MOO3, how to get level 30 techs at turn 10

[AbsoluteZero]

It's lame but...

You know how when you take planets sometimes you get techs from the civ you just conquered? Well, what you can do is land your colony ship you get at the start at any random planet and gift it to the New Orions. Then you can immediately invade the planet and if you're lucky you will get one of the New Orion military techs. Unfortunately it's fairly rare to get techs for invading a planet ( maybe 20% of the time or lower ) and there are many techs you can get that will be of no use ( I just got armor piercing dark beams, problem is I don't have the dark beam tech ), however, it's a lot more reliable then spying on the NO.

Oh don't forget the NO will send some ships your way so you better be ready

 

[vmxa]

No thanks, just as soon do it the hard way. Anyway I am not going to have any contact with NO or anyone at that point. Would you not need that to gift them anything?

 

[AbsoluteZero]

You pretty much have to start in the orion senate.

 

[vmxa]

Yeah, not going to want to do that.

 

[scratchthepitch]

It's been several years since I played MOO3, and I never did finish a game of it, but one thing I learned was don't have anything to do with the NO. Don't contact them at all, for any reason. The longer I stayed under their radar, the longer I got to continue playing.

 

[vmxa]

They are a blast to attack, once you are strong enough. Big fights. I have not finished my last two games, played them till I had about 2/3 of the map and was not willing to do the grinding of the rest.

I never found a way to kill off a planet quickly and just had to pound a systyem for a long time to finally kill off all the pop. Yeah, I could have send in troops, but I did not like that.

Anyway, even getting way ahead did not matter as it takes so long to take all the planet. I turn off the 5X win as that was a little quicker than I wanted.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I never got far enough along in a game where I had the tech to challenge the NO. If they approached one of my systems, I would vacate all the ships from it to give them as few as possible reasons to attack. That seemed to work, since they would just pass on without doing anything. Used to follow their fleet around with colony ships, and colonize the systems they wasted right after they left.

It was the unbelievably bad ground combat and the cheat in the planet colonizing part of the program that finally killed my interest in the game.

 

[vmxa]

That is usually what makes me not finish. I have one now that is maybe 5 months old, but I have not taken a turn in 3 months. I load it up and remember how long it took to kill of the last planet and how long till I get a new engine or a new shipyard boost for a larger ship and bail out.

I have finished a dozen or so in that past, none last year. Though I did get most of the map colonized in one. You have a limit on how many fleets you can have in a battle. This was causing late game problems as there is always someone far away and they will have all the tech or nearly so when you start to attack them.

So you cannot just win a battle with a massive fleet and you no longer have superior ships. If I could use all the fleets I send, not all I have, I could smack them down as I had 300 planets or more.

The game is very long, not like Moo1 and Moo2. Those I could bust a game out in the same day.

 

[scratchthepitch]

The longest I played a game was about 2 weeks, I think. Then I'd get bored. By that point in a game, I was still at the lower end of the scale and looking at a long time to go to finish a game. I read how some people really liked that very long playing aspect of the game, but I could never keep an interest in it. The last game I had just gotten to the spot where a ship battle finally went right. Controlling the fleets during the battles was awkward, and half the time, they ignored the orders I gave them and just milled about and watched the other fleets get hammered without their support.

 

[vmxa]

Yes the space battles are a lot fo work, especially with both side having 5 or more armadas. It is cool to watch a fleet of carriers slam into a bunch of SR ships.

 

[scratchthepitch]

That last battle I mentioned where things finally went right was really quite a sight. It was against an equivalent sized force. The carrier fleet launched their fighters and the fighters took care of the opposing fighters. The LR fleet, for once finally, actually engaged and softened up the other a little as the SR fleet moved into range. Then the SR fleet let loose and all you could see was the beam tracings, everywhere. When the fireworks died down, there was nothing left of the AI. In two volleys, they completely demolished the AI fleet (it was system ships, so they only had one large fleet, if I remember right) for no losses to my side at all. If the rest of the game had not been so annoying and tedious, I might have continued playing. But a few seconds of satisfying fireworks didn't make the weeks of tedium worth the effort.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I still have turn 273 of Evon 1.25. In the end of that game (a SS game played to the end) I was glassing all but 1 mek planet per system and invading the one I left. After turn 500 glassing a planet was no that hard or long. But early to mid game is a different story. You need to invade during that time period as the results and time taken are much better.

Just got a new comp and loaded up MoO3. 1st a played with v1.0 for about 100 turns to get a feel for how it was back then. Silly bugs like Eagles not obeying Move commands and flying right off the combat map. Demographic screen in Planet Screen being blank and if you keep clicking on the "expand" tab it will eventually fill the screen to the top etc..

So I patched to 1.2 and have been playing it off and on the last 2 days. I wanted to see what got cut out before 1.25 patch was put out.

I still have a large library of MoO3 1.25 version mods on my old computer, plus my own Mods (published and unpublished). And of course the entire set of Bhruic's MoO3 Patcher and Patches/Mods.

10 year anniversary coming soon for the old Maid of the MoO series. And still no MoOIV. Star Lords is Not gonna be it's successor. It's more of a MoO/MoO2 clone/hybrid that might not even make it to Beta status. Alpha 2 was released around Christmas but the forum is still missing last time I checked.

JosEPh

 

[vmxa]

Not played a Moo3 turn for a long time. Not much of anything other than Diablo3. Would like to see the save, if you can post it here.

Any links for Star Lords or Alpha 2? I am always on the look out for a space game as long as they are not 3d. Can't deal with the Homeworld type play, wish I could.

Edit:
It was late, I think you meant Alpha 2 as in the version of Star Lords. I took it as a name of another game.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Yeah, Star Lords over Christmas put out an update to their alpha. I pd $20 for pre-ordering and you get access to the alpha. So you can play and report bugs, etc.. Basically pd to be a betatester. But it's 4X TBS and I contribute when and where I can.

It'll will take me a day or so to post the Evon 1.25 turn 273 save. Have to pull it off my old computer. (Just upgraded to an i7 with Win 7 64 Pro, still getting used to the changes).

JosEPh

 

[vmxa]

I found the link, but nowhere, there on reviews could I find if it was tbs or not. If it is TBS I will preorder as well. Like you I try to support games in this genre. So you say it is TBS, great.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@vmxa

Here's my Evon 1.25 at turn 237 (not 273 ) for MoO3, getting !

It was started before Bhruic's MoO3Patcher. In fact it was started right after I installed the 1.25 Official Patch (after it's release) way back in 2003. I did have Ritchey's Ethos Mod active too. I didn't understand 1/2 of what I was trying to do back then. AtmoO was my 1st Forum of any kind. The rest is MoO3 history and lost to the bowels of Google search any more. But it plays with or without either active.

Atari Still does not have the 3rd MoO3 forum active. Talk about the ultimate snub to a game. It's own Publisher refuses to allow a forum for it.

JosEPh

 

[vmxa]

Cool will take a look at it. Interested in way to speed up glassing planets. That is the one thing that drove me nuts. Late in game I could not clear planets for the longest time. I did not want to invade as often I did not want the planet nor the trouble stand it up.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Turn 237 probably won't give you much ideas on how to build a planet Glassing armada. Turn 237 is when the Galaxy turned on me and I was fighting almost everyone for my very life.

But then I should probably post turn 555 or 600 as at that time I was into late game and invading and glassing on a regular basis. Just my ship designs alone would give you more insight into how to build an Armada that could do significant planet damage/turn. The game ended on turn 620.

JosEPh

 

[vmxa]

Thanks, post it when you get the chance.