"Spoilers"? "Surprise"? Hey, it's *strategy*, not *adventure*!

[MariOne]

I frankly don't get it at all.
You're supposed to enjoy games like this because you can play them over and over again, at least 1 year long (or till the next one comes out, except if it's CivIII...).
What will you do after the first time you ll'have met and found out what and how the Harvesters or whichever other game detail are? Begin to enjoy the game less because it has lost the surprise effect? Stop playing it?

I am very puzzled. I would figure that someone with such worries won't probably be the best TBS customer...

[darcy]

Yes, exactly, I laugh every time I see this "spoiler" tag.

The "eXperience" stuff might have made sense if they aimed at the mass market, but mixing it with a hardcore spreadsheet simulator was just... dumb. The decision probably didn't come from the designer, though.

[Stuie]

I tried to make that point in a OrionSector thread. I mean, if you play the game once is there no replay value because it's "spoiled"? Whatever.

[Grumbold]

A game can both be strategic and have some surprises. Sure, by the time you're playing for the fifth or fiftieth time what is holding you is almost entirely going to be excellent gameplay, not new surprises, but that doesn't stop it making the first few games that much more fulfilling.

Sure there are some people who will play chess all their life because the purity of the strategy appeals to them. For others its as dull as ditchwater. If the little plot surprises aren't to your taste fair enough. For some of us it increases the enjoyment to be playing out a story rather than just pushing numbers.

[MariOne]

Mind, I also found for instance the bakground story in SMAC adding alot to gaming experience.
But I didn not found extra enjoyment in UNEXPECTEDLY finding out some plot twist.

Only game which somehow succesfully mixed the two was Alien Legacy. But after I completed it, and test few alternate strategies, it LOST replay value indeed.

So you practically are telling us that you will enjoy your first MoO3 games better, and that no matter how good will your MoO3 experience be after the fiftieth time you'll play it, you'll always feel that you'll never enjoy it that much as you did in those fantastic first games where you discovered plot twists behind a strategy game.

Well, whatever floats your boat.
I fervently hope this will NOT happen to me, on the contrary, I hope that the more I'll get to know it, the more I'll enjoy it. For this reason TOO I'm not planning to get it b4 3 or 4 months.

[Alexfrog]

I think the covering up of harvesters was mostly to increase hype....

But I also think the backstory is very cool.

[Grumbold]

I don't think Alien Legacy was designed for heavy replay since almost all of it was preset, it was just your reaction to the events that led to different ways of succeeding or failing. Having said that, I loved it and I do replay it occasionally to see if I get more out of it, but I couldn't play it more than once a year. I hope to be playing MOO3 a lot more than that

For a repeatable "strategy" game, how about Princess Maker 2? Its got so many endings its unlikely anyone will ever achieve them all without some form of cheat program.

It says something about the story in MOO that I was actively annoyed about the fudge that takes you from MOO2 to MOO3. Its like saying that the all-powerful empire(s) I created that single handedly defeated the Antarrans were all too stupid to look past that one world for more foes, or to explore outside the Orion sector in conventional space. Had MOO got a limp or nonexistent story I'd not have cared at all that you start back with one homeworld and no tech again...