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Master of Orion 3 Released
Kintaro writes "The long awaited Master of Orion 3 is now in stores. The reviews so far have been unusually mixed, but rest assured the game is still complex - in fact that seems to be a recurring complaint among those that don't like it. And as an added bonus, the game actually runs on Linux right out of the box."
So how many games is that which "actually run on linux" out of the box? I guess it is quite a bonus, as the author put it.
Everything game-wise is written in DirectX. DirectX != SDL. So, you either have to hire game coders with experience in a multiplatform engine, or port (rewrite) the entire game to sell to Linux users (which will hardly be profitable, and, therefore, not worth the effort).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Another poster mentioned you can turn off animations. Minute resources.... Unlike the real world?? I thought that the minute resources were the crowning achievement of Civ III. Civ II you beat up on people at your own pace, when you have 150 Marine units, and for no other reason than pure expansionism. Pick off smaller empires while keeping the next biggest empire in check.
The resources in Civ III actually require you to look for land that has more than trees and a river. It requires that you sometimes have to leave your fort and fight the enemy to protect your mines. It improves trade... no more walk your camel halfway around the world to trade something you can't really use, just a money bonus. (side effect, trading raw resources for money is a biggol loser.)
In combat, the resources lead to some interesting strategy. Cut off a countries supply of steel, oil, etc... And watch what happens to their army. I had one opponent go from making Marines to making Archers. Does he commit all of his Marines to recapturing mines, or to defending towns?
For Civ 4, I reccomend a new tech: World Bank. As soon as it is discovered, everybody has it. You can borrow from the world bank, ideally every CIV is going to be in debt within 20 years of it's founding, and can go wildly into debt. (World Bank should extend credit equal to the cost to subvert your entire society.) Percentage of credit used is proportional to chance that World Bank A) Gets you into a war with another country, B) Changes production in one of your cities, C) "Disappears" one of your citizens (either silencing the dissenters or hiring away your scientists) creating a temporary extra unhappy citizen. (5 turns??) If you use up all of your credit the World Bank causes all Civs that owe them money to declare war on your CIV. (You have to get down to a reasonable amount of debt and then chill everybody out and get some truces called.)
Another Tech would be "Supreme Court" - You no longer need a majority to be elected president and win via diplomatic victory. The supreme court will grant you victory with %45 of the votes.
Hammy
"Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product - if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them.
"It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
Bobby Kennedy - June 6,1968
I think the game delivers most of what was promised, though clearly not all.
Namely, it's a game that's VERY deep, yet still fun. Obviously, it's not quite as deep as some had hoped. For example, you can't fight battles at starlane junctions, only at planets or otherwise in-system. Targets and missions for espionage aren't nearly as dynamic and intricate as I'd hoped (or as was originally designed).
But what's there is still going to be worth it to most people. Combat is FAR more interesting than it was in MOO or MOO2; as I said elsewhere, MOO3 space combat allows for maneuver -- not just firepower -- to make a significant difference in the outcome of a battle. Ground combat is much more interesting than previous incarnations (though I realize it could go even farther, yet some people would just as soon not have ground combat at all). The research side of the game is huge, though some will find it more "noisy" than interesting, I suspect, as the player can't take as direct a hand in research planning as some would like.
So, to answer your question, I don't think the game lives up to what was *planned* a year or more ago, in some ways. But, what IS there is still a worthy game for most fans of the series and the genre.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Disclaimer: I've only spent about an hour with this game, which obviously is not nearly enough for an in-depth analysis, but I have to say I'm pretty appalled with the offering so far.
It seems like all the life, colour, and magic has been taken out of the game. Let me give you an example... in prior MOO games, when you colonized a planet, you were treated to a nice full screen animation of a spacecraft landing on the planet's surface, and saw one of your colonists putting up a flag, and then it asked you to name your new world. (You could skip these sequences if desired, of course)
In MOO3, you get a log entry. That's it. Hooray. This "reduction to bare data" seems prevalent everywhere in the game. Yes, it's efficient, detailed, and deep. So is a spreadsheet. But is it fun??? The interface is also very bland... I mean.. flat shading everywhere??? This isn't 1989 anymore, how about some gradients or textures people!? And the few space battles I've seen so far have literally been single pixel ships wandering around on a 2D grid.
The first two MOO games grabbed me like a steel clamp and didn't let go. They had so much personality and polish. This one, I am finding myself having to force myself to try and get into it.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson