Game Comparrisons.

Atrocities · #1 June 2nd, 2001, 12:03 AM

How would you rank the following games?

SEIV (Space Empires 4)
BOTF (Birth Of The Federation)
IGII (Imperium Galactica 2)
MOOII (Masters Of Orion 2)

For me, the ranking would be a simple matter of likeability.

BOTF = 8 (Game play and graphics)
SEIV = 7 (Creatability, depth of play)
MOOII = 4 (AI)
IGII = 4 (Ground based assualts, graphics.)

Atrocities · #2 June 2nd, 2001, 12:34 AM

#3 June 2nd, 2001, 01:20 AM

I played MOO then MOOII a lot but finally found it too easy even on impossible. Also I got tired of the AI cheating so much. Tactical combat was great, especially ship initiative. I used the race pick that got all the techs in an area researched, heavy gravity, and subterranean. I really hated the Saccra, seems like they bred like flies and were usually the race that gave me the most problems. But I guess this is not the right forum to talk about MOO. It is dead and gone so far as I am concerned. SE IV is the game of my dreams!
You forgot to mention Ascendacy - it was ok for a few months play.
Although not a SPACE empire game, the Civilization series was pretty good too. In all I got a couple years play out of that.

Master Belisarius · #4 June 2nd, 2001, 02:28 AM

Hey Atrocities I respect your opinion, but I really hated BOTF!
Bad interfase (with many colonies is a nightmare try to manage your empire, the map is pathetic), worst customization (you can not create a ship design for example), really short tech tree, the tactical combat is very limited.

So far, I think that SEIV is the better (well I like SEIII too, in some aspects was better than SEIV!).

God Emperor · #5 June 2nd, 2001, 02:52 AM

I mainly played MOO2 against friends so I rate it a 8.5 - tactical combat was great! I loved the Sakkrans! Once I had conquered them, I exported them to all of my planets as their subterranean ability increased the living place on any planet where they were present. My friends were stunned the first time I pulled that trick on them!
We still reminisce about some of the battles we fought. Played MOO2 solidly for over two years - even beats the amount of time that I spent on Civilisation.

SE4 rates a 9.

BOTF was very pretty and atmospheric but I only rate it a 5 as the AI stank and the game was very limited. Ascendancy was in the same Category - impressive music and graphics, but, that was it.

Never played IG2 - IG1 put me off and a couple of friends grated IG2 poorly.

Atrocities · #6 June 2nd, 2001, 03:40 AM

quote:

Hey Atrocities I respect your opinion, but I really hated BOTF!

It had a lot of faults, but overall, once you gave it a chance, the game was quite good. I especially loved the ships and bases as they provided me with the frame work to build my own unique star trek race set for SEIV.

Master Belisarius · #7 June 2nd, 2001, 04:59 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Atrocities:
I especially loved the ships and bases as they provided me with the frame work to build my own unique star trek race set for SEIV.

We agree 100% here... and is a good time to say thanks for your work!!!

Richard · #8 June 2nd, 2001, 06:01 AM

BOTF has faults but the overall game design makes it rather addictive.

I just wish we could have newly acquired races actually keep making the ships they did before they joined your race. I wanted fleets of cool mixed ships, not more of my race

.

But yeah SE:IV ranks higher but I am biased

.

------------------
Sarge is coming...

Richard Arnesen
Director of Covert Ops
Shrapnel Games
http://www.shrapnelgames.com

Noble713 · #9 June 2nd, 2001, 07:04 AM

I'm gonna expand the list a bit:

SE4 - 9. Insane customizability, great gameplay. Unimpressive AI and sound. Graphics are ok.

SE3 - 8. Excellent gameplay, damn good AI, and respectable customizability. Crap graphics and sound.

MOO2 - 7. I had never played this until Last year, but I found it rather enjoyable. Lots of options, restpectable graphics and sound. I found it really hard though, being soundly defeated at Easy difficulty.

Ascendancy - 5. Some interesting but poorly implemented ideas. Ship combat was very strange, the pacing was sporadic, and the AI was crap. Good graphics and sound.

SE2 - 5. My first Space Empires experience. It had even worse graphics than SE3 and really crappy interface, but it was incredibly fun and the AI was challenging enough. The construction system was funny (in hindsight), as it worked like repair components do now, you a starbase filled with shipyards could build a dozen dreadnoughts in a single turn. Some of my largest and most memorable space battles are from SE2 (it didn't have strategic combat and I don't think I really trusted the AI controlling my ships).

Imperium Galactic 2 - 4. Great graphics, but VERY slow and boring gameplay. Tactical combat was interesting but I don't think I ever had enough ships (or big ones) to make the options really stand out. Ground assaults had pretty graphics but you always ran right over the other guy with little or no trouble, so it didn't really matter.

Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain - 3. Ugh. I'm ashamed to say that I bought this game and thoroughly enjoyed it for a few months. It had exceptional graphics, sound and music, but the gameplay was VERY limited. Research options didn't matter much at all. The respectable ship design features were wasted, as tactical combat was incredibly straight-forward (had some nice graphics and sounds though) and the AI never made use of interesting tactics. Planetary development options, diplomacy, and intelligence were almost non-existant.

Phier · #10 June 2nd, 2001, 07:26 AM

In order that I remember playing them....

Reach for the stars - first 4X game I played, limited tech tree, no tactical combat, wasted MANY hours on it.

Pax Imperia - Don't remember if this is the name but it was on the amiga and all I recall is that it got boring and your best planetary minister always rebelled.

Stars! - Cool game in many ways but I could never really get into it. I actualy bought it as shareware and then gave my password/copy out to a friend and never played again.

Moo1 - Oh how I loved this one. I still remember having 'genocide days' when I would place a few massive ships over every one of an allies planets and then declare war. Wipe out the entire race in 1 turn. AI not bad but cheated like a mother.

Moo2 - I liked this one too, but the cheating AI again. I don't mind some cheating, the comptuer needs it I think, but the difference from easy to impossible seemed to be only production cheating. Taking out ship initative was a big mistake.

SE4 - My first SE game to date. While I like it a lot I wish the AI was a bit more challanging. TMD mod pack on moderate bonus and hard and not breaking a sweat. Seems the bonus matters in those first few turns but after that its inability to deal with mines, and rather happazard attacks make it easy to win. Think I"m going to try a game without taking any abilities myself to see how I do.