Might & Magic (1-2)

The first two games in the Might & Magic series, published by New World Computing. Both reuse a similar game engine. I only have experience with Might & Magic II, so some of these details may not apply to Might & Magic I.

Combat

Time is turn-based with rounds.
Commands are executed immediately.
Unit turns are ordered by by speed-based initiative.
Units may take one action each turn - attack an enemy unit, cast a spell, use item, or attempt to flee combat.
No form of haste.
Characters gain additional attacks as they level up, but can only target one enemy unit per turn.
Space is one-dimensional, discreet, and has tactical considerations. Normally, only the first 2 or 3 slots on each side are allowed to engage in melee combat (marked with a + in the UI), other units must used ranged combat or spells. When a unit dies all the rest on that side “move up” to fill the empty slot. If the party is surprised, then all characters considered to be in melee range, which simulates being ambushed and surrounded be enemies.
Combat difficulty is primarily determined by the location of the encounter, as this determines the type of enemies that can be encountered. However, the game engine can scale combats up by increasing the number of enemies encountered to try and match the party’s strength.
Combat placement is not random, nor is combat frequency. Specific squares always have a one-time combat encounter, which resets when the player reenters the area.

Exploration

Areas have no persistence, and will completely reset to their initital state whenever the player enters them. Combat encounters and quests can be done over and over to yield unlimited XP and gold.
The game can only be saved at the inn.

Interactions & Bugs

Divine Intervention is supposed to age the caster by 5 years, but doesn’t. (Mac version bug?)

Combat Scaling + Slot 20 + Bloop + Holy Word

This is one of my favorite “we didn’t think about that” combination of mechanics, possibly with a bug or two thrown in.

On the Mac version, a “bloop!” sound is played every time a monster dies, taking maybe half a second. The game pauses while playing the sound.
The enemy side of the battlefield only has 20 “slots” for units to occupy. For the first 19, they each slot holds one enemy, and when an enemy dies the rest shift up to fill the empty slot. Slot 20 is special - it can contain multiple copies of the same unit, up to a 3 digit number. When an enemy in a higher slot dies, one “peels off” from Slot 20 into Slot 19.
Combat scaling for extremely powerful parties in lower level areas would get extremely out of hand by adding a huge number of enemies to slot 20, sometimes in the hundreds.
Even a powerful character can only kill one enemy per round with melee or ranged attacks, and each time one dies, the half-second “bloop!” is played. Thus, it would take several minutes of spamming the Attack hotkey to get through such an encounter. Plus, you would have to wait for each enemy to attack back - possibly casting spells.
Some enemies, like Horned fiends or Lich Lords, have very nasty Stone/Death/Eradication abilities. Although individaully they have a very low chance of affecting a high-level character, in huge numbers someone will eventually be stoned or eradicated.
Melee and ranged attacks cannot be used on Slot 20.
Single-target spells like Implosion cannot not be used on Slot 20. (Can multi-target spells like Dancing Sword indirectly Slot 20?)
Spells which target ALL enemies DO affect Slot 20, hopefully killing the entire stack of enemies. For some reason, the game engine considers it a single enemy. (Mac bug?)
Most high-level enemies have too many hit points to be killed with one of the few target-all spell. But, Holy Word destroys all undead, no matter their level or hit points. +500 Lich Lords? No problem. (Is it unresistable?)

Personal experience

Might & Magic II was the first big-name RPG that I put significant time into, probably around 1990 on a Macintosh Plus.