MOO3 finished!

[Baron Munchausen]

It goes on sale tomorrow... if you have heard of anyone who already has it they are either reviewers or beta testers or pirates.

The reviews are out, though. Of the good ones, all admit that the game is difficult to learn. The negatives think the game is more about 'AI management' than playing the game, and the AI is not manageable. There are also apparently some serious bugs in the UI department, like major graphical glitches. Not surprising given the sheer variety of motherBoards, graphics cards, and drivers out there. How could they possibly test every combination before release?

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Shadowstar:
I saw a similar joke where the modifications to the English alphabet eventually ended up with the article being written in German...

To really get to the bottom of this whole language thing, consider that English came from Latin, just the same as American English came from British English. Nobody speaks Latin anymore (except for arrogant college kids)...

No, English came from Germanic Languages. It is an amalgamation of the Languages spoken by the native peoples of England, that spoken by the Angles when they took over, and that spoken by the Saxons when they took over (and some Celtic thrown in for good measure). All of these Languages are Germanic Languages. Some French (which is latin-based) made its way in when the Normans (who were Vikings-turned-Frenchmen) conquered England in the 11th century AD. French words were used mostly by the upper ruling classes, and English was used by the lower classes. So, most of English is still based off of the ancient Germanic Languages, with a splash of French thrown in. Scientific terms are usually derived from Latin, but they are not really a part of the common everyday English language.

[ February 25, 2003, 00:04: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[CombatSquirrel]

MOO3 is supposed to go on sale tomorrow... or at least the pre-sales are supposed to ship tomorrow. I do not know yet if any local outlets (Best Buy, EBgames, etc.) will have it in.

A few Online vendors have still not definately commited to ship times, so I do not even know if copies have arrived at the distribution warehouses yet.

Anybody got anything definate and dependable?

CombatSquirrel

[raynor]

Adrenaline Vault gives the game three out of five stars--mainly because the AI is so incredibly poor.

http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game=moo3

[Baron Munchausen]

You know what I find impressive is that there are no copies floating around on the P2P networks yet. I browse both the Kazaa/Gnutella network and the WinMX network on a semi-regular basis. Normally you can find a game Online well before you can find it in the stores because someone at the CD plant will leak it. There's usually a lead time of two weeks or more. They must have resorted to some extra-ordinary security to prevent it from leaking.

[Puke]

from the avault review:

Once you know what you should be doing, MOO3 is somewhat curious to pin down in terms of gameplay; at first, I wasn't sure if it was anything more than a spreadsheet with a graphical interface. It's obvious that Quicksilver gave a great deal of thought and effort to the economic and scientific aspects - even including a Planetary AI to deal with mundane tasks. What is equally obvious is that combat is often quick, dull and very dumbed down. The combat engine is not basic in its underlying design; Quicksilver took into account sensor ranges, weapons ranges and other factors as never done before in the MOO series. However, once in combat, there is little strategic gameplay present. You simply point your Task Forces in a direction until you spot the enemy, hit the attack button, and let the AI do the rest - making combat little more than a light show. Even intercepting enemy fleets is no longer that important, as every ship you build automatically goes into your empire's Reserves upon completion. From there you can create a Task Force at any system capable of building the same ships in only one turn - even if your vessels were created many turns travel away on a distant world. With the ability to instantly generate battle fleets just about anywhere in your empire, the Last tactical area of combat has been eliminated.

Unfortunately, I found that the AI only loosely follows the guidelines that you set. For instance, even though I set Mining as the highest DEA priority for Mineral Rich worlds, I often caught the AI building mainly Farming zones instead (despite the fact that Farming wasn't even in my Development Plan). In addition, I found that if I set the AI not to colonize worlds on its own, it would do so anyway - even if the planet was toxic to my race.

In terms of difficulty, Master of Orion 3 falls totally flat, especially compared to its predecessors. I was hard pressed to tell the difference between the Easy and Hard levels of difficulty, as both played nearly the same. In fact, it's not uncommon to see AI players actually bring a fleet to one of your systems, then do nothing. The enemy will simply sit in orbit of a system until you send in an opposing fleet and destroy them; they won't even press an advantage. The only real challenge posed by MOO3 is with the Antarans and the various Guardian battleships, each of which takes aggressive action.

maybe i wont buy it, afterall. Theres always Galciv. maybe X2 will come out in a couple months.. maybe i'll finish the GritTech mod, and play more PBW.

[Fyron]

Maybe it will be better after many patches a year from now.

[Wardad]

Originally posted by Puke:
...maybe i wont buy it, afterall. Theres always Galciv. maybe X2 will come out in a couple months.. maybe i'll finish the GritTech mod, and play more PBW.

hmmm... play more PBW.

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
You know what I find impressive is that there are no copies floating around on the P2P networks yet. I browse both the Kazaa/Gnutella network and the WinMX network on a semi-regular basis. Normally you can find a game Online well before you can find it in the stores because someone at the CD plant will leak it. There's usually a lead time of two weeks or more. They must have resorted to some extra-ordinary security to prevent it from leaking.

Either that or it sucks so bad nobody WANTS to pirate it

(And I was looking forward to MOO3 too... )

[klausD]

Nobody mentions that the combat system of MOO3 is only real time. Is this real time crap so much accepted in this forum, that no one is complaining about this important issue?