MOO3

[Jubala]

I've never played any of the moo games. Don't know why, I just didn't. But judging from what I've read about moo3 I'll probably play that. Still playing Stars!

[AJC]

I think that for its time Moo2 was a pretty good game. In fact I remember when it came out - I was thrilled - I thought finally a game that came close to the old star fire system, and on a computer no less! Oh the late nights I burned ... trying to beat the cheating AI...
I think my problem with the MOO series was that it came across as civilzation in space. Alot of the same paradyms were in the game that you found in all the civilization games- such as having to feed the population, the inability to research more than one tech at a time, to name a few frustrations. I particularly hated the fact that I could not build on a planet and build ships at the same time, and that I couldnt expand my construction capabilites around a single star system like I can in SE3/4.
Once I found the SE series - well moo2 got shelved. Moo1 and 2 were just too limited.

I am not too hopeful for Moo3 - It doesnt look that great to me, I hope I am wrong. The Last time I read about it - I read that they had removed tactical combat. For me, the ability to do tactical combat is half the fun of a space warfare game. I prefer the ability to move the ships and fight the battles myself instead of waiting for a computer to decide the outcome for me.

[mafia]

cyclemania - I checked out your MOO3 site. The second link down, read about the tech tree they are planning on writing. It's a complete copy of SE4's tech tree!

-m

[James Sterrett]

Talenn:

I disagree with you that the "choose one of the techs" in MoO2 was dumd. IMO, it's brilliant in theory, because in theory it presents the player with tough choices and forces the player to engage in some combination of conquest, espionage, and/or diplomacy to gain the other options. It's a mechanism that creates more gameplay.

In practice, I agree many of the choices were not that tough to an experienced player. But there were a few tough ones. I always agonized over Missile Bases vs Auto Factories, both critical technologies. If more of the sections of the tree had forced decisions like that, it would have been a stronger tech tree design.

On the other hand, I missed MoO1's random deletion of techs from the tree. That ensured that every game played at least a little bit differently - and, sometimes, a LOT differently. I played a game once in which nobody developed anything that could harm planetary missile bases until very, very late in the game. The only way to take systems was to try to bLast out the missile bases with spies! Eventually, the really powerful late-game weapons changed that and the conquests unrolled again.

[Talenn]

James Sterrett:

IMO, the CONCEPT was sound, but the execution was silly. Many of the techs had NOTHING to do with one another, you just had to make an arbitrary choice. The example you gave was a perfect example of what I'm saying.

Now if it had been a choice between 'x','y' or 'z' weapon or variant of weapon or somesuch I would have enjoyed it. Many of their choices just seemed not too terribly relevant to the other items on the list.

Also, IMO it would have been nice to be able to go back and research the other techs perhaps at a surcharge. That would make more sense but the whole 'This is your one chance for tech 'x'...didnt take it? Ha! You lose it forever!' idea doesnt seem to have much basis in reality and IMO didnt add much to the game play.

I understand the effect they were looking for with that, but I think they missed the mark in implementing it. SE4 does and admirable job of rewarding people for specializing their techs while still allowing the ability to go back and pick up neglected techs. In fact, I think SE4 might be a bit TOO forgiving in that regard.

FWIW, I'd like to see all techs in SE4 take a minimum amount of time to research or else give diminishing returns on huge piles of RPs.

Talenn

[Psitticine]

Here's a point I mention with great trepidation . . .

Anybody recall how buggy that game was when released? They released three patches and never did get all the DTDs out of it. MOM was even worse. As shipped, it was impossible to finish the game and they never addressed even half the issues.

I loved both games and would probably still be playing MOM if it didn't have a weird conflict with the video card on my newer computer. I do think, however, all the fuss being made over SEIV's progress should be considered in light of exactly how unstable the game to which it is most frequently compared really was.

BTW, whatever happened to Steve Barcia, anyway? I liked his designs very much!

[Talenn]

No idea on Steve Barcia. I believe Alan Emrich is working on MOO3. I really look forward to it simply because of his input. He has done a number of other board games that have all been VERY well done IMO.

He used to also be a review/columnist for CGW years ago and many of his views on what was or was not a good game mirrored my own.

Talenn