you, or they might go and found a new settlement elsewhere in the world. Natural disasteres or events should happen from time to time and actually affect the terrain of the game. A lot of other possibilities could be thrown into this same general idea. The main goal is to keep the world evolving and changing so that new challenges and decisions are required and the game doesn't come off so much in stages, but rather a continuous ever evolving and fluctuating dynamic worlds. Although it's not fun to lose (generally speaking), it's not all that fun to do perfectly well over the course of a game. Sometimes bad things happen that will set you back but it's all the more enjoyable and rewarding when you can overcome that unexpected challenge only to come out better down the road. Note, although the game world should be more reactive and exciting, I do not mean that something fantastic should happen every turn, it should still play fairly realistically and not be overly dramatic.