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MOOOing: My First Game
Setup: Stock Trilarian, Huge 3-arm galaxy, Easy (I’m a wimp…), 8 AIs, all victory methods enabled.
Firing up my first game I couldn’t imagine a better start. I’m in the Senate, and there are relatively ‘nice ‘races there: Humaniods (Evon), Silicoids, Imsaeis, Klackons, and Meklar. No nasty Sacra, who will hate my guts immediately! My home system is beautiful to behold. Besides my Sweetspot homeworld there are FOUR green planets! Sure, one has Battle Damage, but who cares! Another had rare plants – bonus! This will make my home system a powerhouse, and easy to defend and develop. I put my Development strategy to Research, Infrastructure, and Military, and research priorities were divided roughly equally with a bias toward Physical since it is clear at the start that minerals are very short supply, limiting my industry. I zilch the AI’s build queues and replace them with System Colonies (at 850 vs ~1100 each this is a huge advantage).
Before I start I call up my other Senate members and, over the next few turns, only the Evon and Imsaeis are friendly. My scouts go out to see the universe. It takes them about 10-20 turns before a Green world or two shows up, then I send my Warp Colony out to grab it. Luckily it’s far away from any known terror, so far at least.
I set my spending for Peace through Strength (max 20 percent military) and changed my government to Constitutional Monarch (no bonuses/penalties to speak of). I zone my homeworld (not trusting the AI, and wanting to see what would happen) to have 2 Industry, 2 farms, 1 government (there already, I think), 3 mining (I’m chronically short here), and 4 research. I think I shorted Industry too much, but I’ll try again in another game. Mines came first, then the others. In retrospect I should have followed the AI’s lead and have the industry build first so I could build faster – live and learn. Because of the Trilarian’s strong Bioharvesting two farms were plenty, especially with later upgrades.
The plan was simple – expand like crazy, which I knew I had to do to compete with the Klackon and Imsaeis (Klackons have fast reproduction, and Imsaeis very large worlds and big population potential). I wanted to avoid investing early in useless early warships since they cost so much wrt early production ability, and getting out colonies early (system and otherwise) is crucial.
Within 50 turns I found I had no nearby neighbors even though I was in the center of the galaxy. Whew! I found 2 splinter colonies in the boondocks, one of which was on a Sweetspot World. I also found the Darlock (red 2) on two worlds, and the Bulrathi (green world for me). Later I found a very small Mrshaan. I made it a priority to put an outpost on the Darlock world, and a colony on the Bulrathi world to make it mine! It took 20 turns to get the colony up and to the Bulrathi system (which was Sol, btw, with 3 other Green worlds – looks like those old Terrans had been busy before they were exterminated). After placing the Outpost on the Darloc world I simply let it grow (albeit slowly), and later plopped a colony ship on it to give it a boost.
All the while I’m fiddling with the build cues, overriding my AIs zoning (and doing some wrong things, like building mines before industry, for instance) and being a control freak. The AI has this nasty habit of not building military defenses/bases and favoring troop ships or ship construction upgrades – these get deleted until much later. That could be my priorities, though – I’m still learning the nuances. I’m also fiddling with the ship building and realizing I have no idea what to do, so I focus on three simple plans: short range direct fire, long range direct fire, and long range missile, largely on CL hulls. (I dislike the AIs stock ship names, which are overly arcane – what is wrong with “CLdfsr-3” for short range direct fire CL with level 3 warp or “CLmsl-3” for CL missile cruiser?). My fleet was very small (the original system ships plus one CL, then a few much later about turn 90), and the strategy was to rely on decent ground bases for defense and hope I don’t get blockaded.
Around turn 70 or 80 my mineral problems disappeared due to automatic mining DEA improvements, especially Deep Core Mining (I think level 6 physical). I could zone for more research and industry. Another benefit is that I got lots of nifty missile techs, and I put an emphasis on building CLmsl-3 (level 3 missiles, with warp engines at speed 168, vs the original 85). These had decent engines and shields (level 3) due to my generally equal tech rate progression.
After turn 80 or so I noticed something strange: colonies and outposts were being established I and had nothing to do with it! There were no colony pods or outposts being build – they just appeared. Moreover, they were Trilarian, Bulrathi, Mrshaan, and (especially) Darloc. Many started as tiny populations (say, 50 to 300) that, over 20 or 30 turns, grew to 1000 and became a ‘real’ colony. At this point I stopped making colony pods since colonies were forming by themselves – why waste the resources! One bad thing is that sometimes they formed on Red planets. I hope these are Darlok (which have a vastly different environmental preference than Trilarians) so they can become useful in the future – until they grow to 1000 I won’t know.
About this time the Meklar decided I needed to be exterminated. Fine. Be that way. I start making a fleet, humble though it may be. It takes a LONG time, and by the construction time of 12 turns had elapsed the sad ship is obsolete. My tech is zipping along, easily several thousand a turn. There are a lot of underruns, and few overruns, so tech progress was speedy.
At Turn 100, after the erratic Meklar had been the unhappy victim of a Total War declaration by the Senate and were then kicked out of the Senate (now, who do you suppose arranged that? It was supported by the New Orions, too, hehehe. Now, isn’t that too bad?), I decide to take the war to them. My stupid colonies had been building transports so I had a lot in reserve. My techs gave me Marines with some bumps in their otherwise poor effectiveness. It took a while to figure out how to form troops on the transport, but when I did I sent my 2 CLmsl-3s off with 4 transports to a Meklar colony 6 turns away (by warp point – vital to secure!!) and held my breath (my ground combat is terrible). But I won, easily too. Now my unhappy Meklars started, within 10 turns or so, making their own colonies all over my empire, and since they have almost opposite environmental preferences this greatly expands my ability to utilize systems. It takes time to cycle the transports, since they go back to Reserve for 10 turns or so, but I make steady progress and absorb 3 or 4 Meklar colonies by turn 130 since I have 3+ sets of transports cycling to the front.
In the meantime my tech and economy are exploding (in a good way – no orbital bombardment by nasty Meklar - yet). By 130 my income is 15000+, and the research, production, mining, and weaponry improvements are flowing in. Most tech advances are in the upper teens and low 20s, but are slowing down a bit even with the nifty Sociology and Mathematics research DEA upgrades. My shipyards have been upgraded a few times so I start producing CAs, then BCs and BBs.
Now the game had changed completely since I’ve gained critical mass. During the last Senate President Election I was nominated instead of the Klackon (my total pop was about 450 to the Orion’s 1000). There are over 20 planets under my belt and more are falling into my lap every turn (well, it’s slowing down a bit now that I’m no longer producing so many system and colony ships and relying on ‘natural’ colonization). My home system is gearing up for major ship production as their shipyards are upgraded. I’m forming my first carrier task force on a battleship CV hull (in response to a pesky Meklar CV group that is blockading one of my ‘free’ Darlok colonies – why they don’t bomb it into oblivion is beyond me). I still don’t understand Task Forces very well, but I’ll try or die in the attempt. So far my original missile CLs have done a wonderful job, obsolete though they may be. Now that I think about it I should change to Limited War or Total War to boost my military spending.
I’d guess I’m at the hard part in the game – integrating ship design and tactics from the ‘big picture’. The mechanics are complicated but understandable, but a worthy task of an Emperor. The AI does a decent job in general, and I find it does reduce the micromanagement a lot once I learn to let go.
Overall comments:
1. This is probably going to be a game I LOVE. It isn’t dumbed down like CIV3 and the designers seem to have succeeded in making a game the feels different, and that is fun. My only qualitative complaint here is that the narrative doesn’t seem to be tied into the game; it seems to sit on the surface. I’ve loved SMAC/X (Alpha Centauri for the uninitiated) long after the mechanics became old because of its strong story line and I was hoping the same for MOO3. This could still come out later.
2. Colonies forming by themselves is a nifty idea that makes sense once there is enough population to emigrate. For a while I was annoyed that I’d lost control, but I quickly decided this was a good thing – go for it loyal citizens! Don’t wait for your grateful Emperor to tell you what to do! Use that initiative!
3. On a similar note, the Emigrate function is a good idea. Toggling this may have been what triggered the exodus to all those unclaimed, juicy worlds out there. The main function is that worlds that are getting a bit full can have their excess population go somewhere else without me having to assign transports to do it – more useful automation. This is a good idea, and it was well executed (even if I found out about it by accident and experimentation).
4. If you don’t invest in spies of all types you will regret it. Luckily I had a half dozen to a dozen before the Meklar declared war, and that didn’t always protect me. The New Orions were also rather nasty – I caught lots of their spies (and gave them a messy execution). They retaliated by blowing up lots of buildings, and making my people paranoid. Bastards.
5. Society stability is key. Get Duty of Loyalty if you can, otherwise you’ll be plagued by unrest. Trilarians are very stable and even I had problems that required personal attention every few turns. This was especially bad when the Meklar/New Orions started causing civil unrest despite my 3 social defensive spies.
6. I haven’t been able to build any Darlok spies (I’d really like to!), and only a few Mrshaan troops. I’m wondering how to utilize their abilities! Trilarians are pretty terrible at spies and ground troops, and that was the main appeal to the Magnate Civilizations.
7. The AI seems to terraform planets with mixed populations toward Trilarian preferences. This is fine for Blurathi or Mrshaan, but death for Darloks. I’d like to be able to remove one race from a planet to simplify the process. The AI seems to be good when there is only one race in making sure the terraforming goes in the right direction, though.
8. The structures that automatically terraform your worlds are nifty. I looked back and found that ALL my home system worlds were now Sweetspot by turn 120! I didn’t do it, and there were no significant funds devoting to terraforming. The bonuses for a Sweetspot world are huge, and this alone is a major inducement to pursue mid-high level Biology techs.
9. I love the auto-improvements on DEAs when you get the tech upgrades. The AI is perfectly appropriate to take care of this since it is a level of detail I definitely do not want to mess with.
10. The Auto Ship Build function is terrific and a real time saver, and it seems to do a good job. It refuses to make Missile ships, though – those have to be formed by hand.
Gameplay Irritations:
1. Game crashes: I’ve had repeated Direct X crashes on my XP system. This typically happens when I goggle from a detail screen to the galaxy screen. But, it is abrupt and final…
2. Poor facility descriptions: As noted by reviewers, the facility descriptions don’t tell you what they do. I don’t like this since some of the names are more than a tad obscure.
3. Challenging task forces: Forming Task Groups is likely to be an art form; it is not intuitive. I’ll likely get used to it and build accordingly, but until then I’ll be fighting it all the way.
4. Combat? Yawn…: Combat is wholly uninteresting, as noted by reviewers. It’s too bad they didn’t make it more like Star Fleet Command (or even Birth of the Federation), which is kind of what I was expecting. Maybe my opinions will change when I’m seeing battles with more than a few ships that shoot once and either live or die (my missile CLs are deadly, apparently).
5. Screen hangup: If you leave a Detail expansion screen open you can’t open another one, or go to the galactic map. This is annoying since I can almost never remember which detail screen I’d left open. Once hung up the only way I’ve found to free myself is the End Turn.
6. Ship upgrades: It is infuriating when the AI doesn’t upgrade the stock ships when you get a tech upgrade. So, for each critical tech advance I have to go in and tweak the ship, then make the old one obsolete. If I don’t then the AI will happily make the old (slow, useless) ships forever. Why would I want a warp colony ship with old, putzy speed 85 (TL1) instead of speed 168 (TL3) engines? That is an “A-not-I” sort of thing to do.
7. Ship types: there seem to be a set number of ship types, such as Long Range, Short Range, Carrier (etc). However, the Task Force requires some Pickets, Escorts and other types to allow the formation to be set. This ship type also determined the nifty Auto Build function (which I like a lot). It would be nice if the Ship Types correlated with the Task Force descriptions – that would give clarity of mission and make forming Task Forces easier (for novices, at least).
8. One minor irritation – in the Planet details you can not find the desired environmental types for the Magnate Races. I found this by accident when I was seeing the first Meklar ‘free’ colonies and selected Cybernetic and found they were colonizing worlds Green or Sweetspot for them, but deep red for Trilarians. Then I found there was no way to check this for the Darlok, Mrshaan, or Bulrathi. My fear here is that these planets will be terraformed to some other preference until the population dies. I have no proof of this, but it would be sad if it occurred.
Setup: Stock Trilarian, Huge 3-arm galaxy, Easy (I’m a wimp…), 8 AIs, all victory methods enabled.
Firing up my first game I couldn’t imagine a better start. I’m in the Senate, and there are relatively ‘nice ‘races there: Humaniods (Evon), Silicoids, Imsaeis, Klackons, and Meklar. No nasty Sacra, who will hate my guts immediately! My home system is beautiful to behold. Besides my Sweetspot homeworld there are FOUR green planets! Sure, one has Battle Damage, but who cares! Another had rare plants – bonus! This will make my home system a powerhouse, and easy to defend and develop. I put my Development strategy to Research, Infrastructure, and Military, and research priorities were divided roughly equally with a bias toward Physical since it is clear at the start that minerals are very short supply, limiting my industry. I zilch the AI’s build queues and replace them with System Colonies (at 850 vs ~1100 each this is a huge advantage).
Before I start I call up my other Senate members and, over the next few turns, only the Evon and Imsaeis are friendly. My scouts go out to see the universe. It takes them about 10-20 turns before a Green world or two shows up, then I send my Warp Colony out to grab it. Luckily it’s far away from any known terror, so far at least.
I set my spending for Peace through Strength (max 20 percent military) and changed my government to Constitutional Monarch (no bonuses/penalties to speak of). I zone my homeworld (not trusting the AI, and wanting to see what would happen) to have 2 Industry, 2 farms, 1 government (there already, I think), 3 mining (I’m chronically short here), and 4 research. I think I shorted Industry too much, but I’ll try again in another game. Mines came first, then the others. In retrospect I should have followed the AI’s lead and have the industry build first so I could build faster – live and learn. Because of the Trilarian’s strong Bioharvesting two farms were plenty, especially with later upgrades.
The plan was simple – expand like crazy, which I knew I had to do to compete with the Klackon and Imsaeis (Klackons have fast reproduction, and Imsaeis very large worlds and big population potential). I wanted to avoid investing early in useless early warships since they cost so much wrt early production ability, and getting out colonies early (system and otherwise) is crucial.
Within 50 turns I found I had no nearby neighbors even though I was in the center of the galaxy. Whew! I found 2 splinter colonies in the boondocks, one of which was on a Sweetspot World. I also found the Darlock (red 2) on two worlds, and the Bulrathi (green world for me). Later I found a very small Mrshaan. I made it a priority to put an outpost on the Darlock world, and a colony on the Bulrathi world to make it mine! It took 20 turns to get the colony up and to the Bulrathi system (which was Sol, btw, with 3 other Green worlds – looks like those old Terrans had been busy before they were exterminated). After placing the Outpost on the Darloc world I simply let it grow (albeit slowly), and later plopped a colony ship on it to give it a boost.
All the while I’m fiddling with the build cues, overriding my AIs zoning (and doing some wrong things, like building mines before industry, for instance) and being a control freak. The AI has this nasty habit of not building military defenses/bases and favoring troop ships or ship construction upgrades – these get deleted until much later. That could be my priorities, though – I’m still learning the nuances. I’m also fiddling with the ship building and realizing I have no idea what to do, so I focus on three simple plans: short range direct fire, long range direct fire, and long range missile, largely on CL hulls. (I dislike the AIs stock ship names, which are overly arcane – what is wrong with “CLdfsr-3” for short range direct fire CL with level 3 warp or “CLmsl-3” for CL missile cruiser?). My fleet was very small (the original system ships plus one CL, then a few much later about turn 90), and the strategy was to rely on decent ground bases for defense and hope I don’t get blockaded.
Around turn 70 or 80 my mineral problems disappeared due to automatic mining DEA improvements, especially Deep Core Mining (I think level 6 physical). I could zone for more research and industry. Another benefit is that I got lots of nifty missile techs, and I put an emphasis on building CLmsl-3 (level 3 missiles, with warp engines at speed 168, vs the original 85). These had decent engines and shields (level 3) due to my generally equal tech rate progression.
After turn 80 or so I noticed something strange: colonies and outposts were being established I and had nothing to do with it! There were no colony pods or outposts being build – they just appeared. Moreover, they were Trilarian, Bulrathi, Mrshaan, and (especially) Darloc. Many started as tiny populations (say, 50 to 300) that, over 20 or 30 turns, grew to 1000 and became a ‘real’ colony. At this point I stopped making colony pods since colonies were forming by themselves – why waste the resources! One bad thing is that sometimes they formed on Red planets. I hope these are Darlok (which have a vastly different environmental preference than Trilarians) so they can become useful in the future – until they grow to 1000 I won’t know.
About this time the Meklar decided I needed to be exterminated. Fine. Be that way. I start making a fleet, humble though it may be. It takes a LONG time, and by the construction time of 12 turns had elapsed the sad ship is obsolete. My tech is zipping along, easily several thousand a turn. There are a lot of underruns, and few overruns, so tech progress was speedy.
At Turn 100, after the erratic Meklar had been the unhappy victim of a Total War declaration by the Senate and were then kicked out of the Senate (now, who do you suppose arranged that? It was supported by the New Orions, too, hehehe. Now, isn’t that too bad?), I decide to take the war to them. My stupid colonies had been building transports so I had a lot in reserve. My techs gave me Marines with some bumps in their otherwise poor effectiveness. It took a while to figure out how to form troops on the transport, but when I did I sent my 2 CLmsl-3s off with 4 transports to a Meklar colony 6 turns away (by warp point – vital to secure!!) and held my breath (my ground combat is terrible). But I won, easily too. Now my unhappy Meklars started, within 10 turns or so, making their own colonies all over my empire, and since they have almost opposite environmental preferences this greatly expands my ability to utilize systems. It takes time to cycle the transports, since they go back to Reserve for 10 turns or so, but I make steady progress and absorb 3 or 4 Meklar colonies by turn 130 since I have 3+ sets of transports cycling to the front.
In the meantime my tech and economy are exploding (in a good way – no orbital bombardment by nasty Meklar - yet). By 130 my income is 15000+, and the research, production, mining, and weaponry improvements are flowing in. Most tech advances are in the upper teens and low 20s, but are slowing down a bit even with the nifty Sociology and Mathematics research DEA upgrades. My shipyards have been upgraded a few times so I start producing CAs, then BCs and BBs.
Now the game had changed completely since I’ve gained critical mass. During the last Senate President Election I was nominated instead of the Klackon (my total pop was about 450 to the Orion’s 1000). There are over 20 planets under my belt and more are falling into my lap every turn (well, it’s slowing down a bit now that I’m no longer producing so many system and colony ships and relying on ‘natural’ colonization). My home system is gearing up for major ship production as their shipyards are upgraded. I’m forming my first carrier task force on a battleship CV hull (in response to a pesky Meklar CV group that is blockading one of my ‘free’ Darlok colonies – why they don’t bomb it into oblivion is beyond me). I still don’t understand Task Forces very well, but I’ll try or die in the attempt. So far my original missile CLs have done a wonderful job, obsolete though they may be. Now that I think about it I should change to Limited War or Total War to boost my military spending.
I’d guess I’m at the hard part in the game – integrating ship design and tactics from the ‘big picture’. The mechanics are complicated but understandable, but a worthy task of an Emperor. The AI does a decent job in general, and I find it does reduce the micromanagement a lot once I learn to let go.
Overall comments:
1. This is probably going to be a game I LOVE. It isn’t dumbed down like CIV3 and the designers seem to have succeeded in making a game the feels different, and that is fun. My only qualitative complaint here is that the narrative doesn’t seem to be tied into the game; it seems to sit on the surface. I’ve loved SMAC/X (Alpha Centauri for the uninitiated) long after the mechanics became old because of its strong story line and I was hoping the same for MOO3. This could still come out later.
2. Colonies forming by themselves is a nifty idea that makes sense once there is enough population to emigrate. For a while I was annoyed that I’d lost control, but I quickly decided this was a good thing – go for it loyal citizens! Don’t wait for your grateful Emperor to tell you what to do! Use that initiative!
3. On a similar note, the Emigrate function is a good idea. Toggling this may have been what triggered the exodus to all those unclaimed, juicy worlds out there. The main function is that worlds that are getting a bit full can have their excess population go somewhere else without me having to assign transports to do it – more useful automation. This is a good idea, and it was well executed (even if I found out about it by accident and experimentation).
4. If you don’t invest in spies of all types you will regret it. Luckily I had a half dozen to a dozen before the Meklar declared war, and that didn’t always protect me. The New Orions were also rather nasty – I caught lots of their spies (and gave them a messy execution). They retaliated by blowing up lots of buildings, and making my people paranoid. Bastards.
5. Society stability is key. Get Duty of Loyalty if you can, otherwise you’ll be plagued by unrest. Trilarians are very stable and even I had problems that required personal attention every few turns. This was especially bad when the Meklar/New Orions started causing civil unrest despite my 3 social defensive spies.
6. I haven’t been able to build any Darlok spies (I’d really like to!), and only a few Mrshaan troops. I’m wondering how to utilize their abilities! Trilarians are pretty terrible at spies and ground troops, and that was the main appeal to the Magnate Civilizations.
7. The AI seems to terraform planets with mixed populations toward Trilarian preferences. This is fine for Blurathi or Mrshaan, but death for Darloks. I’d like to be able to remove one race from a planet to simplify the process. The AI seems to be good when there is only one race in making sure the terraforming goes in the right direction, though.
8. The structures that automatically terraform your worlds are nifty. I looked back and found that ALL my home system worlds were now Sweetspot by turn 120! I didn’t do it, and there were no significant funds devoting to terraforming. The bonuses for a Sweetspot world are huge, and this alone is a major inducement to pursue mid-high level Biology techs.
9. I love the auto-improvements on DEAs when you get the tech upgrades. The AI is perfectly appropriate to take care of this since it is a level of detail I definitely do not want to mess with.
10. The Auto Ship Build function is terrific and a real time saver, and it seems to do a good job. It refuses to make Missile ships, though – those have to be formed by hand.
Gameplay Irritations:
1. Game crashes: I’ve had repeated Direct X crashes on my XP system. This typically happens when I goggle from a detail screen to the galaxy screen. But, it is abrupt and final…
2. Poor facility descriptions: As noted by reviewers, the facility descriptions don’t tell you what they do. I don’t like this since some of the names are more than a tad obscure.
3. Challenging task forces: Forming Task Groups is likely to be an art form; it is not intuitive. I’ll likely get used to it and build accordingly, but until then I’ll be fighting it all the way.
4. Combat? Yawn…: Combat is wholly uninteresting, as noted by reviewers. It’s too bad they didn’t make it more like Star Fleet Command (or even Birth of the Federation), which is kind of what I was expecting. Maybe my opinions will change when I’m seeing battles with more than a few ships that shoot once and either live or die (my missile CLs are deadly, apparently).
5. Screen hangup: If you leave a Detail expansion screen open you can’t open another one, or go to the galactic map. This is annoying since I can almost never remember which detail screen I’d left open. Once hung up the only way I’ve found to free myself is the End Turn.
6. Ship upgrades: It is infuriating when the AI doesn’t upgrade the stock ships when you get a tech upgrade. So, for each critical tech advance I have to go in and tweak the ship, then make the old one obsolete. If I don’t then the AI will happily make the old (slow, useless) ships forever. Why would I want a warp colony ship with old, putzy speed 85 (TL1) instead of speed 168 (TL3) engines? That is an “A-not-I” sort of thing to do.
7. Ship types: there seem to be a set number of ship types, such as Long Range, Short Range, Carrier (etc). However, the Task Force requires some Pickets, Escorts and other types to allow the formation to be set. This ship type also determined the nifty Auto Build function (which I like a lot). It would be nice if the Ship Types correlated with the Task Force descriptions – that would give clarity of mission and make forming Task Forces easier (for novices, at least).
8. One minor irritation – in the Planet details you can not find the desired environmental types for the Magnate Races. I found this by accident when I was seeing the first Meklar ‘free’ colonies and selected Cybernetic and found they were colonizing worlds Green or Sweetspot for them, but deep red for Trilarians. Then I found there was no way to check this for the Darlok, Mrshaan, or Bulrathi. My fear here is that these planets will be terraformed to some other preference until the population dies. I have no proof of this, but it would be sad if it occurred.
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