A friendly word of advice -

do NOT buy Master of Orion III if you plan to use it on a system that does not display 800 x 600 resolution graphics clearly. This would include -

> almost any laptop made in the last 3 years
> almost ANY LCD display
> most CTR displays larger than 19"

For reasons that are all over the forums at the various MOO3 sites, this game was made to work *only* in 600 x 800 resolution. In my case, I have now blown ~$50 on a game I can not play on either PC I own - my laptop or my desktop - unless I hook them up to a CTR monitor. On my systems, the graphics are extremely muddy and text is unreadable. Some users with large CTR monitors have complained about "...pixels the size of your thumbnail..."

Available graphic mods do not clear any of this up, and the developers have made it pretty clear that adding additional resolutions to the game is not the type of thing that can be addressed in a game patch.

After the great experience I have had with Civ III and PTW, I can only say that I am *really* disapointed in Infogrames...

Ashoka