For the first time this morning, I had a chance to play "Master of Orion 3". I never actually tried the game because everybody else said that the game was bad.
Many people said that there was less micromanagement and more macro management. Since, I hate losing time on details and often want to get to the point, I thought that it might not be that bad for me. Also, I am playing more board games right now and due to the limited amount of information it can keep track, it needs to simplify and abstract much more information than in video games.
So I thought that Moo3 could be for me. So I started a new game, read the tutorial windows and relatively learn how the game works to realize that right now, it is horrible.
I understand that in order to manage a large galaxy with a lot of colonies, they implemented an AI that will do routine task for you. That is OK and I agree with the decisions. It's just that the game has too much detail and information for what the user needs to know.
For example, each planet has various types of regions which can hold various kind of buildings an districts. The idea is that a part of your production could be applied to planetary development of these region to make your colony better. Since the AI manage where the stuff is going to get built, Why should I know all this information, why should the game keep track of all this information.
If would have been much more simple to have 1 development level stat which tells you how developed is your colony. All the regionning quality and buildings available could be sumarized as 2 values (Current and maximum development level). Then you would have the choice (or let your AI choose) if you want to improve your colony, of if you want to produce something useful. That way, it would have been much simpler to manage, analyze and understand rather than having tons of numbers where 3/4 of them could be ignored by the player but not the AI.
I am going to take a look at a FAQ and give it a second try. The only thing I hope is that elemental does not become like this.
You must love self punishment. I rate MOO III as the biggest dissapointment in gaming history by far....
I tried MOO2 and i didnt get what i was doing. Wonder why people love it.
Then again i love MoM ALOTTTTTTT
Well, strategy game history anyway. I was so close to running out and buying it day 1, but held off to wait for more reviews before deciding. Best gaming decision I ever made.
Galactic Civilizations 2 was very good, but still can't match the magic MOO2 pulled off to call it the spiritual successor of MOO. Not being able to control your ships in battle was a big loss to the gameplay. I really hope Stardock gets the license to make a real MOO sequel one day.
MOO3 made me so sad for the loss of a wonderful franchise. MOO1 and MOO2 were both wonderful games. I didn't find GalCiv to be to my liking, the lack of a tactical combat system contributed a lot to that. Sword of the Stars came closest, I think, to what I'm looking for in a space 4x game.
I'd give that title to Spore, no contest. But yeah, still pretty disappointing.
Honestly, I kinda liked MoO3 for a while, but of course my favorite by FAR was MoO2. MoO3 was ok in a certain way. The one thing that really turned me off to it was the graphics for the ships which are so tiny it's hillarious. My ex used to see me playing it and say "Awww, are you playing with your little pew pews again?" lol.
It does have a lot of Details though and if you don't want to Micromanage it you can Automate just about everything. MoO3 is a Great Example of a game that gives players the choice between Ultimate Micromanagement Hell and Ultimate Automation. Find the balance you like for yourself, then give it a "Fair" chance. I think I played it for about 2 or 3 weeks before I put it down and never really went back to it. It's not too hard to Mod either. you can find some decent Mods for it OnLine which may change your opinion of the game. Do a Google search on MOO3 Mods and see what comes up. You might find something you really like.
You need to go to the atari forums and grab the user patches and mods.
Then MoO3 becomes enjoyable.
Playing it from the box is, well, not usually a positive experience.
There are some good threads on MOO3 over a www.gog.com in the Master of Orion section. One will tell you how to install the Tropical mod made by users that improves things a lot. Of course install the last official mod first.
As for MOO2 there are some play throughs on youtube that will get you started.
I have tried MOO3 with the best mods. Still a game that is clear as mud to me. Think I got to turn 150 once way back there and had not the slightest idea what I was doing. The game development was tragic from the outset. If they had merely updated MOO2 with only a few new features, it would have been a great game.
MOO3 and Spore where so bad and so far from what they could have been.
Infact after Spore i have not bought another PC outside of Impulse.
I have vowed i will not step foot inside another gaming store unless it is for a Wii game.
ps MOO2 is one of my all time favorite games. I still have the game and manual and have from time to time reinstalled it for a bit of fun.
MOO2 was Very Good. Today, it would still needs to be updated. It is not that complicated to learn , but I have to say that my friend tought me how to play. In a few games, I had understood most of the concepts of the game. I remember that near the end of the game, a very large empire was hard to manage, so yes there was a lot of micro management but it took a lot of time before in gets a problem.
I am not sure if this is a rumor, but apparently somebody started a game, setup is settings, clicked end turn 500 times and won the game. Which means that he actually took no decision for the whole game.
As for modding, I was not sure if there was some mods out there. I might give it a try. Is it easy to mod? Is it like civ 3 where you ave a value editor? If I find interest in modding the game, I would put an axe in the data and massively simplify the game.
As for the lack of tactical battle, it don't mind much not having them. I still consider that it is better than in board games where you roll the dice and see who wins. (this was one of my problems in one of my board game design, I wanted people to take decisions during battle without having a side board for tactical battle resolution). At least here, you are able to see the battle and take a few decisions during the battle. (did not have a chance to test the battle yet).
Right!
When I think of the tens (hundreds?) of hours I lost reading their forums during the year preceding release... I needed a good 4X space game, the only one I got was Space Empires IV: good but with terrible AI. Well, as is said, you are always more clever after.
There was the developpers coming to taunt about 'there gonna be this and that but it's a surprise' and there was the beta-testers telling us how the game was fantastic and such... Bloody liars! Must have been paid to post!
Fortunately, I didn't pre-order and, like you, waited for the review. Wow! It spared me time and money for sure.
Since that tragedy, I very rarely buy a game without testing the demo first, without reading previews, forums and without waiting months to get it patched.
The only exception is...Elemental.
I'd love to see a GalCiv 3 with more advanced ship combat. Hell, what I'd REALLY love is where you get into the cockpit of one of your ships and fly around in combat ala Tie Fighter.
But that's probably not going to happen.
People are working on an open source spin off of MOO2 called freeorion, it looks promising, but man are they slow at developing content.
Free orion looked interesting, but it currently have the same problem than gal civ: You develop tons of technologies that has meaningless impact on the game. You need to accumulate tons of technoloies before seeing some changes.
Also free orion look similar to moo3 for the look. I am not sure what are exactly their objectives: remake moo2, moo3 or a combination of both.
Check out this link if you want to know a bit more about freeorion. Is is an interview I did with Zach Laine the Developer Head of Freeorion: http://www.spacesector.com/blog/2009/08/interview-with-freeorions-programming-lead-zach-laine/
Enjoy!
Moo 1 and 2 were amazing for their time. Moo3 was a pile of malarganite and never was really finished. Modders have done what they can without getting into hard coded limitations and even then the game was pushed to the max in order to fix it. Tragedy really. Still managed to have some massive epic lan battles in MOO3. Usually resulted in a crash but hey we played the hell out of it anyways. LOL my head on the desk at 4am in the morning moaning TURN dammit.
If there ever is another Galciv I want planetary bombardment and I want ship refits to be handled like MOO2. I really hated the way Galciv handled refit ships. I would end up with a big mess of ship lists and god it just frusterated me to no end. Tactical combat would also be awsome unless its something like Gratuitous Space Battles or better. Even then autocalc usually ALWAYS pisses me off in any game I play. The minute I let the simulation take over I lose.
I really like Moo3 once you get used to it. The ability to micro/automate everything is very nice. I still liked Moo2 more, and Galactic Civ2 most. But the features I liked best come from all 3, particularly the scale of Moo3 and the research method. By tech level 30, you're looking at massive battles. BTW play it with all the patches and fan patches, for example turn up the max number of fleets in a battle etc.
Well, after applying some mods I actually enjoyed it. Even though I wasn't able to figure out how precursory races migrate to other planets automatically.
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