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Wasn’t the moo remake a nearly 1:1 remake except for jettisoning the tactical combat for some real time thing with no direct control I don’t know why moo clones always think that the combat has to be replaced with something better/streamlined, moo2 combat was fine but I can’t think of any game that just kept it instead of trying to reinvent things and coming up with something worse
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Oct 31, 2022 05:13
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chaosapiant posted:Is there a packaged version somewhere of Civilization 2 that runs natively on Windows 10 and isn't bugged? I have the "Civilization Collection" box set which has Civ 2, but I don't have a disc drive any more and my understanding is that the "working/current" version of the game has some kind of bugged AI? The MoO LP on the Let's Play archive is good and fun, Thotimx plays through all the races and shows off the differences, etc., very thorough and informative. chaosapiant posted:After years of playing 4Xs, but never playing either MoO Classic or MoO 2, i'm falling in love with both of these games. I think I do prefer MoO 2 for the better presentation and atmosphere and I like loving with pops. But both games are just so drat elegant in their design it makes me wonder why other 4Xs keep having to get just more and more complicated. RandomBlue posted:1. Not good. Extremely bland and forgettable IMO. First of all, which MoO remake are we talking about here? The Master of Orion 2016 (on Steam) is a re-make of MoO2, and I'm suspecting RandomBlue might be talking about that one; according to Steam I have some 700 hours logged in that game so I'm not quite as critical, but my hot take is that MoO 2016 is MoO2 with a prettier interface, some absolute misfires on "fixing" things (spying, looking at you in particular), and I would also say it doesn't quite capture the magic of the original MoO2. I have played way more MoO2 than MoO 2016, so I am not able to say how nostalgia-tinted my views are. If you're interested in this one, I can type up more of my criticism of 2016 at you  Now, there is a MoO (1, from 1993) re-make, Remnants of the Precursors, which is an extremely faithful remake of the original game. More precisely, it's a game that functions like the game described in the original Master of Orion Strategy Guide (remember those things?), so it has some tiny engine-fixes and patching up some inconsistencies, but it's definitely like a very low-key "unfinished business" MoO1 version, if the BG analogue makes sense. RotP also has a somewhat active Discord where you can ask questions about figuring out a game from 1993! Oh and needless to say, the interface is a lot more usable than the original MoO, with its limited screen real estate availability and all. You can use the scroll wheel on your mouse! In case Libluini's LP hasn't convinced you, Master of Orion III is an absolute trash fire.  Do not waste your life on that abomination.
Rappaport fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 31, 2022 08:13
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I liked 1 and loved 2, never played 3. However, I will never forgive MoO2 for ruining the space 4X genre because everyone afterwards tried to copy it instead of doing their own thing.
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Oct 31, 2022 08:43
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habituallyred posted:A middle ground between hiding all of x announcement forever and being told every time somebody decides to ward nowhersville would be nice. I always follow the Chosen One, just on general policy. Everyone else I just glance at. Except for the Mammon game I had which was just a nonstop series of fights over the holy mountain. Lots of trying to pick off people before they could replenish their bodyguards. Okay tried the god of cups mod alongside the improved cult of the deep mod. The basic idea of the god of cups mod works pretty well. You use infiltration/god powers to convince heroes to travel to your tomb and take a grail. If they don't sell the grail to a ruler they will drink from the grail when they feel danger. An immortal hero will eventually lose their humanity and start rampaging around. Pretty much exactly what everyone wants out of the vampire curse, minus the shadowing. Starting with an immortal pawn and the option to make your more traditional agents immortal is also neat. I never did get a ruler to drink from the grail and lose their humanity. The real problem is that one of the early powers lets you add danger to any city, and can be intensified by a short agent action. Throw that on a city that the chosen one is trying to rest at and they will get trapped in a loop of trying to heal themselves, and failing. The alliance never got out of its starting country between that and throwing Gawain at the chosen one every time they even thought about building the alliance. At which point the chosen one gets caught in the rest/danger damage/rest loop again. ^^^Star Ruler 2. I really hope somebody will start licensing the non ship builder parts for their 4xes. A great break from all the MOO2 likes. Stellar Monarch 2 managed to release recently and also breaks the MOO2 mold.
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Oct 31, 2022 09:12
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If MoO3 is appealing, Distant Worlds 2 might be the closest you’ll get.
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Oct 31, 2022 09:39
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From what I've seen of MoO3, it was an incredibly ambitious game that just didn't have access to tools needed to achieve the initial vision for it, and ended up failing. So yes, Distant Worlds (I played DW1, not 2, so can't comment on that one) are the closest you'll get to it, because it reaches for those same stars and actually manages to grab them. It's still a... game for a specific player mindset, but within that constraint, it just works. A big thing MoO3 tried to do was to give you the ability to have actually useful automation of the sort of micromanagement that kills 4X lategame, and Distant Worlds was built from the ground up to let you just tick a "I don't want to deal with this poo poo" box for any part of the game/empire/management you're not interested in (and flip that switch on or off at any time you want) and still be an enjoyable game.
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Oct 31, 2022 09:46
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Beefeater1980 posted:If MoO3 is appealing, Distant Worlds 2 might be the closest you’ll get. Distant Worlds Universe and DW2 are both super cool and good and fun. And not nearly as obtuse or hard to play as they’re made out to be.
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Oct 31, 2022 12:13
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Yeah, MO3 suffered a lot because the game tried to give you lots of tools to macro-manage your empire, but then the devs also gave the AI ideas of how to do things and forgot to inform the player. Like, nowhere in-game is explained that the AI when contemplating what military stuff to select is hard-coded to always take the cheaper option, resulting in late-game AI cheerfully filling up your reserves with hundreds of tiny recon ships you don't want. The game is also full of odd oversights, like did you know its impossible to scrap ground units after they've entered your reserves? Or that troops can't be moved after they end up on a planet? The only way to get veteran troops back is either hoping for survivors of lost battles to limp back home or to just manually scrap armies stuck on the ground and put them into completely new ships. Because of course their old transport task forces demobilize themselves immediately after a landing attempt. And in MO3 it can take some time for demobilized ships to finally reach your reserves so you can use them again. Another thing that was always a real head scratcher is that the devs implemented a full system to store ammunition on a ship -but only for missiles. Fighters instead just auto-respawn. Every so often, your now empty carriers will magically refuel empty space and then eventually their hangars will spit out another wave. And another one. And so on, every couple minutes, until the battle ends. Since I sincerely believe the devs weren't stupid or lunatics, I can only assume all this weird poo poo is the result of time crunch, because I can easily see the devs finishing up the missile system, realizing they don't have the time to properly balance a similar system for fighters, and then just make them respawn a lot 'cause otherwise fighters would have been too weak to compete with missiles. (Instead it's the other way around, as soon as the tech tree gifts you some good fighter techs, the other ship classes can just go home and weep.) Libluini fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 31, 2022 12:20
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Was anyone on the MoO 3 dev team leftover from Simtex or otherwise worked on MoO 1 and 2?
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Oct 31, 2022 15:34
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MoO 2016 is fine I wouldn't endorse it any more than that, but it's fine.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:39
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Deptfordx posted:MoO 2016 is fine Is there any reason at all to play it over MoO 2? I mean, when it comes to more modern 4Xs, I've got Endless Space 2, Distant Worlds Universe and its sequel, and of course Stellaris.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:41
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chaosapiant posted:Is there any reason at all to play it over MoO 2? I mean, when it comes to more modern 4Xs, I've got Endless Space 2, Distant Worlds Universe and its sequel, and of course Stellaris. You want to play a game or two of something that is slightly different than the games you've already played quite a lot of? It has a couple of neat little ideas, as I recall.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:45
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been playing some fall from heaven 2 recently. still owns
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Oct 31, 2022 15:47
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Jazerus posted:been playing some fall from heaven 2 recently. still owns I've never played this. I actually started to install it the other day and kinda went "naaah" before getting Beyond the Sword installed. Is it really that good? I've heard nothing but good things about it, but sometimes mod greatness gets exaggerated because it's regular people designing things and that sometimes gets to be like "holy poo poo! This is amazing for a mod!"
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Oct 31, 2022 15:49
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As far as design purity goes, I'd love to see more games takes the Spaceward Ho! approach. It's neat how the design is simple enough that the AI can meaningfully engage with it, down to AI players being able to cuss you out appropriately.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:50
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there's a Master of Magic remake coming out in the not too distant future. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623070/Master_of_Magic/
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Oct 31, 2022 15:50
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Deptfordx posted:MoO 2016 is fine MO16 has sexy cat ladies, if you're into that. Otherwise,  not really. "It looks nicer to modern audiences" is the only thing it has going for it.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:52
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It's better than MoO 3 at least. But not nearly as ambitious as that game. So... yeah.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:54
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chaosapiant posted:I've never played this. I actually started to install it the other day and kinda went "naaah" before getting Beyond the Sword installed. Is it really that good? I've heard nothing but good things about it, but sometimes mod greatness gets exaggerated because it's regular people designing things and that sometimes gets to be like "holy poo poo! This is amazing for a mod!" It’s that good. Just a wild outpouring of creativity and pushing the Civ4 engine to its limits.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:56
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uber_stoat posted:there's a Master of Magic remake coming out in the not too distant future. I know it'd probably be too unwieldy for it, but I'd like to see an attempt at MoM multiplayer.
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Oct 31, 2022 15:58
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Mr. Fortitude posted:It's better than MoO 3 at least. But not nearly as ambitious as that game. So... yeah. yeah, but a solid block of wood is better than MO3
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Oct 31, 2022 16:01
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uber_stoat posted:there's a Master of Magic remake coming out in the not too distant future. I saw a youtuber (I think it was Quill18) going over the preview/beta build of this and it looks decent. Hexes instead of squares and of course it looks like every single hex based 4x since Civ V, but it also appears to be an extremely faithful adaptation, which is all I'd want. I'll be curious how it turns out. If it's just a new coat of paint and a balance pass over the original i'll definitely get it.
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Oct 31, 2022 16:04
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chaosapiant posted:I've never played this. I actually started to install it the other day and kinda went "naaah" before getting Beyond the Sword installed. Is it really that good? I've heard nothing but good things about it, but sometimes mod greatness gets exaggerated because it's regular people designing things and that sometimes gets to be like "holy poo poo! This is amazing for a mod!" i think it's designed more interestingly than standard BTS with much larger faction differences and a wider array of verbs because you have spellcasters, so for example you can found a city on lovely land early in the game and eventually make it really good by magically terraforming the land into better tiles, completely ignore catapults and just blast cities apart with fireballs, etc. i would say that compared to 99% of mods for any game, it is wildly more successful at feeling and playing like its own separate game rather than just a flavor conversion of civ 4, although obviously a lot of civ 4 strategy is still relevant. the downside is that even with nearly two decades of work by a bunch of different people the AI is still civ 4's AI and it can have a rough time on non-standard settings like any civ 4 AI. but it does cope surprisingly well with things like a non-linear tech tree and using hero units/spells/unique religions/etc., a lot more of the stuff that doesn't exist in BTS is understood and used by the AI than you would probably expect. if you want to play it i'd suggest extramodmod which is the most "vanilla" FFH2 branch still being maintained. has bug mod and all of the other standard civ 4 conveniences built in
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Oct 31, 2022 16:04
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Jazerus posted:i think it's designed more interestingly than standard BTS with much larger faction differences and a wider array of verbs because you have spellcasters, so for example you can found a city on lovely land early in the game and eventually make it really good by magically terraforming the land into better tiles, completely ignore catapults and just blast cities apart with fireballs, etc. That's a strong endorsement. I'll need to give it a real shot.
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Oct 31, 2022 16:07
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chaosapiant posted:Is there any reason at all to play it over MoO 2? I mean, when it comes to more modern 4Xs, I've got Endless Space 2, Distant Worlds Universe and its sequel, and of course Stellaris. MoO2 is more challenging and more diverse, if that makes sense. Essentially the main game-play loop in 2016 is the same for all races*, so there isn't really a special way of playing any of the (stock) races. You will always want to colonize as many planets as possible, as soon as possible, and terraform them to the max as soon as possible. I don't think a turtling strategy would make any victory condition easier to accomplish, usually the opposite, and therefore ideas like Psilons being weak science geeks just doesn't work like it does in MoO2. 2016 and MoO2 both visualize the mechanic of planet management via cute tiny pixel mens (aliens), so you'll get that either way. The tech trees work slightly differently, and I would say 2016 botched this renovation too, although MoO2 is different about how it is cruel with the 'Uncreative' race trait. Both games also have the end game mechanic of blowing up planets, so that's a tie, and the Antaran menace is about the same in both games. MoO2 has way better music! *The exception being the Meklar (robot race), but I'm not sure if this is due to a bug or not. Either way, they steamroll the other AI due to a unique advantage they get in the aforementioned loop. Libluini posted:MO16 has sexy cat ladies, if you're into that. Otherwise, MoO1 had sexy cat ladies, too. MoO 2016 has curvy silicoid ladies, for some loving reason  MoO2 has sexy elf ladies, and the sexiness of the human scientist lady in 2016 depends on how one feels about librarians, I suppose.
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Oct 31, 2022 16:19
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chaosapiant posted:Was anyone on the MoO 3 dev team leftover from Simtex or otherwise worked on MoO 1 and 2? It was run by Alan Emrich who wrote the prior have strategy guides so I assume it was writer arrogance, like every time a movie critic makes a movie and it turns out terrible.
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Nov 1, 2022 15:49
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PerniciousKnid posted:It was run by Alan Emrich who wrote the prior have strategy guides so I assume it was writer arrogance, like every time a movie critic makes a movie and it turns out terrible. Alan Emrich left the design team at some point, and the game design was changed around quite a bit during development. The resulting mess is not pretty. I was following the development along back then, but it was over 20 years ago now and I can't remember most of the drama. Except for how angry people got that Rantz wanted to delete half the races from MoO1 because anthropomorphic animals were "childish", and as a response Rantz put an animation of the cat aliens being bombed to death into the game's intro movie. And all the teasing about the "harvester" aliens.
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Nov 1, 2022 16:18
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More MoO talk: I've been playing more of the original Master of Orion and also it's sorta-remake: Remnants of the PreCursors. I wish there was a game that combined Remnant's general HD-ness and balance/ease-of-use features but still kept the game closer to the graphical pixellated spirit of the original. That said, i'm surprised by how elegant the design is in the game. I was confused for the first few hours because I couldn't tell how to make money or production or decide what to build where. I felt I kept missing something. Then I realized that each star system is basically a "city" and you don't need buildings to make things, because the sliders just adjust how much income is used to build infrastructure/population/ships/research. It's very sleek, especially by modern day standards. And to my knowledge, no other games have actually built on this model. They all went the Civ route of building buildings and structures from each settlement/planet/colony/city. I don't know. I still love Civilization and I'm not against that kind of gameplay, but it'd be neat to see what could've come out of the original Master of Orion if they kept moving in that direction.
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Nov 1, 2022 17:03
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chaosapiant posted:More MoO talk: I've been playing more of the original Master of Orion and also it's sorta-remake: Remnants of the PreCursors. I wish there was a game that combined Remnant's general HD-ness and balance/ease-of-use features but still kept the game closer to the graphical pixellated spirit of the original. Sword of the Stars used the MoO model of just having infrastructure sliders with no discrete buildings.
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Nov 1, 2022 17:18
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I always liked sword of the stars take; maybe it was too simple but once a planet was growthed out it was 'done' and you didn't need to fiddle with it anymore unless you decided to overharvest
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Nov 1, 2022 17:29
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Emperor of the Fading Suns is one of my favourite 4Xs from my childhood and I just discovered it got an update (which is nuts, the last time this was updated was like 20 years ago). I think it’s still only on gog.com. The update seems to be folding in a lot of the work done by modders over the years. It’s a very old game so don’t expect much by way of graphics or a modern UI, but if you want a Dune / 40K 4X, there’s still none better IMO.
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Nov 1, 2022 17:30
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chaosapiant posted:Then I realized that each star system is basically a "city" and you don't need buildings to make things, because the sliders just adjust how much income is used to build infrastructure/population/ships/research. It's very sleek, especially by modern day standards. And to my knowledge, no other games have actually built on this model. They all went the Civ route of building buildings and structures from each settlement/planet/colony/city. I don't know. I still love Civilization and I'm not against that kind of gameplay, but it'd be neat to see what could've come out of the original Master of Orion if they kept moving in that direction. I hate buildings, it feels like you're just designating a city as "constructing" or "researching" or "money" but instead of one click per city it's fifty.
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Nov 1, 2022 18:48
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Beefeater1980 posted:Emperor of the Fading Suns is one of my favourite 4Xs from my childhood and I just discovered it got an update (which is nuts, the last time this was updated was like 20 years ago). I think it’s still only on gog.com. The update seems to be folding in a lot of the work done by modders over the years. i tried this years ago and bounced off it but might be worth another shot for less than 5bux.
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Nov 1, 2022 19:20
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Clarste posted:Sword of the Stars used the MoO model of just having infrastructure sliders with no discrete buildings. I'll check out this game. I assume it's on Steamer or Gogger?
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Nov 1, 2022 19:23
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Sword of the Stars is an extremely good game, one of the best space 4Xs ever IMO. Do not touch Sword of the Stars 2 under any circumstances. I'm one of those crazy people who kinda like MOO3 and even I admit SotS2 is utter trash.
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Nov 1, 2022 19:32
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uber_stoat posted:i tried this years ago and bounced off it but might be worth another shot for less than 5bux. There was a LP in the LP forum years ago and tbh while all the bits from the tabletop RPG (lore, art) were great, it did not feel like a game I'd enjoy playing.
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Nov 1, 2022 19:46
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Zurai posted:Sword of the Stars is an extremely good game, one of the best space 4Xs ever IMO. SOTS:1 is on both GOG and Steam. SOTS:2 is not on GOG. I like to think this is because even by the somewhat low standards of GOG, even they can't bring themselves to call it 'good'. The worst part about playing SOTS2 is seeing how easily it could have been good if the lead developer would have just pulled his head out of his rear end and listened to playtester feedback. There's core gameplay mechanics that he introduced in 2 that weren't in 1, and they are the cancer at the heart of the game; you can't fully mod them out. If someone ever figures out a way to completely remove both the prototyping and mission systems, it would be buggy but fun. Every couple years I check for new mods, hoping without reason that someone will find a way.
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Nov 1, 2022 21:03
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Slyphic posted:SOTS:1 is on both GOG and Steam. SOTS:2 is not on GOG. I like to think this is because even by the somewhat low standards of GOG, even they can't bring themselves to call it 'good'. I should go reread the SotS 2 thread starting from release day, that was such an amazing clusterfuck of bullshit.
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Nov 1, 2022 22:54
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Sots2 could have been so goddamn good  that and the secret world are the two games that really broke my heart
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Nov 1, 2022 23:12
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GreyjoyBastard posted:Sots2 could have been so goddamn good I actually really liked how SotS2 handled task groups and fleet bases, as well as system defenses, it seemed like a really fresh take on 4xs as opposed to just dumping all of your ships into a death blob. It's a pity about, you know, everything else.
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