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It is being remade:

Free Orion

I enjoyed MOO2 though I have to admit I've ditched it these days in favour of Galactic Civilizations 2. I've not played Free Orion yet, I don't think it's that mature a release yet, but it certainly looks interesting.

I dunno, http://www.stardock.com/ http://www.galciv.com/ seems to be doing all right over the decades without Digital Rectal Manacles or rootkit copy protection that the MAFIAA asstunnels insist are needed.

Galciv 2 would be a proof to the contrary. As are many strategies published my Matrix Games. There ARE hit indie games (there may not be much in the way of REVENUE, but the profits are good). Galciv II of the starforce fame was (and still is) on the RETAIL Top 10 lists in US, Canada and also in Europe (at least in play.com). Total budget was something on the order $500000 or so, IIRC. Ok, not just two guys in a basement, but still, very small developer and in my books an "indie".

    When something is good, the word-of-mouth advertising can do wonders.

Nope - GalCiv II is written by StarDock, and they have nothing to do with MOO.
Their previous Game - GalCiv - was also not protected. They thought that they'd sell about 30,000 games, but it turned out to be over 100,000 - no copy protection seems to pay out.

And it does explain why I've bought both games. Yes, bought. I *like* not being bothered by some damn Digital Restriction Management, and the games are both very good - and well supported, on top of it.

Have a look at http://galciv.com/ (no, I have nothing to do with them)

It's easy to make AIs that are too good? Then why doesn't anyone ever do that? Halfway decent AI isn't hard to write (as Brad Wardell, maker of http://www.galciv.com/Galactic Civilizations (a game famous for its AI) likes to point out), but a good player can still slap that kind of AI around. Writing really good AI for games where it matters (strategy games) just doesn't happen. It's too hard, takes too much time, and it's easier to hire an extra graphics guy to make the pictures look nicer. What is possible, is to make an "AI" that reacts too fast. Computers are much fast than us humans, so in any game where reaction time matters (FPS, RTS clickfests), an "AI" may be too quick to be fun to play against. But it's not the intelligence that's the problem there. It's the speed. Personally, I'd appreciate it if makers of strategy games and CRPGs put a bit more effort into AI. Those are the games that really need it and where the computer is still way too stupid. mcv.

It's not just games that are online, although there are those. (For example, Galactic Civilizations).

There's also games from smaller publishers. In general, I find Strategy First will usually give games a try that no one else will look at. But don't get me wrong, there are other publishers who look to Indy titles first.

How about Galactic Civilizations?

http://www.galciv.com/

There is even a sequel being produced:

http://www.galciv2.com/

Galactic Civilizations from Stardock has a mode that can take advantage of hyperthreading. Of course it is a turn base strategy game and is able (I assume) to offload a lot of background processing to take advantage of it.

Here's the real MoO3 http://www.galciv.com/index.asp?c=1&u=0

And the sequal to that http://www.galciv2.com/

It's been done before: Galactic Civilizations

... when someone mentions MOO3. Have you seen Galactic Civilizations? :)

I see your point, and I'm sure the publishers have their reason for pricing games at ~$50.

Maybe instead of dropping the price of games they need to improve the quality. I think it's absolutely rediculous when developers are working on a patch before it's even hit the stores. Most publishers put so much pressure on developers to release that they often release a buggy product. It seems to me to be part of the reason why people are more willing to warez.

I guess I just don't believe that people are inherently malicious in their actions and are more driven by market forces.

Check out this article believed to be written by one Brad Wardell of Stardock and Galactic Civilizations fame. I posted the article (and ranted a little) here if you are interested.

Star Wars: Rebellion was a MOO style game that was completely underrated, it looks like there are no plans to release an updated game (possibly because of the tepid reception from the new and horribly aborted Master of Orion 3?)

Galactic Civilizations?

Technically this is a sequel, but since the prequel was on OS/2 8 years ago . . .

As can the Red Alert 2 bundle pack. (Has Red Alert 2 and the Yuri's Revenge expansion)

Galactic Civilizations is a great game as well. You can buy it and download it off the net at www.galciv.com for $40, but i think it's going for $20 now at actual stores.

Two words: Galactic Civilizations.

This was (and is) actually quite a cool game, and it's just about to make a big comeback.

However, when it originally came out back in 1993, it was published for OS/2 2.1 by a company called "Advanced Idea Machines", and it had the absolute _worst_ box art of anything ever produced in the history of the world.

I have the box, and it's UGLY ugly. I've seen boxes that I'd call ugly, fugly, pug ugly, and even pug fugly -- but this is the only one I'd ever think of calling UGLY ugly. It truly is that bad :).

I wish I had a flatbed scanner so everyone else here could see how bad this box really was. Even the GalCiv lead developer has commented on several occassions how bad the box art was. It was truly horrid.

The good news is, now that that Windows has finally caught up to the point where it can run a 1993 OS/2 game, their box art budget has apparently been expanded, and the new box art is amazingly cool (actually, there have been several OS/2 versions since the release of GalCiv 1.0 that also had some excellent box art). But that v1.0 box art was embarassingly bad -- particularily for such an otherwise amazing game.

If anyone knows of an online picture of the GalCiv 1.0 box, post it up here (I Googled for it for about 20 minutes to no avail -- 1993 is a bit early for stuff like this).

Yaz.

Of course blizzard shut it down, because you don't need an "official" key to use it. The honor system has become suprisingly worthless nowadays.

Galactic Civilizations decided to (*gasp*) TRUST their customers and not put SafeDisc or any other type of copy protection on the install discs. A lot of people have problems with these types of anti-piracy methods and generally it just hurts your end user, not that pirates who can get around it with various cracks/hacks/or cd copying programs. Its this kind of trust who now, unfortunately, seems to the be the odd man out. id software did the same thing with Quake3. It was either the first or second patch that took out the cd check, because it annoyed the user more than it actually helped anti-piracy.

I think the worst part is that Blizzard now requires you to buy a "gaming site license" for any gaming venue in which you charge a fee to enter, even if every user has their own, official, bought and paid for copy. This is just sad. You don't see Valve having a fit over Counter Strike players and their LAN habits, yet Blizzard needs more and more cash for reasons that just don't make sense.

Here's the irony: Blizzard is owned by an asshole, very profit-driven company (Vivendi International, AFAIK). The developers have generally been very cool, and sometimes even listen to the community at large (they ignored War3 beta testers, but seemed to actually listen when I participated in the Frozen Throne beta). Even though they might be great people who make some really nice games, this is like PR hell. Give the gamers something great, then stab them in the back once you have their money.

They can't cry "we're just a small developer!" anymore. Not with millions upon millions of sales, and huge development houses around the country.

I say screw this "Don't blame Blizzard, they've got a bad parent company." No, if the Blizzard heads really wanted to dig their feet into the dirt and stand their ground, they would. If they got fired, and worked the press releases well enough, they would start another gaming company and all those brilliant minds would go there, instead of suffering through this idiocy in the name of cash.

Sigh. Dare to dream, folks.

With access to what scientists are referring to as the 'the console' we just need to enter the correct code and we will enter a new state of being that is technically referred to as 'God Mode'

Later on, if your civilization is evil enough (i.e. when exploring space you've forced your colonists to work in Death Mines to extract metal that adds +5% hit points to your battleships or have wiped out native civilizations on new planets) you can research "Galactic Domination Philosophy" whose description simply reads: Our troubles with the Justice Department will finally be over.

Oops. Galactic Civilizations. I swear it was in the preview ;-)

Remember the days of Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital? When was the last time you played a game that was genuinly new and exciting, that could keep your attention for days without getting repetative.

RESOLUTION: Bug closed. Software works as designed.

*rimshot*

(On a more serious note, if you haven't heard of Galactic Civilizations, check it out. Good stuff.)

"How do you know?"

From a linked article:

"Stardock has found that the best way to keep customers and decrease piracy is to reward people for supporting you rather than punish people by having to go through copy protection.

Each GalCiv user has their own unique serial number that is verified on our server as being a valid serial number. When a user enters this serial number into our server, they get a Stardock.net account which lets them instantly gain access to all sorts of extra goodies including the BonusPak."

The language they use, throughout the sites actually, displays a distinct lack of intent to use serials in such a way as to prosecute people who don't have one. "If you have one, great, thanks and here's some extra stuff" is the clear and ringing message I get from the sites. Maybe they will become evil in the future. They have the benefit of the doubt however, due to a lack of past bad behavior. MS does not have this advantage, and further, clearly has the intent of using their serial scheme to shut down and/or go after people without (a real) one.

"And? Microsoft will deny patches if no serial is provided, and StarDock will NOT provide additional goodies if a serial is NOT provided."

There is a huge difference between a patch to fix the base product and additional graphics, sounds, etc. MS putting free stuff up for XP isn't the same, since if you haven't a serial for XP, you're still screwed at a more fundamental level. Not so with GalCiv.

If you can beat it at Intelligent, you have essentially beaten the AI. Anything higher and it starts getting more money from it's colonies (evil genius civs long ago realised that slavery pays great dividends ;-).

I've been a Stardock follower for quite a while now. See, I tried out some of their software quite a while back, and I found a rather nasty bug in their window skinning product, WindowBlinds. So I decided to go report it.

Most companies would simply have acknowledged the bug, maybe offering a simple thank-you. Their response was to give me a registered copy of the software and encourage me to submit more bugs.

(disclaimer: this approach may not work for everyone :-)

Stardock are good. They don't mess their customers around - they might not always do what some of them want, but hey, that's true of any company, and at least they explain why ;-). They go the extra mile to help - almost every member of the company is available on IRC, from the CEO downwards. They have a dedicated community on the Stardock newsgroups and over at WinCustomize, who helped them transition from OS/2 to Windows - people bought Object Desktop subscriptions a year before it was officially out, because they trusted Stardock to deliver.

Heck, they even had a positive cashflow throughout the dot-com era, because they didn't rely on stupid business plans and massive investment. Just on listening to their customers, making a good product and shipping it.

GalCiv is one of those products. It's got a solid AI, and more gameplay than you can shake a stick at. And the price is right. So go get it now.

And no, I don't get paid for this. ;-)

I've been a Stardock follower for quite a while now. See, I tried out some of their software quite a while back, and I found a rather nasty bug in their window skinning product, WindowBlinds. So I decided to go report it.

Most companies would simply have acknowledged the bug, maybe offering a simple thank-you. Their response was to give me a registered copy of the software and encourage me to submit more bugs.

(disclaimer: this approach may not work for everyone :-)

Stardock are good. They don't mess their customers around - they might not always do what some of them want, but hey, that's true of any company, and at least they explain why ;-). They go the extra mile to help - almost every member of the company is available on IRC, from the CEO downwards. They have a dedicated community on the Stardock newsgroups and over at WinCustomize, who helped them transition from OS/2 to Windows - people bought Object Desktop subscriptions a year before it was officially out, because they trusted Stardock to deliver.

Heck, they even had a positive cashflow throughout the dot-com era, because they didn't rely on stupid business plans and massive investment. Just on listening to their customers, making a good product and shipping it.

GalCiv is one of those products. It's got a solid AI, and more gameplay than you can shake a stick at. And the price is right. So go get it now.

And no, I don't get paid for this. ;-)

I am curious to see if they really solved the critical mass problem found in strategic games as well as they claim here.