As requested, my verdict...

[DRoseDARs]

...I'm really trying to enjoy this game. I certainly has the MoO flair and feel...but it also feels...somehow, hollow. I got hit BAD by the OMT (One More Turn) Syndrome yesterday, only taking time out for Part III of Children of Dune, and played all the way through 4am this morning. Have been playing for the past 2 hours since waking up, but need to go to class this afternoon; won't be back till 8:30pm at the earliest.

The learning curve is the steepest I've ever encountered, but not insurmountable. LOTS of little annoyances:

1) Does anyone else have the problem of being placed in or near the center of the galaxy (spiral) EVERY FRICKIN' TIME!?!? I'd like to be placed out in one of the arms instead of being the next star over from Orion...

2) Why are you declaring war on me? What have I done?

3) The Senate was a great idea, but seems pointless when most things are never seconded

4) Unrest, constant unrest no matter what I do. Does adjusting the unrest funding really do anything or can I just give up on that slider and start focusing on the others?

5) Would have like a simplier way of determining which planet is best to colonize. Too many conflict stats, but no clear sense what is best for my species...hell, even looking at my homeworld doesn't really help.

6) Auto-colonizing planets (giving individual planets the order) is not very useful; colonizers go where ever they feel like if you have multiple planets marked. I dare not try using the Empire setting for this matter...

7) Task force creation is akward and fustrating; setting multiple similar TFs one has to start from scratch each time, this could be made easier...

8) SitRep needs to have more filtering options; I REALLY don't care what DEAs a given planet's AI builds..much less what 100 different planets build. Instead of colors, the events should fall under different topics, giving more filter options.

9) God, could the things said during diplomacy be ANY dumber? The tone of voice and choice of words don't often mesh well together.

10) I don't even LOOK at my Tech sheets, they change so fast. (I know, I know...mods are available).

11) Documentation. 'Nuf said.

12) Race customization and galaxy creation share the same problem as TF creation in that all of them reset to the defaults once you leave them.

13) I'm not really happy with the planetary AIs, though they get the job mostly done. Having only 3 slots for build orders makes it rather pointless for me to override their orders (short of turning them off) since I'd have to go back shortly thereafter.

14) Planetary listing is a little cumbersome.



After 3 days of play, I largely still have hope that this game will shine. I haven't really seen any problems that can't be solved in future patches or expansions. The biggest thing for me right now is being placed in or near the center of a spiral galaxy almost EVERY FICKIN' G*DD*MN TIME!!! The current game has me as the Meklars, with the Nommo and New Orions, in a 3-arm huge with short/many starlanes, lots of specials and events. This is the third game I've gone past 50 turns (currently around turn 125). Dozens have been started, but each pissed me off to the point of taking the disk out of the drive and doing other things...only to return a few minutes later... Ah...the siren song of MoO... ...what would we do without it? Besides enjoying life beyond one's computer, smartass...


Damn...I have to get to class now. I'll finish later on tonight.

[Boris Godunov]

Re: As requested, my verdict...

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
7) Task force creation is akward and fustrating; setting multiple similar TFs one has to start from scratch each time, this could be made easier...

12) Race customization and galaxy creation share the same problem as TF creation in that all of them reset to the defaults once you leave them.

The two above things are game-breakers for me. If I tell the game to do something, it better damn well do it and not reset anything without my permission. That's one of the big reasons I won't pick up MOO3 yet, which is having your orders overriden by the computer. That's an obvious and big "NO" for a 4X game.

[Ianpolaris]

Boris,

FWIW, the research sliders do the same thing. I played the Evon a lot when I had the game so I had Soc and Econ set at 30% with the rest set at 10%....but that *%&#( game would reset the sliders every turn (or even during my own turn!) even after I locked the sliders.

The Planetary AI does the same thing even when you turn it off btw.

-Polaris

[Crostoneman]

1.) The arm is just as fustrating as being near Orion. In the arm, habitual planets are few and far inbetween and there is a strong possibility of starting near the Harvesters or the Siliciods.

[Eric S]

Originally posted by Crostoneman
1.) The arm is just as fustrating as being near Orion. In the arm, habitual planets are few and far inbetween and there is a strong possibility of starting near the Harvesters or the Siliciods.

Or worse, having the most populous race at the opposite end of the galaxy, so you have to race through everyone to take him out before he wins the senate (asuming that you're not in the senate).

[Eric S]

Re: As requested, my verdict...

Originally posted by DRoseDARs
3) The Senate was a great idea, but seems pointless when most things are never seconded

I see things getting seconded all the time, even when I'm not the one seconding them. How many AI players do you play with?

4) Unrest, constant unrest no matter what I do. Does adjusting the unrest funding really do anything or can I just give up on that slider and start focusing on the others?

I think you need to go over the unrest factors and figure out what you're doing, because I almost never have widespread unrest problems, and I usually leave the slider at zero. Here's the common unrest reasons that I'm aware of:

• Piracy - as the system-wide population gets higher, you need some way to keep pirates from robbing entire systems.
• High Taxes - Plain enough.
• Leader Effect - some leaders are unpopular with their own people.
• Racial Modifiers - some races start off with unrest from the very beginning. One of the racial attributes (Citizenship? The one that ranges from Loyalty to .... can't remember the name, "Liberty"?) has a strong affect on unrest, from adding 5 (or is it 7?) points, to subtracting 15 points (GO EVON!).
• Social Spies - if you don't keep spies from other empires out of your empire, they'll stir up trouble. You'll usually get SitRep messages about this though, though they are usually in the bottom third of the SitRep, so can be missed easily.
• Military Spending - your economy has several settings ranging from "Peace and Prosperity" to "Holy War." If you spend too much (or too little) on your military for your given economy selection, the people loose faith in you.
• Switching Government Types - Even if they don't like you, changing Gov Types is a type of change that the people aren't comfortable with.
• Setting the Oppression level outside the range your government is comfortable with - set it too high, or even too low in some cases, and the people won't like it.
• Forced Labor Units - at least some of your people will sympathize with any slaves you have. Allowing FLUs and/or working them too hard will cause unrest.

Did anything jump out at you? If you play Human slave traders and blindly accept any leader that comes your way, expect unrest problems unless you bump up their citizenship rating.

One thing you might want to do here is sort your planets by unrest, then pick the highest planet listed. Pull up the Demographics Panel for that planet, and hit the Unrest Tab. That will list the causes of the unrest, though not the relative amounts.

As I understand it, Gov, Mil, and Rec DEAs all help reduce unrest, so having a DevPlan for "New" that includes Gov is usually a good thing (as is industry).

What do I do if I have unrest problems? If it's at all widespread, I dismiss any leader with an unrest penalty. I rarely take a leader with one, and then only if they have a strength that I desperately need.

Piracy can be combatted anywhere in the system, so just because your newly founded colony is up in arms doesn't mean that you have to fix the problem there. Since Piracy is population-based, it's more likely to occur in crowded systems, so look for a nice big industrial planet to crank out a few system ships (not starships, they go into the reserve and don't help the planet that built them unless you create a taskforce and move them back to that system), a planetary shield (very good for piracy reduction), or an orbital.

Is that at all helpful?

[Nightmyre]

i dont get this problem of the ai resetting your orders. when i turn planetary econ ai off, the ai never does anything on that planet that i notice. i mean once in a while it might shift something by 1% to something else, but thats more of a small nuisance than a major deal.

[Grumbold]

Piracy is the common cause for empire wide unrest if you've not been playing with your tax rates. If your new systems aren't developed enough to build system ships yet move a small TF of out of date ships into the system. You'll find this tactic essential when you go on the offensive and start taking enemy planets.

Every planet I build or capture I make sure has at least one gov and mil building, with larger ones having a rec building too. Thats normally enough to maintain happiness even with the oppressometer cranked up.

[Stuie]

Re: Re: As requested, my verdict...

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


The two above things are game-breakers for me. If I tell the game to do something, it better damn well do it and not reset anything without my permission.

The two things that DRoseDARs points out in 7 and 12 are not examples of the AI overriding your decision, they are examples of preferences not being saved. Basically, if you create a task force and want a second one of the same makeup, you need to go through all the steps required to create the first one again. I usually use the Auto-build for task force creation, then modify to my liking, so #7 is never an issue for me.

As for race customization and galaxy settings, these need to be entered at the beginning of a game. When you start another game, they have returned to the default settings. This can be annoying, but it's not ruining the game.

Not sure what you were reading into these two items Boris, but they're definitely not game breakers.

[Raion]

As to overriding your tech settings on the Tech Tab.

The Development Plans on the Empire tab is what they are doing.

That is why they are changing your tech sliders.

That to me, will be done by trial and error, and other things have been solved by the way that one plays it.

But the game is consistent in what it is doing.

So, maybe Development Plans, have to be upgraded some, but since I have some, and I want other things, I myself, will have to deal with that at some point.