Not sure why there isn't an official announcement here yet as they're rolling out the read carpet from CoM on the MoM steam forum lol (maybe I'm just too quick for ya ;) ).

But this is big news! Seravy has done a deal with Slitherine (the new MoM license holder working on a new MoM game) and Caster of Magic is now a buyable ‘officially approved’ Master of Magic addon on Steam & GoG! Naturally Seravy has promised to continue doing more amazing improvements to the mod now that he’s receiving financial reward for his hard work. Caster of Magic is already amazing enough as it changes & improves MoM so much but my god if he ever finds a way to exceed the 4 enemy player limit I’ll have his baby lol!

Announcement thread:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=9846

The only downside is all previous copies of CoM have been wiped! Don’t think I’ve grabbed a copy since 5.6, which must have been a while back as he’s now up to 6.0 lol!

https://www.gog.com/game/master_of_magic_caster_of_magic

I have 5.75 archived.

Oh and FYI to the Slitherine guys. I run the Master of Magic Facebook Group community so I've spread the news there and have also posted on the MoM reddit, Discord and a few forums to let the community know the big news!

Btw Slitherine dudes, while you guys are in the mood for contacting guru MoM fan developers feel free to contact Nigel/Implode who was making the Master of Magic HD Multiplayer remake which was basically a rebuild of the original MoM in java that supported modern HD resolutions, Multiplayer and 13 player games with all wizards! He's pretty much abandoned it (in a barely playable state with next to no AI) as he wasn't getting much support! Maybe some sort of collaboration and financial arrangement could change the tide on that project haha. :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ook3GqkmL8

.

Just bought it. How do I run it?

It is described as a mod so I assumed that running the exe would mod the mom that I have. Not so. Found an extra install directory embedded in the prior mom install directory. Don't see any obvious ways to fire it up. Am I supposed to launch DosBox manually and mount in the com/mom exe?

-edit- To clarify: I am not a Galaxy user.

The announcement was in General Discussion, not in the game specific sub forum.

All I can say is gross.... this isn't some real dlc with bug fixes and some new content, this is virtually a complete remake of the base game.... I'll be demanding my money back as it isn't what was advertised/expected...

Is it still an ms-dos game, or is it a port for modern windows? I mean, can I play the add-on/mod on my 486 PC?

Still a DOS game, but you will need to copy it over yourself.

pfft.. have you been living under a rock or something haha. Also you can read right? Prob should have done both as this forum is where the dedicated MoM fans lurk. ;)

Official minimum requirements list Windows 8 & 10.

I'm still running 7, with no immediate plans to upgrade. Can anyone confirm whether CoM will, or definitely won't, run properly under that OS?

It runs in Dosbox which will run fine in Windows 7, it iisn't an updated game (modern ui/os etc), still a dos mod.

Well, I've been playing MoM since almost the day of the original release, with some breaks here and there. Purchased the Gog version oh so many moons ago (I think shortly after it was rereleased). As for Caster of Magic, I never heard of it until this update came out. I used to fart around on the Gamefaqs forums but not here.

Anyhow, with CoM probably the biggest issue is the removal of dependancies for construction, the reason being is that design choice was intentional and core to the original game because of the lack of researchable technology. I watched an interview somewhere with the guys who made MoM and they were talking about the concept and design. This is but one issue I had with the patch.

Also want to raise a concern about the commercial release of CoM, did he write that mod 100% himself? Or did he use some code from the other community developers who had worked on the game? Not even going to bother with the details regarding using open sourced code under gnu and then reselling it. Without permission from every single one of those developers who contributed to the patches over the years he is technically in copyright violation and can have the game/mod dmca'd on valid grounds. 10 lines of code caused one of the best modpacks for Minecraft to end up ceasing development as a result of one person claiming it and he just claimed as a takedown. Dangerous times online, thanks to wonderful American design. :( Anyhow I've calmed down and ended up purchasing mom on steam, just won't be supporting a mod that is 99% likely to be in violation of gnu and personal copyrights... :(

Oh look its the same guy complaining about the game over on the steam forum too. Activity campaigning for people not to buy CoM is NOT cool. I was going to answer your rant here but now that you've chosen to go in this direction I'm not going to waste my time other than to suggest the admins deal with you as activity targeting a game across multiple sites and telling people not to buy it all for the crime of you not understanding its brilliance is a joke and not a very funny one. The only valid point you make is in the naming of it, Seravy wanted it to still be called a mod, Slitherine felt differently.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1146370/discussions/0/1743394388072526874/

.

Yes, I did make Caster of Magic by myself, there are no other developers.
Obviously the community patches included in the base Master of Magic game are also included in CoM where applicable but that's to be expected of a mod. Slitherine does have the proper permission from the other major contributor of those patches. Other than the two of us, the only remaining contributor was kyrub but his Insecticide wasn't properly documented, added new bugs, but he vanished from the internet years ago and we pretty much had to figure out what he did and create our own patch files based on it.
Master of Magic/Caster of Magic has no source. The entire process was done by disassembly and hex editing.

Caster of Magic uses the design of "magic is the main gamplay" pretty much. So that's your "technology". The original design of building restrictions didn't work well anyway. There is nothing stopping the player from simply purchasing the buildings up to the highest tier, and it's not too hard to obtain the gold to do so from treasure or simply saving up your taxes. Without research limiting the building tiers, they are much less meaningful. "Paladins first" is one of the best Master of Magic strategies despite the unit requiring by far the most and highest tier buildings. Compared to that, Caster of Magic's "armorer's guild unlocks in 1406" is much more restrictive. The ideal solution would be to add a new Arcane spell that unlocks the highest building tier but that's sadly not possible with hex editing.