SE4, MOO3, and HOMM4

[Devnullicus]

These are a few of my favorite games. Ever notice how all the good strategy games have interesting short acronyms? I've been playing mostly MOO3 lately, and of course, doing what I do best - making mods. =) Made a map for HOMM4 too that I thought was interesting.

I haven't played SE4 in a while now, and just downloaded the devnullmod. Wow. Geoschmo and Rollo, you guys are awesome! Considering getting back into SE4 again and maybe starting some modding again. There's so many new (and good!) changes to devnullmod though -- it will take me a bit to catch up =)

Anyway, just babbling and saying hi. Nice to see some familiar faces =)

[Atrocities]

Hey if your playing MOO3, can you post some of what you think are good points to the game. Strategies and other suggestions. I have posted a lot of negative things about the game and I would like someones point of view who enjoys it. I am interested in knowning if the game can be played and enjoyed and if so how you do it. I promise I will not debate the game in this thread. I just want some positive feed back about the good points of the game. Thanks.

[Devnullicus]

can you post some of wha you think are good points to the game?

Well, it's a struggle to enjoy MOO3, honestly. There's a couple reasons why I do:

1) I was a huge MOO2 fan. So there's some definite brand loyalty in there
2) I enjoy playing with numbers and modding. MOO3 is very moddable (much like SE4, in fact, but more obtuse about it)

Other than that, I mainly just am disappointed in it. The new patch that came out recently fixes a lot of my major gripes about UI, etc. and makes it at least playable.

If you really start digging into the data and read a lot of the Boards and FAQ's about how things work in the game, it can get interesting. The space combat faq made the game interesting again for me.

My biggest complaint about MOO3 is how much they hid behind the scenes. They give Users VERY little info on what's really going on and how to affect your empire. There's an incredibly complex engine hidden in that game, and in order to play it well, you need to understand what's going on inside the algorithms. Modding really helps me to do that (as it did in SE4 back when I made devnullmod originally =) ).

As for strategies, well, it all comes down to micromanagement, as it always does. People complain that all they do is hit "next turn". If you do, the game will run and your empire will do about as well as the AIs.

The key is keep a close eye on your planetary production queues and make intelligent ship designs. Be aggressive about attacking the AI or other players because it's hard to defend a system, even though orb bases and sysdef ships are much tougher than normal starships. They can be easily overwhelmed with moderate fleets.

Trade tech with AIs. It's actually possible with the new patch (they would always say no before). The AI in the new patch will actually attack once in a while now and is much more dangerous (yayyy! it was pitiful before). Make sure you keep a large amount of spies in reserve to protect against enemy spies (the economic spies are cheapest and protect as well as any other spy).

Specialize your planets. i.e. build minerals on very rich planets. Make farm planets where you can, bioharvesting planets are semi-rare. Make some industrial only planets that will become production powerhouses. Always build some recreation/gov/mil centers on your planets as morale is a serious problem later as overpopulation and enemy spies hit. Even then, you'll still have to occasionally move your oppressometer down and pump large amounts (sometimes ALL) of your cash into unrest control.

I'm not the best MOO3 player by far, but I'm getting better, especially now that I understand how ship designs work and how to make effective ones. The bulletin Boards help a lot with strategy, etc.

Anyway, not sure how glowing a review this was for MOO3. =) I enjoy it for my own quirky reasons, but I can understand why many, many people do not and are hugely, angrily disappointed with this game. *shrug*

[CNCRaymond]

I think one of the strongest aspects of Masters Of Orion 3 is the Multiplayer. I like the game because it is a challenge to enjoy and play, much like Rebellion was. Although Rebellion was a lot more fun.

[oleg]

Wow ! Devnullicus is alive !
Dis you try the AI Compain mod by JLS ?
It is a very fine piece of modding !

[Baron Munchausen]

Actually, I have made the leap to MOO 3 with the release of the patch. I've been playing constantly for about a week now. The game is actually pretty good. What sucks rocks is the UI, which is ironic because they made so much hype about the 'cutting edge' UI during the development phase. There are jillions of things missing that we SE IV Users take for granted -- like statistics on how many of each ship class are in service, designs of enemy ships encountered in combat, ability to select particular types of 'events' reports out of your huge pile of notices at the start of each turn, and more. There is no way to turn off the in-game music fer cryin out loud! You have to just turn the volume down to where you can't hear it, but your CD keeps on spinning and using up your MTBF. Now that's an unfinished program!

If you can find your way around all the jumping and swooping menu doodads to get at the game, it can be interesting. MOO 3 has it's own Version of 'neutrals' for example, called Magnate Races. Just like in SE IV, you can use other races to inhabit worlds your own race can't live on very comfortably. And when you build colony ships the colony will be of the same race as the dominant population on that world, so you can spread a particular race to particular worlds. Too bad there's no indication of what race dominates a planet on the main planet screen, so you have to go out of your way to a swooping dialog box and check before you queue up a colony ship.

Worlds are divided into 'regions' with differing characteristics instead of being one single homogenous zone. You can set what type of 'DEA' (economic zone) your regions have but everything else has to be done by the 'viceroy' AI. This gives planets a sort of 'SimCity Lite' feel. This is good, though. Unfortunately the little box that lists your regions on a planet is a tiny fraction of the screen space and hard to use. And why does everything have to be double-spaced to make the tiny window show even less information?

The ship design window is a nightmare. I literally do not believe that they released a commercial game with a UI that primitive. It's literally worse than MOO 1. All the ship components are jumbled together in a single list with no set place for any of them. And they jump around as you add/remove things. The MOO 1 screen was better and the MOO 2 screen was vastly superior. Why didn't they look at it?

In spite of the god-awful UI you still get a sense of the vastness of the universe being simulated in the 'black box' workings of the game. I'm still struggling to finish one game, but I guess the main reason for that is my refusal to accept the (broken) judgement of the AI for ship building. It does stupid things like assign battleships to tiny worlds that will take 20 turns to build them, while assigning ground units, ONE AT A TIME, to your main industrial centers that could build the battleships in 4 or 5 turns... SO I have to check all the build queues every turn to prevent stupid attacks.

Well, as you can see in every single paragraph here, it's a real love-hate situation. I sure hope the next patch is a massive UI revision as well as bug fixes...

[ June 20, 2003, 18:01: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Loser]

After reading about the new MoO3, I am very tempted to get the discs back out and give it another shot. But everyone describes it as something like love/hate...

I don't care for love/hate. I just might prefer to keep my broken heart and risk a lifetime of might-have-beens.

Yep, it's all over but the cryin'.

[Rollo]

Hey Devnullicus ,
nice to have you back! I am very glad you like the Devnull Mod Gold. Geo and I tried hard to preserve the spirit of the mod (and I think we succeded), while updating and adding a few things. Most work has been done the the AI really and some of the changes to the data files have been done to make sure the AI can use the techs correctly.

The mod hasn't been updated for a while, but I am starting to get itchy fingers to implement a few of the suggestions from the DNM dicussion thread as well as make a new AI or two .

Rollo

[eddieballgame]

[quote]There is no way to turn off the in-game music fer cryin out loud! You have to just turn the volume down to where you can't hear it, but your CD keeps on spinning and using up your MTBF.[quote]

Copy the MUSIC FOLDER from the CD to /Master of Orion/GameDataSets/Classic_01/GameAssets/Common folder. Will stop CD spinning.

As for the ship design screens being a "nightmare". I agree they were a pain to use at first, but after using them quite a bit, they have become much easier to use & for multiplay very quick to design once you "get the hang of it". Not perfect, but then I haven't played a "perfect" game on a PC!

[ June 21, 2003, 08:09: Message edited by: eddieballgame ]

[Fyron]

Copy the MUSIC FOLDER from the CD to /Master of Orion/GameDataSets/Classic_01/GameAssets/Common folder. Will stop CD spinning.

That is a really poor solution. A "no music" option in the game takes at most 2-3 minutes to code (if you are a slow coder).

after using them quite a bit, they have become much easier to use

That would be a great indication of extremely poor UI design. It should not require quite a bit of time and work for them to become any easier to use.

[ June 22, 2003, 10:39: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]