will i like MoO3?

[sabrewolf]

hi there

sorry, i have never played any version of MoO, nor have i ever seen it. while wanting to order civ3ptw, amazon.co.uk recommends to also get moo3.

so my question: would i like moo3? [i always loved TBS (especially the civilization-series), liked ascendancy (a turn based game with research, building, combat, etc in a galaxy)]. should i order it in your opinion?

thanks!

sabrewolf

[Skanky Burns]

It is a distinct possibility that you would like MoO3.
It might be worth it to try out MoO 1 and 2 too, although I'm not sure of their availability.

[Grumbold]

Imho the MoO games have been distinctly superior to the Civ games.

MoO1 has reached abandonware stage but may or may not be available for download depending on how aggressive the company is about defending decade old code. MoO2 is still floating around in budget compilations. Both are still extremely playable (but I have to disable sound to get MoO1 to run in a Dos window these days...)

[Main_Brain]

I remember that on the MoO3 Page the so to call betaAncestor is downloadable. cant remember the Name now though
In my Opinion Civ always was less complex on the surface than MoO. In Civ you always had the Option to get deeper into the Game figure out some formulas etc. in Master of Orion it was very hard to play without going into micromanaging everything.

[Mr. Orange]

I agree, but also realize that in Civ you are dealing with roughly 30 cities tops in a large game. In Orion, you would be dealing with up to 5 planets (cities) per system. Therefore in a large game, you might have 20 systems. Mirco-management hell.

What is so hard to balance in any TBS SF game is having something accurate (systems with planets and moons) with something accesible (managing each one).

Hopefully QS has put together a good balance between both. IMO, this is what will make or break the game.

[vmxa1]

Re: will i like MoO3?

Originally posted by sabrewolf
hi there

sorry, i have never played any version of MoO, nor have i ever seen it. while wanting to order civ3ptw, amazon.co.uk recommends to also get moo3.

so my question: would i like moo3? [i always loved TBS (especially the civilization-series), liked ascendancy (a turn based game with research, building, combat, etc in a galaxy)]. should i order it in your opinion?

thanks!

sabrewolf

I would expect you would enjoy either game. Many civ players play Moo as well, not to mention of know several that play Ascendancy (me). That is why Moo is on this board.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Mr. Orange In Orion, you would be dealing with up to 5 planets (cities) per system. Therefore in a large game, you might have 20 systems. Mirco-management hell.

Like Civ, it would be very unlikely that you needed to visit many of them. I always found the build queues and information reports more than adequate to keep on top of the tweaking. Now if you're the sort of person who has to double check the allocation of each new worker, I can't help you

[sabrewolf]

actually, that's one thing (probably the only thing) i hated about ascendancy: micromanagement. it's just tedious to build always the same things on 100 different planets. specially terraforming, etc. was a pain in the neck.

but otoh, so is civ3 (on larger maps)

[Grumbold]

Yeah, its not like you had to build one research lab per planet, you had to build one on each blue square and connect them up. If only the AI could have done that sensibly for you it would have been a classier game.

[moomin]

You're gonna like MoO. MoO, MoM and X-Com represent some sort of peak of TBS gaming. Unfortunately, only MoO2 is easy to get to run on modern machines. MoO3, if done right, should last us well into the next decade.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
actually, that's one thing (probably the only thing) i hated about ascendancy: micromanagement. it's just tedious to build always the same things on 100 different planets. specially terraforming, etc. was a pain in the neck.

but otoh, so is civ3 (on larger maps)

This is so painfully true. The need to do so much, is what makes it long periods before I go back and fire up another Ascendancy. You have to terraform black squares, place everything by hand. I loved the ships battles and blasting the planets, but it is tedious.

Moomin, I have no problems getting any of those games to run on every Windows platform since DOS, except Win2000. Win2000 is a gamers worse nightmare. It is strange as I got Moo and the rest to run on NT and XP.

[Craig P.]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Like Civ, it would be very unlikely that you needed to visit many of them. I always found the build queues and information reports more than adequate to keep on top of the tweaking.

The trouble is, the build queue in Moo2 isn't deep enough, and there's no option for saving a template to re-use in getting a planet off the ground.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Moomin, I have no problems getting any of those games to run on every Windows platform since DOS, except Win2000. Win2000 is a gamers worse nightmare. It is strange as I got Moo and the rest to run on NT and XP.

strange... i am pleased with win2k and can get a lot of DOS-games running (to be honest, i didn't try too many).

for me with win95/98 it was nearly impossible to get anything working, except if you started in DOS-mode.
and NT4 seemed to have a completly other API than the other OS's, because you didn't even think to try a get the games to run.

havn't tried XP yet...

[moomin]

Oh, I know you can get the games to run, and that they sometimes do so without any trouble whatsoever. But the numbers of questions and threads on how to run MoM over in classic games seem to indicate that some luck is involved.

[Straybow]

Heck, I've been able to get old DOS games like Castles II and Warlords II to run on my Win95 machine, but couldn't get Dune II to run to save my scalp. It's a crap shoot.

Every time I think of the eventual necessity to switch over to W2k or XP makes me cringe.