No comparison to MOO2

[Jason2]

I keep seeing people refer to the "AI" of MOO2. What AI?

A MOO2 basic game: build up for about 300 turns and then either wipe the whole galaxy or get wiped. The bonus to the computer was huge on "Hard" and "Impossible" and there were NO tactical issues to resolve as once the right fuel cell was researched all fleets could reach any planet. Even with the occasional loss to the huge fleet of the Psilons or Sakkras (almost always, no other race could win) MOO2 stayed on my hard drive about 1 month and then resurfaced for the occasional battle. The only place it was better was its mix of random events.

Just my 2 cents... lol. I think SEIV is above and beyond (wwwwwwwaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy beyond) the better game.

Jason2

[Nitram Draw]

While MOO2 was not overly challanging it had a number of nice features. My favorite was the research, where you had to choose one item available and lost the ability to research the other items on that level. That made Diplomacy very important.
BUT, overall SE4 is by far a better game! I think it will remain on my harddrive until I bury my computer. No other game I have ever owned did that.

[raynor]

Space Empires IV is far and away a better game than MOO2. I have already spent more hours in a month playing SEIV than all the time I've spent playing MOO2 since buying it when it first came out.

Does MOO2 have AI? Well, if I loaded it up right now and played a game on Impossible, I'm quite sure I would get spanked.

Does SEIV have AI? The game started out one hundred times better than MOO2 and doubles in quality with the release of every new patch. I love playing the game. Am I concerned about losing? No.

Let's think about how hard it is to create AI for a game. Let's start with the simplest game of all: Tic-Tac-Toe. A child learns this game at an early age and quickly masters it. Could you sit down and write an AI that would always result in a tie game? You bet.

What about the game of checkers? This is a much more complicated game than Tic-Tac-Toe, wouldn't you agree. But it is still a children's game in comparison to chess. Could you write an AI for checkers that would be challenging to the casual checkers player? I think you could. But for chess? I don't think so.

I think this is a good comparison. The lack of tactical options in MOO2 makes it very much like Checkers vs. SEIV as chess, IMHO. Let's say I spend the time to write an AI for checkers and then spend the same time writing AI for chess. Which AI is going to be harder to beat?

In conclusion:

If I spent a week writing a checkers program that could beat you two/thirds the time and a week writing a chess program than can only beat you one game in ten, would you say the AI for the checkers game was better than the chess AI?

[This message has been edited by raynor (edited 07 March 2001).]

[jdjackson99]

I agree SEIV is way better than MOO2, but I liked the random events in MOO2 a whole lot better. Good and bad events would be a nice addition to SEIV.

[jdjackson99]

I agree SEIV is way better than MOO2, but I liked the random events in MOO2 a whole lot better. Good and bad events would be a nice addition to SEIV.

[Sinapus]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nitram Draw:
While MOO2 was not overly challanging it had a number of nice features. My favorite was the research, where you had to choose one item available and lost the ability to research the other items on that level. That made Diplomacy very important.
BUT, overall SE4 is by far a better game! I think it will remain on my harddrive until I bury my computer. No other game I have ever owned did that.

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Yeah, I like SE4 better, but still have MOO2 and X-Com Apocalypse on my machine as well.

Ah, we need the GNN newsdroid! That's it!

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

[This message has been edited by Sinapus (edited 07 March 2001).]