Flying Units

podracer691

Join Date 04/2003

Flying Units

I read that that flying units do not exist. For example, a player could wall off his or her castle with volcano spells and units cannot fly over the volcanos. If this is true, it should be reconsidered for a fantasy game. I could not have imagined playing Master of Magic without flying units.

To further add to my confusion, I have seen screen shots with dragon units. Don't they fly and why can't they fly over volcanos conjured by volcano spells? Please explain. Thanks so much.

elemental

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I don't think it's too ridiculous to expect flying units that aren't insanely rare and powerful. The only fantasy settings I can think of that don't feature things like gargoyles or sentient eagles or whatnot are extremely low-magic, like A Song of Ice and Fire. And even A Song of Ice and Fire features wargs that can see through the eyes of birds, which would be a flying scout. This is a game where you are a god-like wizard, not exactly compatible with low-magic. Not to mention that people don't play a game called "War of Magic" to be told that something as mundane as flight is impossible.

The ability to field units that can do fantastic things (like flying) is the defining part of the turn-based fantasy genre. If it's not in Day 1 I would hope flying units would be added in an expansion or something.

Not saying that I'll throw a tantrum if I can't easily enchant an entire stack of knights to just gallop across a rainbow, I can see why someone would want to leave that sort of thing out, but I really think the absence of flying summons like imps and such would detract from the atmosphere.

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Quoting Annatar11,

reply 17

Me, I want hobbits.

Nasty Hobittses, Nasty Nasty Hobbitses!!!

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Its been said more than a few times before that there will be units that can fly, i.e. Dragons - you just can't train any flying units.

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To the OP:

Did you really just combine "flying units" "fantasy" and "realistic" in the same sentence??? That is awesome.

I'm sure within a WEEK of release, there will be a mod...

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

I wish flying units were widely available in the game. It would make AI coding a LOT easier.

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Anything that has a flying animation in game can have the "Flying" trait taken off a true flying unit and modded onto it. Making a structure that you can recruit those units from in game is ridiculously easy. Frogboy even shows us how in a video dev journal he did a while back. I'd say a Mod with recruitable flying units will be out within the First Couple Days, not even a week. I could probably do one on release night if there weren't so many other things I'd rather mod in first

Get in touch with by Folcik009 here on the forums and ask him nicely and he might crank it out the first night if he has time. I'm sure there's a bunch of us here on the forums who would like to see something like this in game.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 30

I wish flying units were widely available in the game. It would make AI coding a LOT easier.

Gal Civ III?

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Quoting econundrum1,

reply 22

I have no strong wish to put in flying units but it wouldn't be to difficult I imagine so we may see it in a future update. Not sure it really adds that much to the game though.

As for see going units I believe they are in already.

At BETA we had only Transport Units for Sea travel.

Not sure if anymore have been added yet.

I had a few maps where my start was blocked by Sea and Mountains, to get by this I grew my town until the area of influence was past the mountain and teleported over. Another way would to have used the Spell Lower Land to cut a new Valley to pass through.

Lots of options when you have magic.

Lee

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Flying units, while cool, are traditionally extremely difficult to balance if they are able to fly in combat. The fact that they are immune to melee attacks is such a huge advantage. This problem becomes compounded when you try to teach the AI to deal with flying units. As a result I'd never blame a game for not including these. It's better to not have a feature then to have a feature and have it be poorly implemented.

Much easier to deal with are units who have limited flight like in HoMM. Their flying gives them superior mobility, but they have to land after every move so they can still be attacked.

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funny how flying units made it into Master of Magic in 1995 and 15 years later programmers cant make it happen in this game. LoL and higher some better programmers. MoM didnt need flying modded in or wait for a future patch either. So how long until modern turn based strategies can put flying back into games?

As for flying units being immune to melee, the supposed spiritual predecessor to this game, Master of Magic, fixed that problem by having flying units land to attack. Heroes of Might and magic games also used that concept. Its neither difficult to impliment, nor game breaking. Can't believe game balance excuse is even being given.

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If Gnomes can't tinker motorcycles in this game, consider me sad. (not really)

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well I am not suprised there are no flying units as there are no special abilities for units in general, whats up with just giving every unit man so that they can then cast the same spells as the caster. I have spiders that can cast blizzard but they suck becuase they have hardly any intellgecne.

they dropped the ball with unit design.

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One of the nastalgic aspects of Master of Magic was that each race had its own units which had different abilities. Dark Elves had warlocks and nightmares (which could fly btw), dwarves had hammerhands and golems, high elves had griffen riders, and the list goes on. That's what made the game so great, was that you could see how hundreds of different unit and spell combos interacted with each other. And on top of all that, they threw in a another Plane of Existence to conquer.

As for hero balancing, Master of magic executed it well. You could get some weak and pathetic heroes that couldn't kill spiders, but by the end game you could literally mop the map with some heroes.

Elemental doesn't seem to have quite captured the spirit. Damn I wish they would have negotiated for that Master of Magic license a little harder, heh.

On a side note I am glad I kept my Master of Magic Official Strategy Guide, those suckers go for $70-140 on Amazon. lol.

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