MOO2 was (and still is) one of my favorite games of all time. I still play it occasionally. I generally went for a "custom" race, but favored Klackon due to the obscene production levels.

Gal Civ 2 is also WAY up there, although IMO the game is fairly easy until you give the computer retarded levels of production bonus. In that game I generally prefer either Drengin (WAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRR!) or Dominion of Korx (Starbases ftw). Come to think of it, the defensive playstyle of Korx while pursuing cultural conquest and using trade to keep relations positive is about the most fun I've had in a 4x game.

Sins seems like alot of fun so far, but its definently more of an RTS than anything else. Still super fun though.

I think the reason it quite hasn't been recaptured yet is because no one has faithfully reinvented every aspect of it correctly. What people truly want in a new Grand 4X Space Strategy is something with the complexity of Gal Civ 2 or Moo2, but have the battles from something like Sins of a Solar Empire. Gal Civ 2 came close to Moo in my mind but the battles just weren't quite there. Everything else was dead on though and I loved the ship customization. The level of customization is what drew me to Stardock games in the first place.

Moo and Moo2 also have a special place in all our hearts because for many of us these were the first games of their kind that we played. My first PC games were floppy copies of Wolfenstein (the Original),Moo, X-Com and X-Com TFTD, Doom. Old school style. I even played a God Awful copy of the War of the Lance in what seemed like Atari graphics and thought it was the top of the line back then..lol. You know...now that I think about it, aside from the graphics that game was Awesome...See, oldschool. These games are as attached to us as our family. They're bred into us.

Modern games can't compete with that feeling anymore and they never will until 20 years from now. 20 years from now we'll be on game forums in Virtual Reality land and we'll say we played the Original "Elemental" and peoples eyes will bug out and they'll bow at our feet and start praying. Just watch and see if I'm not right..LoL.

That's why I stopped playing those after part 3. When a new one comes out these days I don't even blink unless I something about tactical battles. Which I haven't. IMO the only thing the Civ series has ever had going for it is it's Diplomacy AI.

I liked the tactical control of battles in MOO2.  I miss that in GalCiv2.  I really do.

Even in SEIV, one could take tactical control.  If one wanted auto-resolution, one could do that.  Also, there was a wonderful option to let the battles play out as you watch, but to specify ahead of time important tactics, including targeting priorities, ranging, and formations.  Those sorts of features made the SEIV battles something to really look forward to, instead of a simple accounting exercise.

MoO runs well on DosBox on linux, windows and OS X.

Hi!

For me the MoO-1 is still better. It doesn't require so much hassle with planets, and (because of the random tech availability) there's no optimal tech path to victory. To emulate that in MoO-2, in the last couple of years I usually played races with "uncreative" trait. Just that makes MoO-2 game significantly more replayable. Tanks Steve Barcia I can still extort unavailable techs from other races.  

BR,  Iztok

MoO1 and 2 were two of the very very few space 4x games where you could actually finish a match in a reasonable time by winning or loosing. While Galciv2 and SotS matches tend to drag on for forever. Something that just kills the fun and stops me form starting another one after i technically won/got a stalement in the first.

MoO games also gave you alot of tactical option while designing your ships.

Something which is especially lacking in GalCiv2. Ok it got some cool ship designer for the looks but gameplay wise it was just about adding the right attack/defense ratio with your best tech onto the hull.

While SotS got it better i always end up with some alrounder design which i just keep on updating till the tech tree is exhausted. Mostly because special designs like cloakers or drone carriers got some real hard counters.

In MoO1 you

1. could not just upgrade to a better tech cause it there are no simple upgrades to existing weapons and better tech always needed more space

2. may have to change your designs because your enemies ships where too small/shielded or simply killing your ships too easily.

MoO2 failed to recreate the though.

Now the only weak points of MoO1/2 are the luckbased starting positions having alot of impact on the game, the extensice micromanagement in MoO2 and the AI which was kinda weak but playing unfair.

In MoO1 it was allying with each other far too often and got some bugged 32k ships fleet on harder difficulties.

In MoO2 it always seemed to have some kind of strategic range bonus and always knew where you ships where flying, always hitting the planet which was not defended well enough. The only defense was offense.

Which were honestly the only things stopping you from winning too easy (after you put tactical battles on in MoO2)

But the better AI of modern game(partially due to more computational power of modern pcs) does not help them to overcome their poor core mechanics.

Now if you want to know why Galciv2 is not better than MoO1/2 then you have to look into

-the economic system aka the reason for "all-x" strategies

-the spy system + larger maps+mass spy event+not spamming counter intel buildings=NOT FUN

-the, as far as i know of, still broken twilight AI, with certain races

-occasional tendencies of the AI to play unfair: when trading techs or finding colonies(i heard that was fixed)/resources/anomalies, note that you can reproduce that by sending your , for example, flagship to auto survey. it will directly fly to the nearest anomaly in range no matter if you can see it. if it is flying to a point you can be 100% sure that there is an anomaly there.(which may be found by an AI first though) And if there is none it will just sit somewhere.

Just think about that: why should it sometimes fly to some unexplored tile and sometimes just sit there tellling you that there is no anomaly in range?

And this auto find algorithm seems to be used by the AI for other things too.

-the "cool" is better than "balanced" game design strategy which led to alot of the weak points in galciv2. ok this is a singleplayer only game where balancing does not seem to be that important, but in order to provide entertaining and varying strategic challanges, the skill of the player should be THE factor which leads to win or loss and not some random balancing of the techs he used.

my 2 cents

Well the lack of a true successor to Moo 2 is in my opinion a similar reason for the lack fo a true successor to MoM. In fact if anything MoO 2 is the successor to MoM. Both games have tons of "cool stuff" to find and explore and lots of options when designing your side which really capture the imagination. Both games also completely abandoned any concept of AI or balance in their quest to achieve so much cool stuff. So they work more as sandbox Sim empire games then as strategy games. These days when people create games (except perhaps in the case of elemental) they tend to plan ahead and think about how all the elements will work together, how the AI will deal with things, etc. Thus you tend to get games with better strategic game play but less cool stuff.

I guess a key difference between MoM and MoO of course was that you could play MoO multiplayer and it was actually kind of fun. Although even heavily houseruled, the multiplayer in MoO really made the balance problems shine as anyone who built a ship using any weapon other then missiles quickly found out.

While I certainly won't say that Gal Civ 2 was much of anything like the Sims 3, I will say that Galactic Civilization's combat did suck. First, you had no control over it, combat was entirely simulated. Second, they made it 3D and, IMO, they made it 3D for the sake of it being in 3D. Third, it was "balanced" around attack (lasers, mass, and missles) and defense (armor, shields, chaff). None of these weapons were what I would call unique.

I'd preferred a 2D MOOII tile and turn based tactical combat rather then a uncreative 3D combat simulation. Ship design in MOOII was more fun despite not being able to design the look (other then a few shapes) of your ship. The weapon variety and mods were one of the major things that made MOOII combat unique and enjoyable.

Regarding my statement about "bad best practices" I'd have to say that designing a game around "perfect" balance and multiplayer fairness is one of the things hurting creativity and uniqueness. I agree that trying to implement the "best" AI possible for the game is also limiting player freedom and options. Frankly, I'd rather have more "fun" stuff then an AI who knows exactly how to use each thing in the game because, in allowing the AI to do that your essentially dumbing down the game.

I definitely agree.  The overall strategy and complexity combined with being able to fight it out with your own ship designs had a level of appeal that just hasn't been matched.  Arguably never will be matched; most modern game developers seem to think graphics should get top priority, when good graphics are really nothing more than a cherry-on-top.  Putting a cherry on a turd doesn't make it any less crap.

@adamsolo Imperium Galactica II get's the closest and maybe it surpasses a bit when we have to do with tactical battles where micromanagement has it's benefits but when we have a huge number of ships you simply have to turn control to AI.

Holy thread necro!