It has one. Dominions 3. Last fantasy TBS game you’ll ever need.

I think Fall From Heaven (as inextricably Civ-ish as it is, being a mod for Civ IV and all) is closer to the Master of Magic feel than any of the Age of Wonders games, which are entirely scenario-based and thus completely lack the wide-open empire-building of Master of Magic. Plus they’re insanely hard, or I suck, one of the two. I find that I can only afford one decent stack and so the computer just goes around attacking whatever my stack’s not near and I never make any actual forwards progress. Anyone who would like to direct me to some help in that regards will receive effusive gratitude…

Still, this definitely needs a contemporary remake. I’m not salivating on my keyboard at the thought of Stardock doing just that, but only because that would be incredibly stupid. But you might say, that I’m giddy with anticipation.

Sins looks very promising too. I once bought Hegemonia, thinking that it would be something like Masters of Orion in real time and was rather disappointed to find out, that it was something else entirely… I guess it still was a good game, but it really wasn’t what I was looking for, so I never got into it..

I was a total warhammer geek and Warlords fan back then and having a fantasy empire building game, where I could train different units of different races was just brilliant.

It was a bit broken though, I think. Heroes were incredibly powerfull and I had at least two heroes with so many movement and other bonuses stacked on them that they and their armies could cover ridiculous amounts of ground each turn and defeat everything in their way.

But I guess I never played it on it’s hardest difficult setting. Anyways, I’m off to the home of the underdogs now, to see if I can grab it there..

Let’s take a stroll on memory lane, shall we…

EDIT: Yup, it’s there. Now let’s hope DOS-Box can run this. Oh, and I paid good money for it back then, so I’m not doing anything illegal here!

It shouldn’t be that hard. Galactic Civilizations 2 “gets” what make these games great to their players and I am sure they can manage to put some interesting twists. Master of Magic had some serious balance problems (which is not a problem to make it of of my most beloved games). I loved all that possibilities, I loved to have tons of spells, to create my own magic devices, to control different types of races (each with their own types of units and differentiated buildings), to build my cities and watch them grow and, of course, to have a direct input in battle.

In fact, the problem of Master of Magic it’s exactly what made it great for me, it was so vast, it had so many options and possibilities that it didn’t need a perfectly controlled and balanced campaign. I want more of that, more of that unpredictability. The actual games may be better products, but I miss the “shooting for the moon” approach, that innocence produced many overambitious almost unplayable games, but when worked, it was fantastic.

As for the unicorns, well.. “I don’t wanna sound like a queer or nothin’ but Unicorns really kick ass.”

“Sins Of A Pink Unicorn – A Real Time Fantasy 4X”

I’m allready sold…

(I still haven’t played it)

KG