Crossroads attempts to "Win" MoO-III

[Crossroads Inc.]

Yes, THAT game. Widely regarded as one of the worst sequels of all time, the game that Killed the MoO franchise in more ways then one. All your favorite races? All dead. All the best aspects of the first two games? All gone! 500 micro-managing aspects you never asked for? Here ya go!

But hey, when it first came out, we were all excited, and I, like many others gave it my all.

For those that know the game, the easiest way to play is as the "Harvesters" Everyone hates you, but you get race bonuses up the ass and can out build, out research, and out manufacture everyone else. Perhaps the last game I played seriously had a custom Harvester race I called "The Dalek Imperium" I figured I'd play them like 'nice' Daleks, conquer the Galaxy, but be nice about, not carpet bombing every planet I came across. Well, 300 turns in I have a Nice set up. Already my ships tear ass over others, I've got 40 planets in 17 systems.

By turn 400 I have conquered nearly 1/4 of the whole Galaxy. this is a "Large" Galaxy too, for those that played the game, its freaking HUGE. So Its turn 400 and I have 1/4 of the galaxy, and best of all, there are only 3 ways into my space. SO I sat back, and let time past, No one could oppose my fleets, despite everyone hating me, and I slowly figured I'd research the crap out of as much as I could.

but time passes, the other races advance and spread, what was 10 races became just 5, and Three of those carved up much of the rest of the Galaxy. And of course, there are always spies. Bit by bit, year by year, your most powerful techs WILL be stolen, its only a matter of time. And slowly, eventually, larger fleets how up at my borders.

And then, around turn 750, I hit the Missile Paradox.

For those that have not played the game, the AI is an ass, it doesn't "cheat" outright, but it does thing you could never do. Chief among them, ESPECIALLY when it knows its out gunned and out manned, is missile spam. Missiles in MoO-3 are the ultimate weapon. The Computer over time would build Armadas, thats 12 fleets of 12 ships, and most of them are all missile ships. They warp in, fire all missiles, and then warp out.

Now, while retreating is a "Loss" for them, and they retreat from my system, often they would leave before my ships would ever see them. Meanwhile their missiles would 50/50 either be totally shot down, or, obliterator between two to three "fleets" or 24 to 36 high end expensive ships per fight.

it didn't take long of this for me to say "Fuck it" and give up MoO3 for good.
That was about four years ago.

In the past month, spurred by some odd masochistic urge perhaps, I dusted off my MoO discs, fired it up, and went over my old games. FInding the Dalek game, and taking in what had happened, something clicked in me. "Fuck it" I thought, I'm going to "win" this game.

In the past two weeks since then, I have waged unspeakable war upon the Galaxy. My mission? Bomb the fuck out of every habitable planet in the Galaxy. If I have the time, I might recolonize it. As previously explained, Full Fleet engagements are rare, the only time the enemy DON'T flee is usually if Im taking on an important planet of theirs. Of course their ships are nigh inexhaustible, one fleet had over 800 ships.

Yeah, apparently in the 400 or so turns of me letting them to their own before getting pissed off, apparently the two biggest races have between them close to 5000 ships total. But fck it. They can flee and run all they want, They may never run out of ships, but eventually they will run out of planets.

The casualties I no longer count, I am used to loosing up to 50 ships in an engagement, thats acceptable losses these days. My whole Empire is devoted to ship building now. Pollution? Feh, what does it mater any more, I can produce enough ships per turn to fill in the losses, the treasury is being spent into oblivion, but the taxes have been raised to tyrannical levels. The citizens don't revolt much since I have switched over to a total war Police state.

I tried to be nice, I did, for 400 turns I left the galaxy alone, I walled myself off to pursue enlightenment, Science, and explore life. But the galaxy wouldn't leave us alone, no, they couldn't stand to see the feared, scary 'evil' Harvesters living in harmony with all those that they had taken into their Empier, they could not stand to see such a horrid race live like Gods, they would not leave us alone.

And now, now they will all BURN because of it. World by World will either surrender or be wiped clean of Life till NOTHING Remains! Nothing but fleets of useless warships with no home, no support no where to go but Oblivion. And then at LAST will there be peace...

[Samuel]

You do realize peace as the Harvesters involves them eating people getting misguided individuals to see the error of individuality away from Harvester control.

Also, is there any point to playing? Whenever I played there didn't seem anything I could do to run my empire. Oh, and if you are missile spamming, dumb sub light engines- you aren't going to be using them

[Steel]

I saw a person play a game of MoO3 and win without ever issuing an actual command. The automation does take quite a bit of the game away.

[Edward Yee]

I saw a person play a game of MoO3 and win without ever issuing an actual command. The automation does take quite a bit of the game away.

Truly, a master of grand strategy.

[White Haven]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

[Gramzamber]

One thing I remember about this game that hasn't already been said is the god damn council thing.
Like the one in SMAC or GalCiv II only not any good. Seriously, what was the point in this council if the Antarans (because that system you spent all that time getting to in MoO2 wasn'tt really Antares, duh!) could just veto everything and the only way to stop them was to become powerful enough to stomp them out of existence at which point you didn't freaking need any council anymore!

[CaptHawkeye]

I think MoO-III will forever go down in history as a cautionary tale to developers and gamers alike. That gamers really don't know to develop a good game, and that ball-less developers who listen to every whinge of their fans are doomed to failure.

It's still pretty common to hear developers claim that they're "listening to the fans" when making a title. What fans? The shrieking monkeys on your forums? Have you guys stopped to think for a second what KIND of people they are?

[Gramzamber]

One only has to look at the current retarded revisions going on in Star Trek Online to know that you don't base your game on the bleats of fanboys.

Mind you does MoO3 really fall into that? Were people really calling for a game that's basically a glorified spreadsheet?
Were fans wanting the Bulrathi, Mrrshan, Darloks, Alkari, etc. to be replaced by races that were so stupid and generic I literally can't remember any of them?

[Vympel]

No. One thing that always appeared clear to me when I would look at the MOO3 website prior to its release (quite enthusiastically, of course) was that the developers had a very peculiar vision of what they would try to do with the game - the decision to get rid of our favorite races because they thought those races were "cheesy" was met with pretty sweeping disapproval.

As for attempting to "win" MOO3 - to quote WarGames tagline - the only way to win, is not to play.

[Covenant]

Gamers are like clients, they don't really know what they want, and listening to their demands will lead to a slow, tedious, bad final product. But you want to listen to what they're demanding and try to figure out what they actually wanted, and try to incorporate some of those elements into what you know will be an effective product.

MoO3 is odd in that I don't know any change that was made which was actually desired, or desirable. They really did take a huge handful of terrible ideas and replaced a very workable basis with garbage. The impulse to go "Faster! Newer! More Epic!" overrode the emphasis on gameplay.

[wautd]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

It's also the only game where I had more fun reading the manual than playing the actual game. At least I've finished the manual.

The only thing I liked was how the alien races were presented (as in, their design and animations), and the fact there were a lot of them. That doesn't mean I was happy to see some of the old races go extinct.

[Stofsk]

I once played MoO3. The UI was a horrible, horrible mess. Eventually, I figured out how to form a fleet and send it somewhere. I planet hopped, found a suitable planet for colonisation, then had to figure out how to colonise it. Then when I did, improving its infrastructure was a hassle. I met some aliens, they demanded of me a peaceful greeting, while gesticulating violently, and that was diplomacy. Around turn 75 the New Orions elected themselves Supreme Leaders of the Universe. The End.

[Spoonist]

Crossroads attempts to "Win" MoO-III

Nooooooooo don't do it, don't go towards the light. Cooooomme back... Oh please god no, please don't, just don't. *sobs uncontrallably*

[Kuroji]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to playto uninstall it and smash the four CDs with a sledge.

The manual was pretty good but they never bothered to explain any of the mysterious things that were introduced in it. At all. I preferred Homeworld's, myself, though it wasn't as thick.

[Vympel]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

That'll teach me note to skip over small one-line posts in my haste to quote 80s movies.

[White Haven]

It's an understandable urge. 80s movies are endlessly quotable.

In all fairness, Master of Orion 3 could be a fun game...but to have fun with it, you had to sink vast quantities of time into understanding it, and it wasn't very much fun. The payoff was definitely not worth it, for all that I admit giggling madly when I ambushed a New Orion fleet as it tried to leave Orion on its way to bushwhack someone.

[wautd]

It's an understandable urge. 80s movies are endlessly quotable.

In all fairness, Master of Orion 3 could be a fun game...but to have fun with it, you had to sink vast quantities of time into understanding it, and it wasn't very much fun. The payoff was definitely not worth it, for all that I admit giggling madly when I ambushed a New Orion fleet as it tried to leave Orion on its way to bushwhack someone.

It also didn't help that MoO3 had the charisma of a rubber ball, being dreadfully bland and featureless (or at least, that's how I remember it). The prequels radiated atmosphere (case in point, the music from MoO2 will forever be burned in my memory, whereas I'm not even sure if MoO3 even had music).

[Crossroads Inc.]

The War goes ever on.

The others races continue to pull up to my level of tech as I seem to be in a Tech stagnation phase. I haven't had a Tech discovery in over 25 turns, and worse still much of the next levels are "Empty" which means i have to research through a level that gives me nothing useful for the CHANCE to then research something else. Either way its moot, no matter how much i dump into research virtually nothing happens.

Still, almost half the Galaxy has either been "Purged" or conquered by my forces. While nuking a planet back into the stone age deprived the Enemy of industry, I have had to laboriously conquer the worlds one by one in order to actually march forwards and gain territory, mostly to keep the Enemy from recolonizing.

Still the march is Agonizing slow. Because of the Massive fleets of the computer, Often I have to sit through to 6 turns of defeating forces or letting them run away before I get the chance to actually bomb and capture a planet. Once captured I have to leave behind an immense defense force to keep out the AI from retaking it. This game needs "Interdictors" badly... If I could force the Computer to stand and fight in each engagement, I would have decimated their forces by now.

You do realize peace as the Harvesters involves them eating people getting misguided individuals to see the error of individuality away from Harvester control.

Usually I restrict Harvester population to worlds where their immense racial/production bonuses are best. If I conquer a world, I usually use NON harvester troops and then populate it with more friendly races. My current big success story are two systems with a total of Seven worlds that are populated Entirely by Mrrshans and Burathi. I was really pleased to find both "Mrrhsa" and "Draconis", after defeating their guardians, I repopulated both with Mrrshans and Elerians.

[Stofsk]

I wish they'd remake Master of Orion.

[Stark]

Unless you mean 'a space game with little micro due to sliders and huge fleets of deathships' that's a pretty bizarre thing to say.

Fucking MoO2 being Civ in space was lameo.

[Covenant]

MoO2 was great for the time because it was like Civ with less spearmen and triremes killing your tanks and ironclads. Masters of Magic was still the best game of that genre in that era though.

A remake of MoO1 or 2 would need to do something clever to avoid feeling ponderously slow. With all the kinds of advances in AI and user interface there's no excuse for a lot of the things that MoO games did back then, not that there ever really was a reason I should have to build factories on my planets anyway. But if you stripped out all the layers of bullshit you'd realize the core game is baby-pool shallow.

If you wanted to sell it as a 50/60 dollar product, however, you need more than just a streamlined gameplay to make it work. Something more like Sim Empire than Civ-in-Space might work, but really, the problem is the playerbase. Copying the gameplay of a MoO type game means creating one of the least intelligent strategy games and stapling it to a huge, dull grindfest of an econ and infrastructure engine. Civ is bad enough at creating actually strategic gameplay, this would be Civ with no terrain map. To make a MoO type game playable in the modern era you'd need to really evaluate wargames for a better core mechanic--and I don't mean the Total War games, more like those nearly-always-broken Heart of Iron games.

This wouldn't save it entirely, but MoO4 could distinguish itself by being a strategic 4X game where most games end up being "Switch to Dictatorship, Mass shit, Throw at enemy," with minor differences.

[Stark]

I think Tropico-in-Space (basically Sim Emperor) would be an interesting way to do it without loading it down with five thousand colony windows and mendacious stat-balancing silliness.

That said, Elemental is NEARLY looking like it MIGHT be an effective MoO replacement, even with a relatively interesting HoI-like economy system.

[Stofsk]

Unless you mean 'a space game with little micro due to sliders and huge fleets of deathships' that's a pretty bizarre thing to say.

Fucking MoO2 being Civ in space was lameo.

I don't know, I liked it because it was a space game with little micro and huge fleets of deathships.

I didn't like MoO3, but exploring the galaxy (once I figured out how to do so) did have this nice feel to it. I guess I want a 4X space game with modernised UI and gameplay principles, and a similar exploration and galaxy model to MoO rather than Galciv2 (which felt like Civ in space too, it even had a square grid, but of course it was heaps better than MoO2).

[Covenant]

I like the Tropico-In-Space model (Sim Empire) because it lets you use that whole 'internal strife and politics' thing to the game's advantage, meaning that you don't need to feel bored out of your skull for those turns you're not warring with the cat-head people or the bear-head people. I swear I started those wars out of sheer boredom since I damn well knew that if I just kept my nose clean and teched up I could never lose.

I like the idea of exploration, but I feel like it was always so minor. I did massive surveys of the regions to scout them out, but I never felt as if I were 'exploring' them... though I think I understand. Plus, the massive fleets of deathships is a reward for doing well in the internal portion of the game.

[Stark]

I was actually talking to blue the other day about how exploration is so minor in games these days. It was fucking absolutely core to MOO and MOM and these days it's giant range, build a super-fast scout and explore the map, silliness.