How do you like MOO3, now that you have had much time to play, and with the luxury of patches?

I didn't vote as I haven't played any of the previous MOO games but I definitely would recommend it to anyone who enjoys turn based games, and especially science fiction ones.

Not a very positive result so far. :ack:

Perhaps I should vote and help out MOO3 ;), however that would skew the results considering this is the first MOO game I've played.

Perhaps I should start a poll about whether MOO3 is a good game in itself. I wonder if that is duplicating threads though!

That won't give much more value to the discussions I think. We have a thread about why one should buy this game already too, so...

I guess so.

BTW, seeing your avatar has reminded me of the doom 1 & 2 days. Man, that game was cool, especially the double barrel shot gun ;).

this game wasnt very good:( :(

granted, the ship designing is cool, but it doesnt make up for the sheer boredom of this game. (it takes FOREVER for a ship to get from point A to point B!) Also, it is very confusing the first time u play and takes a while to learn.:(

Well, 7 out of 11 voted for the last option. :rolleyes:

I tried it myself once too, but wasn't that much "catched" as with the other two versions. But I figured I needed to get to know the game more and explore all the options there are. It's just that there are so many! :eek:
Originally posted by bladester
BTW, seeing your avatar has reminded me of the doom 1 & 2 days. Man, that game was cool, especially the double barrel shot gun ;).
You know, you're actually the first one ever to make a comment about it. ;)

Originally posted by Matrix
You know, you're actually the first one ever to make a comment about it. ;)

Really? Seeing that marine just brought back all the memories. Is there not any here that remembers or is old enough to have played doom?

Edit: about the number of options available. Take it one step at a time, I started off with getting my economy and planets functional and let the computer design all my ships. Then I started designing my own. It is alot more fun when you are learning a bit at a time and the automation tools help A LOT in this department.

I am still learning the game even now, but that has more to do with lack of spare time than anything else.

And the encyclopedia mods are a must. They really do help explain certain things.

Well, I didn't vote since I never played the other Moos, and it would be hard to recommend it to someone since it DOES have such a steep learning curve--which is only worse with the 1.25 patch since the manual becomes completely outdated...

That said, the game can be quite addictive IF you can get into the spirit of it. You are supposed to be the Galactic Emporer and NOT some micromanager who decides everything about every planet. If you can accept that role, you can like the game. I guess the closest thing in Civ terms is, if you can play Civ with the Governors on, using whatever units or structures they build with workers set on auto, with you only dealing with the combat units and battles and diplomacy, then you have a chance of liking Moo3.

The problem is, though, that you say, OK, I won't micromanage, but then you get overwhelmed because you realize that the choices you make on macroscale sliders DO have Empire-wide effects! If you've never played before, you might figure out what putting one DEA in a region of one planet does--it's understandable--but until you've read all the posts on the Atari MOO forum and played the game a bunch of times, you really don't know what your Empire wide slider setting is gonna do--and you can get paralyzed with indecision.

Stick with it, though, and when it all 'comes together' it's easy to play!

You MUST, however, play with the Senate victory On. Since the AI is STILL not very good (although it's much stronger with the patch) you'll be able to beat it on any difficulty level. You need the Senate victory On for a few reasons:

1) The game will end somewhere between turn 200-300. Your goal becomes to make sure you get in the Senate if you don't start in it, STAY in the Senate if you begin in it--which can actually be quite difficult! As such, this DOES make the game a challenge since you must stay focused on that objective and can't lollygag around.

2) If you DON'T use the Senate victory, as you get farther into the game, the numbers for the Empire will get huge--and there are many roll-over errors in the game where too large a positive number causes it to go negative with sometimes very dire results!

3) Since the game will be ending in that short time frame, you will NOT get all the techs and so may have to develop different tactics and learn to use what you have instead of waiting for stellar converters. (Which I've NEVER gotten and win without!)

So, again, you can see I'm mixed on it--I can't truly recommend a game with some game-killing bugs...


And now a short word about mods. Go to Atari Moo and you'll find mods, lots and lots of mods! On the original release I had installed the tech slow-down mod, but since the patch I've played it clean. I guess after a couple more games I WILL go and figure out which mod(s) I need to make it a challenge--perhaps the Invader megamod mentioned on this board. but there too many to choose from it makes it hard to know which one--or combination of them--to use! ;)

A month ago I bought MOO3 and got MOO2 thrown in for free. I played several games of MOO3, one of them straight through to the end, and was not impressed (yes, I downloaded the patches). Then I installed MOO2, downloaded the patch, downloaded The General's and Bobba Fett's strategy guides, and away I went. I got hooked on MOO2 from the first tutorial game. I don't care what fixes Atari does to MOO3, I won't load them. I can't, since I uninstalled MOO3.

MOO2 is a "just one more turn" game.

Originally posted by YNCS
A month ago I bought MOO3 and got MOO2 thrown in for free. I played several games of MOO3, one of them straight through to the end, and was not impressed (yes, I downloaded the patches). Then I installed MOO2, downloaded the patch, downloaded The General's and Bobba Fett's strategy guides, and away I went. I got hooked on MOO2 from the first tutorial game. I don't care what fixes Atari does to MOO3, I won't load them. I can't, since I uninstalled MOO3.

MOO2 is a "just one more turn" game. dam you got moo2 for free !

MOO2 is a "just one more turn" game.

sounds like my kindda game!:D

also, i saw somewhere that a game called "Galactic Civilizations" is MOO3 done right. has anyone played it?

I have galactic civilizations and when I do get around to play it (or any other game for that matter) I enjoy it. I don't know what you mean by MOO3 done right as I haven't played MOO 1 or 2 and I enjoy MOO3 currently aswell.

But GalCiv is very similar to civ in many aspects. I suggest you download the demo, it's not too large and will give you a flavour of the game. Check it out at http://www.galciv.com

i have GalCiv also, it's much better then moo3 - but it has more of a 'boardgame' feeling to it (and space battles are assumed)...

moo2 is definately the better buy...it's $5 locally

GalCiv is very much like Civ3 in space.....but better IMHO.

I like GalCiv. It's the game that MOO3 tried to be.

Galciv is much better than MOO3

I just picked up the game about a week ago, despite the mixed reviews. It was cheap, so I figured why not? The site to dl the patch wasn't working at first, and I was impatient to start a game, so right now I'm doing without it. It's not a bad game, but there are some pretty big annoyances. For ex., the diplomacy seems to be even stranger than in civ3. There, every civ in the game dislikes me more and more as time goes on, even though I'm not doing anything to them. In MoO3, it's much the same, but even friendly races will cut off profitable trade relations, break treaties, and declare war for seemingly no reason, despite the fact that I outnumber them 10 to 1. Mb I'm doing something wrong, but still..

Someone else mentioned in another thread that the build queues were messed up, and I couldn't agree more. Instead of being easily accessible in the planets list screen, you have to click to the planet screen, then into 2 sub-panels to even see the names of the ships 2nd and 3rd in the list, or change anything. If they wanted to allow macromanagement, there would be a very simple and realistic way to do it. There should have been a screen where you could request that a certain ratio of your ship types be maintained in your reserves, or somewhere that you could put in bulk orders for ships. ie. "I want 6 carriers and 10 long range attack ships built by 15 turns from now", and the AI would assign the tasks to the appropriate planets. That feature alone would have made the game much better. Without it, I either have to read the sitrep all the way through every turn to see what planets have finished building things and need new assignments, or trust the AI to do it and wind up with 80 transports, 40 point def. ships, and 2 each of my core dreadnoughts. :/ Finally, they could have made the build queue longer than 3 slots, so you could fill them up manually every dozen turns or so with a long list and not have to worry about it for a while.

Finally, the way it handles racial preferences and planet habitability is irritating. You can see the habitability rating (sweet spot through red 2) in the solar system screen, and once you colonize it there’s a handy graph in the planet screen that will let you see the environment with respect to other species types and their preferences. But, you can’t see that graph until you do colonize the planet or take it over, so you don’t know who it’s a sweet spot for. For an inhabited world, it seems to refer to the population that’s living there. But, once you grab a world with a magnate race or conquer a planet from another race, you’ll start seeing more units, ships, and population from that race instead of your starting one. This is because, apparently, each colony ship contains population from the planet that built it, whatever the majority there is. Now here’s the problem: in NO place does it list what kind of colonists that ship is carrying. I’ve had several occasions where I’ve landed a ship on a sweet spot world, only to find out that the ship contained silicoids, who think the world sucks (red 1), are going to have a hard time living there, and are generally going to waste the planet’s potential by terraforming it at great expense to suit them.

Phew. Now that I’ve gotten that rant off my chest, I just have to say that, like many of the reviewers of this game, I feel frustrated to play a good game that’s hampered by stupid niggling problems that could easily have been fixed prior to release.

DT_76: I have found the game MUCH MUCH more enjoyable with the 1.25 patch. I hated the game when it first came out with the viceroys changing the build ques even after I turned the planet econ off but they have fixed that in 1.25.
1) Suggestion for stopping the building of unwanted units: Mark them obsolete - the AI will not be able to build them. The AI will still be able to build lots of ground troops but I believe they won't waste too much time doing that because they will reach a critical limit <- haven't played long enough to test this out but it will atleast cut down on the transports.
2) I'd suggest that you use the Planets screen and check to see only owned planets. Then from there you can click on the double chevrons (>>) and go directly to the military or planetary build que. You can then click on the Planets link again at the bottom of the screen and go to another planet.
3) I agree that there should have been some way to tell the computer that you want x amount of carriers and x amount of LR+SR ships etc. Maybe in MOO4! ;-)

My own opinion(s): It would have been cool to get actual characters for the viceorys on each planet...that would have added a bit of life to the game. As to the bad feelings by most everyone about this game I feel that with patch 1.25 and an understanding of how this game is to be played (you can micro but it isn't designed that way) people would feel different about it. I used to be one of the game haters but I have turned a new leaf. :)

Well, months later I check back to see results I expected. That said, anyone know someone who wants a free copy of Moo3?

I've been playing Moo2 a lot lately. Definately the best version of Moo. I just hope that don't drop the series after the #3 bomb.
Anyone know if there's still an active MP Moo2 anywhere? I would like to play again, even by email.

GalCiv is good, but it was hard for me to get into it since I was still bummed out about Moo3 when I got it. My thoughts were that it was a board-game type feel of a cross between Moo2 & Civ2. I really should play it again now that I have more time....if I could only quit playing Moo2 :rolleyes:

Come on. There is only one real answer up there.

My Moo3 CD's are used as coasters.
Then trashed and burned to spare the garbage man from accidentially seeing them.

MOO3 was the worst game I have bought. I had high hopes at the time.
I tried patching it, and they still haven't removed those stupid lines all over the map.
MOO1 didn't have them and was great. MOO2 didn't have them and was great. MOO3 had them and is usually cited as one of the worst games ever.

nuf said.

I think you are 6 years too late for this one.

I think you are 6 years too late for this one.

rofl, but, the answer is still the same. :)

wow, I can't believe my answer. I am going to change it to coaster...well, if I could find the CDs that is. :D

I own MoO3. Never played the others. It's a very so-so game. Pretty poor in comparison to GalCiv2.

Moo3 came out in 2003, Dread Lord in what 2008. Galciv1 came out in 2003.

SotS came out in 2006 and is IMO the best 4X out there today, especially with the expansions as they have added a lot of depth. SotS2 will come out in early 2011 and further improve on that.

Master of Orion 1 came out in 1993, and
Master of Orion 2 came out at the end of 1996.

MOO1 was simple, but, the genesis of practically all 4x turn based space games since.
MOO2 added custom races, multiplayer support, a few more races, 2 more ship classes, and some minor changes to the existing races.
Usually, it is one of these 2 that people think was the greatest in the series.
and there are advantages to both.

As MOO2 is Multiplayer and started the race designing part, it is hard not to lean towards it being the best.

More on it here.
http://lordbrazen.blogspot.com/2005/01/download.html

Frankly I preferred MOO1 to MOO2. MOO2 was not well balanced and added far too much micro. Custom races have been more of a detriment to the series than a benefit, overall.

Moo3 came out in 2003, Dread Lord in what 2008. Galciv1 came out in 2003.

Chess came out a hundreds of years ago.

MoO3 is still not a very good game.

So did tiddle winks, but I am not interested in them either. So what is your point? Chess is not part of the conversation. Comparing a game made years early than another game was the topic. I don't think anyone said Moo3 was a good game.

MOO3 even with mods if an unfinished game.MOO2 is still the best 4X space game around,GC2 is not fit to hold its jockstrap.

I voted "It's ok, but I wouldn't recommend it to others." simply because of the mods others made to the game. Had I voted when this poll was posted, before those mods, my answer would have been the coaster one.

I thankfully never bought MoO3 - the chaotic development process made me suspicious enough to play it at a friend's first. Well, "playing" is probably a euphemism when talking about MoO3.

If I had the CDs, I'd probably nail them onto my front door, to ward off all kinds of evil. Burglars would probably think "MoO3? Oy, the poor guy is punished enough already", and Death & Devil would simply acknowledge the superior abomination and vanish.

SotS came out in 2006 and is IMO the best 4X out there today, especially with the expansions as they have added a lot of depth. SotS2 will come out in early 2011 and further improve on that.

I have looked at the demo for SoTs, but I could not bring myself to spend the time to give it a real shot. It looked a lot like Space Empires, which I thought was an ok game.

It is just that it took a long time to play and a long learning curve. I did not want to do that again with a new game, unless there was a lot of return (in fun).

I doubt I would have played SE4 or V, if I had not already knew how to play III. The reason I was able to give III a good shot was that someone put together a massive roadmap.

Reading it made the game sound interesting and provided the stick and carrot to get started. As it is, I only played one game of V and only a few of IV as they are slow to get going.

I own MoO3. Never played the others.

They're incredibly worth playing if you like 4x in space (add in tactical combat) and don't mind outdated graphics.

Frankly I preferred MOO1 to MOO2. MOO2 was not well balanced and added far too much micro. Custom races have been more of a detriment to the series than a benefit, overall.

Yea I'm in agreement with liking MOO1 more pretty much for the same reasons as yourself, but I think MOO 2 is typically accepted as the better game.

Yea I'm in agreement with liking MOO1 more pretty much for the same reasons as yourself, but I think MOO 2 is typically accepted as the better game.
I actually don't think so. Wherever I met MoO fans, their preference was almost equally split between MoO1 and MoO2. MoO2 may have had a slightly larger fellowship due to having more features, prettier looks, and especially multiplayer ability. But AFAICT MoO1 is still valued very highly.

Personally, I can't even decide. MoO2 has more features, but (perhaps consequentially) a much weaker AI, and I liked the MoO1 research model better. Not knowing which high-end technologies would be in the game added immensely to my enjoyment. In MoO2, the mutually exclusive research choices always felt like a tacked-on game mechanic without much believability.

and I liked the MoO1 research model better. Not knowing which high-end technologies would be in the game added immensely to my enjoyment. In MoO2, the mutually exclusive research choices always felt like a tacked-on game mechanic without much believability.

Yea I was not a fan of the mutual exclusive research. Moreso because I hated having to decide between techs than knowing it's all available. Who can say their game would be more fun without a mega-crutch like black hole generator :D

I have looked at the demo for SoTs, but I could not bring myself to spend the time to give it a real shot. It looked a lot like Space Empires, which I thought was an ok game.

It is just that it took a long time to play and a long learning curve. I did not want to do that again with a new game, unless there was a lot of return (in fun).

It's actually very unlike SE4 or SE5. The amount of micro in SotS (and will be in SotS2) is deliberately minimized; they have gone for an easy-to-learn-hard-to-master dynamic. The basics of the game are relatively simple by 4X standards, but there is a lot of depth to the game if you choose to look for it.

There are also plenty of resources available to help new players learn the game, from tutorial videos to a comprehensive wiki to a substantial number of game walkthroughs on the forums. Plus the forum members as a rule tend to be friendly and very willing to answer questions, and most multiplayer opponents are willing to help a newcomer learn the ropes.

As far as fun factor goes, I found it a lot more fun than any other 4X I've played since MOO1. That includes Civ and GalCiv. Best if you can get your hands on a bundle of the complete set, though, as the expansions really do add a lot to the ease of play and depth of the game. Fortunately, it's fairly inexpensive to get the complete set these days.

I will look around and see if can find some and maybe get started. Been playing more RPG's lately, but time to get in some space games.

MOO3 ruined the MOO franchise. Kind of like Sim City Societies.

MOO and MOO2 were excellent games in their day, MOO3... not so much.

I liked 1 better than 2. MoO 2 was just a civ clone to me. 3 was at least innovative but had... well... issues. We all know about that. :)

There are a bunch of mods for MoO 3 and even about 30 unofficial bug-fixes (manual patches).
I like it, its more "grand" that anything out there and i like micromanaging my colony DEAs.

I think that both moo2 and moo3 have their own advantages. Both are different type of game. I think that playing moo2 was more fun, more planet graphics, and micromanagement in moo3 is is bit hard and time taking especially in later game, and if you put it on AI, it is not always so perfect, and game goes even more boring then... Also, moo1 is pretty useless for me, as I never played it when it was fresh, and now it have not much to offer in graphics and game complexity compared to moo2 and moo3.

The end of a Moo3 game gets very tedious, but then many games do. It is hard to get into a game as old as Moo1, if you had not already played it. I can only say that everyone I ever showed it to ended up liking it.

Graphics are lost in any game that I get involved in, you just forget about them. If you don't then the game probably never grabbed you.

Graphics is not so big issue at all, but lack of complexity of building things on planets like they are in moo2 and moo3.

True, but that is also a plus as you have less micrromanaging. I bounce back and forth as to Moo1 over Moo2.

I liked both MOO1 & 2. When I initially played MOO2, I remember being disappointed (why, I don't remember now, it's been 10 years), though I quickly got to like this game much better than the 1st edition. It was probably familiarity with the old version that caused the initial nonacceptance of #2. #3 never grabbed my interest the way the first two versions did. I tried some of the mods for this game (Strawberry & Tropical), they improved the game immensely, but there was still too much I didn't care for that could not be modded out.

I use Strawberry as well and a few mods I added to some of the events. I always like the fleet engagements, but it take time to get to where they are larger.

I use Strawberry as well and a few mods I added to some of the events. I always like the fleet engagements, but it take time to get to where they are larger.

Watching them was both frustrating and fun. Getting your own fleets to move and attack was the frustrating part. Frequently some of my fleets were placed behind a planet and after directing them to attack, they would wander aimlessly about behind the planet allowing the others to get cut up from lack of support. But when the fleets do act intelligently, it's a lot of fun to watch them go at it. In the last MOO3 game I played, I gradually improved my fleets as I researched the techs to the point where in the last battle, against pretty much even odds, tech and numbers wise, they managed to destroy the opposing fleets without suffering a single loss. Watching my short range fleet close and then open fire in unison and obliterate an opposing fleet was the highlight.

What really killed the game for me was not being able to save a game at the end of a turn or any time during it. Late game, it could take a half hour to correct the AI garbage during my turn and being able to save these changes when interrupted is a must. I'll probably go back to it for a game eventually. I always do with these sorts of games.

Not much point in saving other than right at the start of the turn. I won't start a turn, unless I plan on finishing it, otherwise I won't remember what I done via the report log.

Not much point in saving other than right at the start of the turn. I won't start a turn, unless I plan on finishing it, otherwise I won't remember what I done via the report log.

I suspect we live in very different social conditions. ;) I spent a lot of time redoing things in the game that I had just done due to that saving programming screw-up, often enough that by midgame I was loath to continue. It wasn't just interruptions, either, but I frequently do things by mistake, distractions, clumsiness and just dumb stuff, and a quick reload midturn when I botch a move is not optional to the way I play computer games. For me, the amount of micro needed in the game, much more than in MOO2, meant several saves per turn was very often necessary to avoid having to spend an excessive amount of time going back and redoing the turn from the beginning.

I'm not a concentrated game player, but a distracted one. :lol:

What was trying to say is that no matter hwo many times you save during a single turn, you have saved no changes. The turn will always start right at the same spot.

Hence you save before you do anything. If you do some thigns and save, it does no good. The loading of the save will start at the beginning of the turn.

It is not a matter of convience or cheating or anything.

This is the annoying events for techs. It seems to like to put up the same event over and over and often. My understanding is that a tech can have an overrun. The over run can be good or bad.

If no overrun, you get the tech at the scheduled time. If an overrun, it is either sooner or delayed. The delay is always given as a Protest and Security increase.

The Oneturn patch was suppose to make it so there was no overrun, good or bad, but it does not seem to work or else the Protest is from who knows where.

I loved MOO1 and am back playing MOO2 (although it is getting to be too easy) but unfortunately MOO3 was the worst sequel to a great game in the history of gaming.

I never managed to finish a game of MOO3, nor did I want to.

.. neilkaz ..

Thanks to helps form the old Atari board I seem to have gotten the tweak in to allow the OneTurn to work. That means no overruns positive or neg.

I loved MOO1 and am back playing MOO2 (although it is getting to be too easy) but unfortunately MOO3 was the worst sequel to a great game in the history of gaming.

I never managed to finish a game of MOO3, nor did I want to.

.. neilkaz ..

Moo3 is looking much better than Civ 5 at this point.

Moo3 is looking much better than Civ 5 at this point.

I preferred MOO3 to Civ4. But not by much. kind of like:

What would you rather have? A sharp stick in the left eye or in the right? :lol:

That's not totally fair. Since I did buy MOO3, blindly, without reading a few write-ups first, there was some incentive to at least give the game a few evenings. I did play some of the mods for MOO3. I don't own a copy of Civ4, and my test playing the demo, and the full game at a friend's, precluded any desire to own the game, I never played the mods for it. It could be mods made Civ4 a playable game. That's something I wont find out unless the game goes on sale for a couple of bucks.

Most people seem to far prefer Civ4 to Civ5 (or other iterations of the Civ franchise, for that matter.) Personally I never really got into Civ4 because the Civ franchise has historically been heavy on the micromanagement and I didn't see much indication that they were addressing that for Civ 4; in the end, mods only added more detail to an already overly detail-oriented game.

Civ5 could have been a breath of fresh air for the series if they had bothered testing and balancing the game rather than releasing while it was still only half-baked. :(

I preferred MOO3 to Civ4. But not by much. kind of like:

What would you rather have? A sharp stick in the left eye or in the right? :lol:

That's not totally fair. Since I did buy MOO3, blindly, without reading a few write-ups first, there was some incentive to at least give the game a few evenings. I did play some of the mods for MOO3. I don't own a copy of Civ4, and my test playing the demo, and the full game at a friend's, precluded any desire to own the game, I never played the mods for it. It could be mods made Civ4 a playable game. That's something I wont find out unless the game goes on sale for a couple of bucks.

I played Moo3 and Civ4 for a month or two intensely and found Moo3 to have too many problems and Civ4 to just not be for me.

BTS and mods did not change that much for Civ4. Strawberry and the 125 patch and a number of tweaks made Moo3 a game I could play once a years or so, but not great.

It is just that there are so few Space games that I hold on to all of them.

Most people seem to far prefer Civ4 to Civ5 (or other iterations of the Civ franchise, for that matter.) Personally I never really got into Civ4 because the Civ franchise has historically been heavy on the micromanagement and I didn't see much indication that they were addressing that for Civ 4; in the end, mods only added more detail to an already overly detail-oriented game.

Civ5 could have been a breath of fresh air for the series if they had bothered testing and balancing the game rather than releasing while it was still only half-baked. :(

When I want to avoid MM, I play Diablo.

Pretty sure there is room for both micro-heavy and micro-light games in the strategy genre. ;)

Pretty sure there is room for both micro-heavy and micro-light games in the strategy genre. ;)

Both could even be in the same game, if a developer wanted to put the effort in.

Perhaps... could be a tall order though. Most games that successfully reduce micromanagement do so by virtue of abstracting away unnecessary details; instead of having tons of controls with little individual impact (meaning coming from aggregating many many small but ultimately similar decisions) they focus on building game systems with few but relatively more impactful controls with different shades of meaning depending on how the player tunes them.

I'm not sure how a developer could marry those in the same game. Building a game with lots of fine tuned controls under the hood and then simply hiding them in some fashion for the 'micro-lite' version wouldn't really work that well, and neither would handing over the MM burden to an AI, because both those options just result in a game where player agency is compromised, i.e. the player doesn't feel fully in control of their own empire. IMX a good micro-lite game which feels deep without feeling fiddly has to be designed that way from the ground up.

Perhaps... could be a tall order though. Most games that successfully reduce micromanagement do so by virtue of abstracting away unnecessary details; instead of having tons of controls with little individual impact (meaning coming from aggregating many many small but ultimately similar decisions) they focus on building game systems with few but relatively more impactful controls with different shades of meaning depending on how the player tunes them.

I'm not sure how a developer could marry those in the same game. Building a game with lots of fine tuned controls under the hood and then simply hiding them in some fashion for the 'micro-lite' version wouldn't really work that well, and neither would handing over the MM burden to an AI, because both those options just result in a game where player agency is compromised, i.e. the player doesn't feel fully in control of their own empire. IMX a good micro-lite game which feels deep without feeling fiddly has to be designed that way from the ground up.

Not being a game programmer, I'm not sure how true that is, but one way around would be to design the game as 2 games. A macro and a micro version. They could be together when the game starts and the player would pick the version they want to play at the beginning of a game set-up. I see no trouble fitting 2 versions together as most of the game components would be the same for both versions.

That makes twice the work for the devs... why wouldn't they build and sell them as 2 games then? ;)

That makes twice the work for the devs... why wouldn't they build and sell them as 2 games then? ;)

Many "complete" versions of games are more than one game bundled together. Civ3 is 3 games, for example. It would probably be cheaper to bundle the 2 versions together. For boxed games, the cost of the packaging costs more to the manufacturer than stamping the cd/dvd does. They could also sell them separate, and people could buy the one they think they would rather play.

It doesn't really make 2x work for the developers, since most of the elements of the games would remain be the same. Most of the graphics (minus the several pages of displays), details about units, combat and a lot of other things would all be the same. The main difference would be in some parts of the core programming and the graphical interface with the player.

Sounds to me like you're underestimating the work involved, but since neither of us is a game developer... *shrug*