Bottom Line for Me (YMMV)

[Malleus]

Agree wholeheartedly. Now, how do I invade??!

K

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Kromwel
Agree wholeheartedly. Now, how do I invade??!

K

Manually run the space battle selecting 'assault planet' and win. After all space battles have concluded, manually control the bombardment phase and opt to drop troops.

You cannot invade a world that is below a certain level of population. Leave it a few turns and come back when its pop is 1,000 or higher.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Re: Re: Bottom Line for Me (YMMV)

Originally posted by H Tower

Can I get this on a T-shirt?

[Eric S]

Originally posted by Ianpolaris
Guys,

The real bottom line is this:

The game is NOT FUN.

I could forgive the macromanaging, the cryptic interface, a manual that is less approachable than a graduate level physics test, if when all was said and done, the game .... was..... fun!

It isn't.

I have to disagree on that. I had a blast this weekend playing MoO3. I've still got a lot to learn (I've lost 2 out of 3 games on Easy so far), but I can make things happen well enough that I'm enjoying it.

Is it a perfect game? Not even close. The UI needs work, the encyclopedia needs to be about 4 times the size it is now, and the AI has bugs involving war. War seems to be more a matter of attitude than action to the AI. I'm just as likely to be attacked by someone that isn't at war with me as some that has declared war. Also, I don't know if MoO3 has war weariness or anything like that, but the AI is constantly calling off the war only to redeclare it the next turn.

Doesn't change the fact that I am having fun.

[CharlesBHoff]

I play the game this entire weedend an I than haveing fun.
I must to autosave to play the game due to the Direct X Surface Unavailable error message when I try to save than game. Than I have Direct X 9 install.

[kalbear]

I stated this over at OS, and I'll state it here: this is the first TBS game I've ever played where I was looking more forward to the late game than the early game. It's not tiring MM at the end, your economy isn't going to fall into ruin if you don't check on each little planet. In fact, once the computer gets a surplus and you tell it what to do, it does a damn fine job of doing it for you.

It is a blast - a BLAST - to kill all those NO ships. That battle alone sold me forever on this game. There's a lot of other things as well, but that simple part of the game and all the effort and tech it took to get there, well, wow.

The battles themselves are a great example of why this combat system is so cool. When a NO carrier armada unleashes it's fighters, it's like a cloud of locusts. Missiles flying everywhere, beams shooting all over the place, massive explosions, ships fragmenting, people trying to frantically find that hidden stealthed TF...all good stuff.

There is a lot wrong, and it does make me annoyed. It annoys me that the AI is so great at managing my empire for me but apparently doesn't do at all a good job with my opponent's. Diplomacy is completely wacky and confusing. PD doesn't shoot down missiles reliably. Menuing is sometimes confusing, and the queues for each planet should be more easily accessible and changeable.

And it's still a total blast. I must've played 30 hours this weekend. Yep, I played all night.

[Togas]

Bottom line for me is the same ... am I having fun?

I picked a race I enjoy, I get involved in the areas of the game that I like, and I have learned to relax and let the Viceroys tend to the dull details that I always used to toil through. Sometimes I go crazy and change everything they're doing, other times I check in every 5 turns and smile as I see them building those new ships I designed. I pump my fist into the air when my fleet destroys those annoying Ithkul that were pestering my new colony, and I groan I see a report of another terrorist attack on my facilities, and quickly head over to my espionage department to "deal with" those S.O.B.s that did this henous act.

Sometimes I scroll through a list of worlds and mark up the ones we need to colonize next. Sometimes I have to manually tell my stupid scouts and colonists where they need to go. Sometimes I spend lots of time trying to make sweet bargains with other races. Sometimes I just hit end turn a few times to skip ahead to a battle I want to watch.

No matter what I do, I think that once I allowed myself to "let go" of the details and just do the things that I find interesting (as well as regulating by cleaning out old designs and changing Devs and deleting all the magazines from my planets' queues), the game becomes much more fun. I'm still learning it, and sure I get frustrated when I can't figure something out, but I'm not feeling the weight of responsibility of having to understand it all right now to be successful. My empire is successful now and it's only my first game. I look forward to learning more and trying out new things. But overall, I'm enjoying the process and enjoying the show and that's what it all comes down to for me.

--Togas