Master of Magic: Caster of Magic

The good: Added some new buildings, new spells, and new retorts. Greatly improved interactions with other wizards. Made it possible to have a long term peace with another wizard. The bad: Changed it so you only start with weak spells. In the original game, if you dumped all your books into one school of magic, you'd get one higher level spell. Altered numerous races in ways that changed who they are, and how they work, including taking magical weapons away from barbarians, and compounding that by making the Alchemy retort give everyone, except barbarians, magical weapons. Finding retorts and spellbooks is almost impossible in the game, even once you've taken every node and ruin you can find. The really bad: Basically ruined the Myrran retort. If you choose it, EVERY WIZARD GETS IT. Odds are they'll all have draconians as well, so they'll expand far faster than you. Doing so makes it a complete waste. Previously you'd get one, maybe two wizards who would start with it, but now, all of them get it so there's no significant benefit aside from being able to choose a few other races. Turned every wizard into an expansionist. The moment the game starts, it's a race to create as many cities as possible, and the computer already has a head start, even at lower difficulty. The AI is omniscient regarding your cities. It not only knows where they all are, it knows how many troops are in each one. Even random monsters will target the city with the least/weakest defenders, knowing in advance which one that is. If that city suddenly has one more defender, monsters will instantly change and target another, even though there's no legitimate way they could know that troops increased. The spell "Awareness" no longer exists, giving your omniscient enemies a massive advantage. They know where all your cities are instantly, but you have to scout and find theirs. It's a good effort, but needs some serious readjustments to be anywhere near as enjoyable as the original.

I have discovered Master of Magic about two years ago. I played it for a month or so, trying to get into its rather complex mechanics, before I stumbled upon Caster of Magic mod and have been playing it instead of original version since then. But I still can't get my head around it. It brings a lot of good things (fixed diplomacy, less bugs, building queue), but it changes many things that I wouldn't like to see changed at all or at least in the way they are changed by this mod like extremely aggressive AI, weaker heroes (in the beginning, but good luck trying to level them up when they are usually sniped in the first round of combat) and changes to race restrictions (inability to change leader's race by moving the fortress (was in the original game) extremely annoys me). The most annoying part, however, is that since Master of Magic was acquired by Slitherine it now ships with their own custom launcher (on GOG!) and this launcher shows you ADS every time before you start the game. This is outrageous. I was going to give this DLC 3.5 stars (I know you technically can give only whole numbers here) but because of ADS and unnecessary custom launcher I give only two stars.

Rodney666's review is pretty much right dead on. It adds a slew of new content, which is something to be excited about--but it definitely does change the flavor of the gaming experience. Nations don't colonize in neat, contained lines anymore; they'll push hard towards your base, and you can expect scouting and raiding parties to start in earnest even on the easier difficulties. It's hard for me to complain about, just for the sheer volume of content--but it's definitely designed for a certain type of play, and I don't much enjoy that type of play. I wanted to take my time and turtle, or else start out with a midgame summon right out of the gate... *sigh*. Oh well.

As another reviewer stated, this DLC/mod makes the AI super aggressive. It's basically total instant war against every single AI wizard, even the ones that are supposed to be peaceful and friendly (Ex. Other Life/Nature wizards of the same race). There IS a great deal of cool new buildings, units, and spells. The DLC really does a fantastic job with that, and this would add a lot more replayabity...if you like playing 1vs4 constant and total war. Even on lower difficulties, there really is no diplomacy with the AIs. They will all attack you as soon as they can no matter what you do, and they're now really good at picking at your weaknesses. And they do seem to have map hacks, as they will always know exactly which of your cities is the least defended and make a beeline there. If you're looking for a challenge with tons of fights, this could be a good DLC. I mean, it's only 3 bucks. Just wish there were options for some AI allies for less aggressive play. Couldn't even explore ruins or the other old stuff as I was constantly having to fight off all the AIs coming at me from every direction. Missed opportunity.