Master of Magic: Rise of the Soultrapped

Enraged_Snowman

2024年04月12日

'Rise of the Soultrapped' add-on adds a strange robotic faction (maybe think of the Meklars of MOO, although not as attractive as the Meklars are) to the game. It's overall pretty fun and adds a little more challenge to the game.

It does make it very hard if you aren't familiar with the auto battle rules- you need long-range siege weapons like steam cannons and catapults to win the auto battles, having 20 stag beetles won't stop a single stack of Soultrapped units. Also, a downside to this expansion could be that the computer opponents are too dumb to fight off the Soultrapped so even at 200% difficulty, they will frequently be eliminated from the game by the Soultrapped, leaving you with a lot of neutral cities to conquer rather easily.

Apart from the Soultrapped, I'd like to comment on a few things I realized about the AI and out-of-game behaviour of Slitherine agents (?). The AI is a lot worse than original Master, let alone Caster of Magic. The computer is so stupid and doesn't even think about building roads, and they will incessantly try to sabotage your magic spirits and engineers- to the point of, leaving a Node alone for 250 turns after they conquered it AND ONLY COMING TO MELD AFTER THE PLAYER MELDED IT.
Also the engineer sabotaging must abso-effing-lutely go away. It's not just the players, but groups of giant spiders, colossi, great drakes, and Soultrapped whatever- they all come to kill your poor beastmen engineers trying to connect a city to another. Same thing with Settlers but I guess attacking Settlers makes a little more sense than engineers and spirits.

Also, I usually mention Master of Magic on reddit gaming subreddits to players who aren't familiar with the game. However I was contacted by someone- in hindsight it may have been someone from Slitherine- saying that they prefer the new Master over the old DOS version. It's acceptable to me that the developers/sales reps feel that way but it's not a good idea to say that to a fan who was voluntarily talking about the game that way. The reason I thought the person was from Slitherine is because I was contacted by the person on three different occasions on different subreddits. Maybe I misunderstood something, but please don't do that. I like the new Master but there's no way it's going to be better than the classic for me period. Don't you salespeople have a thing called sentimental value? Not even to mention that the AI feels BETTER in the older Master than yours.
I should probably 'not recommend' this game just for that, but I'll overlook it this time.

Anyway, if you thought Slitherine's Master of Magic was too easy, this is an okay addendum. Maybe you can try not building siege weapons and trying to fight off the Soultrapped at maximum difficulty- but I think that's going to be close to impossible. Too bad the overall AI is still 'dumb as toast'. If you act fast enough so you can build a stack of Steam Cannons, it will arguably be easier than the vanilla version because the 'Soultrapped' will completely run over Jafar, Oberic, Tauron and what not.