MOO II vs SMAC

[Leon Trotsky]

That sounds a lot like Hammer of the Gods... I should get it.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Darrell01
If any of you know of this game, there is a game almost exactly like Civ1 called Masters of Magic, I believe. That had everything like Civilization, except in battles, your units would be on this map and you would have to move them around on a square map. There were races in that game. They were all based off of Lord of the Rings type monsters. On top of having different races, you were a wizard and you had magic spells based on what types of magic you chose from. There was white, black, green, blue, red, and maybe a couple others. It was kind of a mix between Magic: The Gathering and Civ1, come to think of it. I think your research was magic and buildings or something like that. There were also these tunnels you could go thru to go to the surface map and the inner earth map. I didn't get to play it much. My friend showed me it after I told him I liked to play the games on these forums.

Masters of Magic is one of the all time great games. It was produced by Simtex, the same company that made MOO2. There are a number of similarities (leaders / heroes being one of the main ones). A way-cool game.

[Aabraxan]

Yeah, a while back, I added Masters of Magic to my list of possible games to get. Sounds very cool.

[fed1943]

Master of Magic is indeed a great game.

Older than civ1, was possibly a source of inspiration for the civ series.

I still play it (DOS version by DosBox).

Best regards,

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sikander
Isn't MOO2 about the same age as Civ2? I find them about equivalent in terms of social model complexity, perhaps with the slightest nod to Civ2 in that regard. And Civ2 is the world's worst wargame (barring other games of the genre like Civ1) for no particularly good reason, a model that is only marginally improved upon by SMAC etc. This is the reason why I don't enjoy conquering the AI or playing multiplayer. As an old school board wargamer I just can't devote much time to playing a wargame that is only one notch above Tactics II. Thankfully SMAC's social and economic models are quite deep in comparison, which make all the difference for me.

I found Civ2 much deeper in social model complexity than MOO2, Im too far from each game to really explain why, though. SMAC was admittedly more complex, and Im told deeper, but I never got into it enough to really fully experience the depth.

Im also an old wargamer, but I never thought of Civ2 as essentially a wargame.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


I found Civ2 much deeper in social model complexity than MOO2, Im too far from each game to really explain why, though. SMAC was admittedly more complex, and Im told deeper, but I never got into it enough to really fully experience the depth.

Im also an old wargamer, but I never thought of Civ2 as essentially a wargame.

I never thought of it as such either, but the warfare elements are so weak that I don't enjoy them at all. This is where MOO2 is a significant improvement. It's not "all that" or anything, but it's a lot more fun (and believable) than the Civ model. For me it's the economy, the building and the tech etc. that are funnest part of these games, but at least MOO2's combat was a bonus. Same for Master of Magic.

I always thought a better model for combat in Civ etc. would have been in-tile combat, no ZOCs, with leaders "carrying" a selection of units to form armies. A battle map of the tile with tactical combat would be optional. Leader quality would depend on social, educational and tech qualities as well as some random factors. This would allow / favor combined arms armies and rid us the the ridiculous artillery operating alone takes a city thing, as well as the phalanx from a city of 10,000 stops a mechanized corps from a city of 200,000 from moving over a vast area with its ZOC.

[Leon Trotsky]

Originally posted by Sikander
I always thought a better model for combat in Civ etc. would have been in-tile combat, no ZOCs, with leaders "carrying" a selection of units to form armies. A battle map of the tile with tactical combat would be optional. Leader quality would depend on social, educational and tech qualities as well as some random factors. This would allow / favor combined arms armies and rid us the the ridiculous artillery operating alone takes a city thing, as well as the phalanx from a city of 10,000 stops a mechanized corps from a city of 200,000 from moving over a vast area with its ZOC.

I am a long time supporter for a in-tile combat, very similar to that which you describe. I hoped Civ4 would change it, but it seems that the whole "(X:35/Y:24) attacks (X:36/Y:25)" is part of the trademark... note that it wouldn't even need the actual tactical battle (which would be awesome, but difficult to program), the game could just calculate odds in a similar fashion SMAC does.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Sikander

I always thought a better model for combat in Civ etc. would have been in-tile combat, no ZOCs, with leaders "carrying" a selection of units to form armies. A battle map of the tile with tactical combat would be optional. Leader quality would depend on social, educational and tech qualities as well as some random factors. This would allow / favor combined arms armies and rid us the the ridiculous artillery operating alone takes a city thing, as well as the phalanx from a city of 10,000 stops a mechanized corps from a city of 200,000 from moving over a vast area with its ZOC.

Substitute "province" for tile, and have the social and tech directly impact army quality, with leaders either random or historical (although at least one social factor does impact on one leader attribute, IIRC) and youve got the EU2 combat model, which works pretty well, though thats a rather different game. (and of course no tactical combat option)

[Darrell01]

Sounds like what you guys want to do with Civ and SMAC is something like Rome: Total War.

[Kataphraktoi]

RTW move system is based upon, afaik, heroes of might and magic movement system. That could be good.

For galciv 2, i envision(ed) system based movement similar to ogame, except systems have empty space you can stick fleets in. A system is the area around a sun. The graphical map would simply be a representation of where the planets\fleets\whatnot are for easier human understanding. Also, in galciv2 you cant settle on a planet and have it go unseen, and the number of colonizable planets is soo few. Why the heck cant i have a military installation on the ice planet zoolog 4? And put in a huge ion cannon that threatens any hostile ship that enters the system...drools...

Unfortunatly i havnt seen anything as awesome as that.

[Zoetrope]

Darrell01, you _can_ change the other MOO2 races. There's an editor, MeltPot, designed specifically for that.

Many other editors have been made for MOO2. Look for: the COrion2 saved-game editor and the OCL tech editor, for example.

In particular, I recommend these MOO2 sites: The "Orion Nebula" and "masteroforion2.com". Their forums and information pages are very instructive.

I had most editors on my MOO2 ftp site at SFF, but ftp doesn't seem to work there any more, so I'm communicating with the SFF administrator to sort out what to do to make the files accessible again.

MOO2 and SMAC are my 2 favorite games of all time: I play one or the other of them whenever I can. Also in the top 5 most fun games I know are some of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, and the action-adventure game Twinsen's Odyssey.

[Darrell01]

Yeah. I was foolin with those once. Thx for the info. I wanted to make an entire galaxy that was splinter colonies and see what happened.

You know, come to think of it, I remember the last time I started the game up and I chose the biggest galaxy I could find, and it seemed really small, because I had just got done playing Acendency, or Pax Imperia. One of the two. I think that's the time I decided to move on. I never did play it multiplayer and I hated playing the Psilons. Just seemed to easy to play them. I don't like to play the University or the Cyborgs in SMAC, either, although the Cyborgs are so powerful if they get running.