[MoO] Master or Orion 4

[Zed-F]

The basic problem for all of us who love to play the galactic "clash of empires" 4 X strategy games is that the market is skewed towards the "shooters". I much me fear that unless somehow companies such as Star Dock, God bless 'em, and 2K, God bless them, too, can make strategy games profitable and marketable again, those of us who like our games more cerebral, and less relentlessly physical and narrowly oriented towards killing the next alien soldiers appearing over the next rise, are in for a long, dry patch.

Paradox Interactive has a lot of successful strategy games out there as well. Europa Universalis series, Hearts of Iron series, Sword of the Stars series... good stuff all around. Check 'em out if you haven't already.

 

[TheArchduke]

Well that and that MoO III was a failure so noone will touch this franchise in a long while.

Though judging from UFO and the new Shooter, maybe this is a good thing.

 

[Cmcastl]

Thanks for the recommendation, Zed-F. I have the Hearts of Iron series but my heart belongs in the stars and I long for a worthy successor to Master of Orion 2, Birth of the Federation and Alpha Centauri. The mods out there, including even one I know for Babylon 5, aren't too bad but obviously can't be compared to a fully developed stand-alone product.

I don't think the the modded Master of Orion 3 was too bad a game and I played it a lot. It was fortunately robust in accepting Mods.

I just can't get into Gal Civ 2, something about the gameplay and screens is rather flat, and it appears difficult to MOD.

Each time I go into the "sacred store", as I call the local games shop, less and less space is given to PC games and more to the gamesbox games, which, as I have observed, are mostly shooters. If ever they do start producing strategy games for the gamesboxes then I may consider investing in them.

Live long and prosper.

 

[Zed-F]

Thanks for the recommendation, Zed-F. I have the Hearts of Iron series but my heart belongs in the stars and I long for a worthy successor to Master of Orion 2, Birth of the Federation and Alpha Centauri. The mods out there, including even one I know for Babylon 5, aren't too bad but obviously can't be compared to a fully developed stand-alone product.

Out of that list from Paradox, try Sword of the Stars then. It's a good and fully fleshed out space 4X. Just make sure you get the complete collection as the expansions really add a lot of depth to the game. It's also mod-friendly.

 

[Cmcastl]

I have read on Sword of the Stars recently, Zed-F, but what I read was that it was more focussed on star battles than colony management. And I prefer the latter though realise the former is necessary from time to time. What do you say to that?

But you are right; Sword of the Stars is something to consider and a game which I could easily avail myself of. I shall read some more reviews of it and go to my favourite online purchasing site to see what price they are offering.

There is some talk of a private mod to Star Trek Birth of the Federation called Star Trek: Legacy or something like that. They have got some way with it but not quite to beta and if it will ever be completed in my lifetime is an open question; I remain hopeful.

I loved Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain and would have thought that worthy of a successor. Sadly, another successsor to star strategy game Stars by Empire Interactive got to beta stage but was not picked up by a game company. I really do salute Star Dock for sticking to their guns on space strategy games BUT as I said, having sampled their various versions of Galactic Civilization, I find them curiously flat in play and also fiendishly difficult to MOD. I never have got a new set of ship designs in their Metaverse to "take yet."

We have talked, Zed-F, of all the classic versions of space 4X games but with so few successors over the years but the "shooters" just multiply and multiply! I guess there will always be more people interested in the adrenalin of shooting than the more cerebral pleasures of being a leader.
Which means that with our interests in strategy, we are the elite!

Live long and prosper.

 

[vmxa]

I put a price drop watch on Gamersgate for SoTs Collection. Pax2 was not abad game, but I really disliked the steal. You couldsteal planets. You also had a lot of MM later in the game.

I have not tried it on Win7, maybe I will after Civ5 wears down.

Stars I had to really do a lot to get it to run on Dosbox under Win3.1. I actually saw some of the work on Stars2 ar E3 years ago. Same it was to die.

BoTF was fairly weak imo. I only played twice. Not as bad as Rebellion though.

Smac/x will get a sequel eventually. I played that a lot, but no longer have it. I still have Chris's guide book (Vel).

 

[Zed-F]

SotS simplifies colony management because SotS puts a lot of emphasis on eliminating micro -- and it does a pretty good job of it, though there are a couple areas where it could do better. In SotS you generally are looking at around a half-dozen or a dozen worlds which you are actively focusing on at any given time, but the planets in your backfield mostly just sit back and make money for you. It's very reminiscent of MOO1 in this respect, which I found vastly preferable to micromanaging building construction on every single planet in MOO2 for instance.

One thing to note is that just because the controls for managing planets are simple in SotS, does not mean that no thought is required. There is a significant amount of depth to the economy model; it can be important to know which worlds to colonize when, when playing as which race, with how many ships using what amount of tech, with what emphasis on industry versus terraforming, and with what priority relative to other needs. While the basics of economy development in SotS revolve, like most 4X games, around booming as quickly as possible, the devil is in the details, and maximizing your economy could be considered a subtle art of empire-wide management rather than your usual MOO2 'build every building in this order' micromanagement.

 

[Cmcastl]

SMAC has an excellant MOD called Planetfall under Civ IV BUT I can no longer play it since I upgraded to Windows 7 - I keep getting XML error msgs.

If not everything I would like in a space strategy game, MOO3 is my favourite and what I have most often played, at least until recently. I know a lot would disagree with that - but the better balance as it seems to me between managing colonies and managing wars offensive or defensive, particularly with the many mods, appeals to me more than about any other game I have encountered. Space strategy games can be relentlessly battle-oriented; Haegemonia is another game which comes to mind. If I was that aggressive I would be into shooters - not that I am a Pacifist either! I like the occasional war to liven things up but I like time to build, too!

The one thing I didn't like in Pax Imperia was that you had to utterly obliterate an alien population before you could settle a world yourself - too much like genocide for my conscience, even in a virtual world. There is a bit of a problem with Pax Imperia and Windows 7 - it doesn't seem to display some of the screens properly. If this is sorted out I would like please to know.

Live long and prosper.

 

[Cmcastl]

PS - BOTF was quite atmospheric I felt of the TV series. Its main drawback was the very limited map on which it could be played.

 

[vmxa]

At least you got Pax to install and run. Some of the older windows games that were 16 bit, will not even run. As they are Windows games they do not work under DoSbox directly either.

I would install Pax and see, but with Civ5 coming tomorrow and I just got KB Crossworlds, no time. I will try it down the line and see if it works for me in Win7.

I saw the Smac mod, had stopped playing Civ4.

 

[Cmcastl]

I would love a 4x game that had these features.

Simple Economy like MoO1
ship customization like say, the Moo and GaCiv2
some tatical combat, even if it is giving general commands to your fleet or land forces and watch them go at it.
Good AI, perhaps with it being modular so you can swap out the AI.
Good Tech Tree

Perhaps having Multi-cultural planets where you have more then one alien race, of course till you have one they would be revolt prone.

Interesting contribution, Distorted Humour, thank you.

My perfect space strategy game would allow you to tweak the game so that colony management was as important as war management, if not more so. But maybe that reflects my temperament. I stress however that I would like the option for general colony management or micromanagement as I chose, Master of Orion III didn't do a bad job of that with its mods.

I rather like the ship customization of Space Empires but I thought the MOO3 ship customization good too, whether you wanted to tweak yourself or just a good fit.

As for tactical options, I guess I betray myself as an oldish man here because once again the MOO3 option for individual battle-play or leaving it to your automatic generalship was something which greatly appealed to me. Ultimiately, I agree with the aphorism that only armchair generals worry about strategy, true generals worry about logistics. My favoured gameplay is provide the AI working for me with the materiel and let them get on with it - but I accept that is a matter of temperament.

Live long and prosper.

 

[Psyringe]

I don't think the the modded Master of Orion 3 was too bad a game and I played it a lot.

I have to say that I found it difficult to see anything enjoyable even in a fully modded MoO3. Even with mods, the user interface is still abysmal, and it's still extremely hard to get the information needed for decisions. The economy system was impossible to understand without the help of the users in the official forum, and even after understanding it, you still get very little information how exactly your DEAs produce various amounts of raw points which are then transformed into various amounts of different points. The intransparency of the system means that it's a chore to actually assess and evaluate the effects of one's decisions, which is an integral part of any strategy game. When I left the game in disgust, my conclusion was that the game was simply never meant to be understood, instead it tries to give players the illusion that they are playing a strategy game, while in fact they are just pressing buttons whose exact effects are indeterminable, and win by pressing "Next turn" due to the inability of the AI.

It was fortunately robust in accepting Mods.
I just can't get into Gal Civ 2, something about the gameplay and screens is rather flat, and it appears difficult to MOD.

You said that twice now - I'm curious, could you elaborate? GalCiv2 has built-in support for modding, you can download mods from the game's homepage, and if you have a question, you can even go to Stardock's forums or chat and ask the developers directly. MoO3, on the other hand, had no built-in mod support whatsoever, and was abandoned shortly after release. The fact that some extremely capable guys reverse-engineered the engine and managed to fix the most glaring bugs doesn't mean that MoO3 is easier to mod, it just means that some people were willing to put inordinate amounts of time and effort into fixing a broken game - unfortunately they still failed.

 

[Cmcastl]

This is partly about temperament, Psyringe, and one can hardly argue about that; we all have our different temperament. If I lusted for war at almost every turn and was bored by colonial management I might think as you think but I haven't and I don't.. Having read some fine Sci-fi works which create a rich galactic civilisation, I liked the degrees of micro-management in MOO3 because it simulated a richer galactic culture than in any other game I have played, except perhaps for SMAC. The mods did tweak the game formidably and I used them liberally to come up with my favourite version; a balance between war and building. I would defend for all its weaknesses MOO3 against every other galactic strategy game. BOTF has atmosphere but too small a map, Pax Imperia a marvellous interface but is ultimately genocidal - you only colonise a planet by exterminating all alien life upon it, Gal Civ is flat, flat, flat. Space Empires has too few mods. Sword of the Stars is focused upon battle not building.

Live long and prosper.

 

[Psyringe]

This is partly about temperament, Psyringe, and one can hardly argue about that; we all have our different temperament. If I lusted for war at almost every turn and was bored by colonial management I might think as you think but I haven't and I don't.

I agree that temperament (or rather, personal preferences) play a role. I don't understand why you think I favor war over colonial management though, actually I don't. I think my playing style is best described as a builder who occasionally likes to play as a warmonger, hence I prefer games that offer both as viable strategies. That's one of the reasons why I like GalCiv 2 - you can fight the other empires, or you can build yours up and win by influence. Or by researching a certain technology. Or by forging alliances with everyone. Or by claiming 5 special resources for long enough. GalCiv2 is really quite flexible in the ways how it can be played.

My point was not that MoO3 had too much colony micromanagement for my liking. My point is that it doesn't give players the tools that are necessary to make meaningful decisions (and then evaluate their outcome). I would have enjoyed building up my colonies in MoO3 if the economy wasn't so broken and if the interface didn't turn management into such a chore. Necessary information is often hidden two screens away, in a drop-down menu on the second tab, which both snap back to their original state whenever you leave them. The UI is actively torturing the player. That might be bearable if the game was able to create an atmosphere which draws the player in, but unfortunately it fails there as well. There's no atmosphere in colony management - there's nothing which gives you the feeling that you built up a nice place, except some numbers whose meaning is lost in the broken economy. The game doesn't give the player the feeling that he creates interesting places. Buildings are just names dragged into a build queue, they have no flavor text to speak of. Diplomacy is even worse due to the rather dimwitted and incomprehensible actions and reactions of the aliens.

What I also don't understand is that you enjoyed the logistics in MoO3. As far as I can tell, there are no logistics in MoO3. You simply build your fleet deployment centers and your fleets magically show up wherever and whenever you need them. For someone who enjoys logistics, I would have expected Space Empires to rank highly on his personal scale, which has more logistics than any other any game in the genre (right down to supplies and ordnance for your ships which all need to be produced and ferried around).

. Having read some fine Sci-fi works which create a rich galactic civilisation, I liked the degrees of micro-management in MOO3 because it simulated a richer galactic culture than in any other game I have played, except perhaps for SMAC.

Hmm, can you give some examples for the "rich galactic culture"? The only thing coming to my mind is the plethora of research projects, but since most of those were rather meaningless labels, they failed to evoke the impression of a rich culture in me.

Gal Civ is flat, flat, flat.

Humm, that's not quite what I meant when I asked you to elaborate on your impression of GalCiv2 being "flat". I'm still interested in an answer though - also to the questions that you didn't address, e.g. why you think that a game with built-in mod support, developers willing to answer questions directly, and several hundred mods available on its homepage, is "not robust" in terms of modding?

 

[Zed-F]

I would love a 4x game that had these features.

Simple Economy like MoO1
ship customization like say, the Moo and GaCiv2
some tatical combat, even if it is giving general commands to your fleet or land forces and watch them go at it.
Good AI, perhaps with it being modular so you can swap out the AI.
Good Tech Tree

Perhaps having Multi-cultural planets where you have more then one alien race, of course till you have one they would be revolt prone.

You'd probably like SotS then.

 

[Cmcastl]

I don't want to make an enemies, Psyinge!

I never got ANY of the shipsets on Gal Civ to "take". You seemed to need additional files but I couldn't tell if they had "taken" either! Very unmoddable in IMHO compared to MOO3 which I modded so much I wonder it didn't break more frequently, as one of the people on a MOO3 forum observed!

I won't deny there is some validity to your criticism of the colonial management in
MOO3 it is just that all the various infrastructure techs and social improvements, including at one stage sanitation!, for the colonies made it a far richer game for me and excited my Sci-fi imagination as no other game did; it did create for me the sense of a multifarious space civilistion. I don't say there isn't room for improvement in a
MOO4! My use of the word logistics was careless, I agree.

The game hasn't yet been invented, I think, for strategists, but a perfect balance of micromanagement or grandmanagement, is, I am sure you will agree, the Holy Grail for us gamers.

I am not sure how to reply about my Gal Civ criticism. I loved the screens for Pax Imperia, Imperial Galactica II, BOTF and the upmodded MOO3 but the Gal Civ screens are unexciting and as drab, to my taste; they have no distinctive style - perhaps it is a question of taste. It is never a "one more turn and I shall go to bed" for me with this game.

Live long and prosper.

 

[Psyringe]

I don't want to make an enemies, Psyinge!

Don't worry, you won't. Actually my post was intended to be in friendly, conversational tone - but since tone gets lost in written communication, my strong criticism of MoO3 probably gave a wrong impression about its mood. I apologize for that.

Btw, I do think I understand your approach now (and why MoO3 was a good fit to it while GalCiv2 wasn't), your appreciation of the SMAC atmosphere gave me a hunch. I'll elaborate on that on Friday, when I have a bit more time.

 

[Cmcastl]

No hard feelings, Psyringe. You would be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, to learn how I got mobbed for making what I thought were constructive criticisms over Civ IV Planetfall, actually an all-time favourite game of mine. It won't play in Windows 7, it just won't, so far as I can see, but I was more or less accused of heresy and incompetence when I put threads in about that.

One thing I would re-iterate is that I have not yet played a game in which there is that perfect balance between switching from grand-management to micro-management. Not in space-strategy games and not in terrestrial games such as Hearts of Iron. To be able to switch easily from one to to the other would be the Holy Grail of strategy games, as I said earlier. One possible avenue which I very much liked in Pax Emperia Eminent: Eminent Domain is that you could research four major areas at once, tweaking percentages to concentrate on one area or another. I liked that very much.

I have also never understood why in most space-strategy games you can only produce one item at once, at least per coloney, or city or space-city, which seems to me a linear legacy leftover from the days when computers didn't have so much processing and power and software subtlety as they have today. In a visual sense, once again I think Pax Imperia's main screens were exciting and visually appealing in a way that Gal Civs are not. I can't reduce that statement any further; it is how it seems to me.

Live long and prosper.

 

[scratchthepitch]

One possible avenue which I very much liked in Pax Emperia Eminent: Eminent Domain is that you could research four major areas at once, tweaking percentages to concentrate on one area or another. I liked that very much.

In Space Empires 5 you can research all tech fields or just a few or just one at once. You assign a percentage to each one of your own choice. Once you finish one tech, the game reveals a list of the next ones in that field you can research.

I have also never understood why in most space-strategy games you can only produce one item at once, at least per coloney, or city or space-city, which seems to me a linear legacy leftover from the days when computers didn't have so much processing and power and software subtlety as they have today. In a visual sense, once again I think Pax Imperia's main screens were exciting and visually appealing in a way that Gal Civs are not. I can't reduce that statement any further; it is how it seems to me.

That might be more due to the difficulty of programming an AI to master multiple production lines in each planet, colony or city. But I don't know. It is something I would also like to see in strategy games. I did like in MOO3 how several items of planet infrastructure were built at the same time, though the AI governor that handled it usually botched it by selecting the wrong ones to work on, and the "plans" you made to "advise" the governor were mostly ignored.

 

[Cmcastl]

That might be more due to the difficulty of programming an AI to master multiple production lines in each planet, colony or city. But I don't know. It is something I would also like to see in strategy games. I did like in MOO3 how several items of planet infrastructure were built at the same time, though the AI governor that handled it usually botched it by selecting the wrong ones to work on, and the "plans" you made to "advise" the governor were mostly ignored.

I endorse your comments wholeheartedly, Scratchthepitch. And if there were ever a successor to MOO3, I would like to see the problems you raised dealt with, too. But at least, you had the sense in MOO3, with all these techs and social advances at the colonial level, at least as I think, of a deeper background galactic civilisation than you find in most other games. From a cultural point of view, whatever the graphics and battle engines, too many games even at the space strategy level seem very one-dimensional to me. But perhaps it is all a matter of taste, I must admit. I am an older person so just don't relish constant warfare but like to build populations and things as well. Not that I don't mind or indeed need the occasional warfare to spice things up!

In Space Empires 5 you can research all tech fields or just a few or just one at once. You assign a percentage to each one of your own choice. Once you finish one tech, the game reveals a list of the next ones in that field you can research.

I have SE5 but haven't played it yet but few for a few exploratory turns. Sadly, it lacks MODs but I have put out an urgent request to the maker of the Star Trek Mod for SE IV to please, please, please adapt it for V.

Live long and prosper.