GalCiv 2 vs MOO3 (A Comparative Review for all 4X Gamers)

MOO3 was just god awful - there is a special place in hell for developers who destroy legendary franchises.
GC2 is far superior to MOO3.

MOO2 gives GC2 a much better run for the money, but I can not objectively judge them against each other until the "new" wears off GC2.

Sure you can find lots of good ideas in MOO3, but in the end it didn't work well and wasn't fun.

However, the saving point of GalCiv 2 is that you can research INDIVIDUAL technologies, which is a big plus.

Bigger isn't better. This isn't a race called "Who has the biggest Tech Tree?" This is about good game design.

Personally, Civ4's tech tree is superior, precisely because it doesn't have hundreds of techs. You're not just researching some "rank" in a certain field; you're researching technologies. And the fact that the techs don't interweave I feel is a negative thing. The tech tree in both GC2 and MOO3 is reduced to being ranks rather than technologies that have intrinsic meaning.

And you can't even blame the fact that these are made up techs, because Alpha Centauri had a perfectly lucid tech tree made of equally invented techs. In GC2 and MOO3, researching is reduced to simply picking the thing that gives you what you want. There's no real notion of picking up other things along the way. In GC2, if someone's ahead of you in tech, you may be able to beat them military wise. In Alpha Centauri, if someone's ahead of you in techs, they almost certainly have some kind of military advantage.

Shameless plug: If you want a better view of the GC2, see this thread:Link

Of course, I have yet to colonize the Class 0 planets (which I hope will be possible in the late game).

Once again, this isn't a question of, "How many cities can I have at once?" Bigger isn't better. It's about the quality of what you're doing with those cities. Just because MOO3 lets you effectively control 300 worlds doesn't make it a better game in that regard.

I completelly agree with you, there is a special hell for people who destroyed MOO series, MOO3 is an abomination of the MOO series. There is no comparision between MOO3 and GCII, as nothing in MOO3 even worked when the game was released, and to be honest, even if it did, the game was aweful in every possible way. Nothing was implemented correctly, and the amount of design flaws was staggering beyond belief.

Never played any MOO. Who makes it?, or I guess the question is: would it be worth picking up at the bargain bin for $15.

Moo3 once patched, patched and patched again with some thrown in DLL by the mod community and you have a fun empire sim. Not really a game in the strictest sense, but enjoyable.

I will say that I prefer the MOO (Master Of Orion) 1 type of research tree. You only get ~70% of the tech, thus your forced to trade techs if you are missing some techs (like you have shields I and II but don't get another shield tech till VII).

Also as you go up the research ladder, the older tech auto miniturize. Thus your left with choices like "should I stick with more Phasers or go with a fewer more powerful Distrupers?" Type of questions.

I don't like being forced to do either or tech research every 5-15 turns. If you research economy type stuff, you have to hope you can get around to researching warefare tech before the universe runs out of planets. I would rather be able to allocate 25% of my reserach to "bio" 25% to "Industry" 10% to "Math" 10% to "Economy" 10% to "arts" and 20% to "Physics" That way every 5 or so turns I would discover something and would not need to micro manage the tech tree. Durring war or the build up to war I might re-allocate my research to get those latest shields, engines, weapons ect.

to each...

Master of Orion was not the first 4X, but it was the first one for the masses.
A company called Simtex created it and "beta" version called "StarLords is in the public domain.

http://moo3.quicksilver.com/game/starlords.html

Wiki for a longer over view of MOO



Link

Just thought I'd pipe in here. First, to agree with what someone else said, MOO3 doesn't "win" just because you can get "more" of nearly everything. 4X games are not about the sheer numbers. In fact, I'd argue that Civ4 is a huge advance over previous Civs precisely because you control fewer cities, but those cities are more interesting. The same is certainly true in GalCiv2. Each colony is special, each one is important and losing any of them hurts you (with the possible exception of class 4 or less worlds). In MOO3, which is really more of a simulator than a game (because the relationship between what you do and what happens can be so attenuated. Even the so-called "tactical" battles are just "move closer and fire until the other guy dies" mindless affairs), you can control hundreds of colonies. But so what? More often than not, the governers handle everything about the colony. You don't even touch your new colonies after you have built up a lot. As far as the number of ships go, that's a matter of personal taste. Some people liked MOO and some liked MOO2 (thousands vs tens of ships, though you could get 100s in late game MOO2). Regardless, the main point for me is that GalCiv2 is like a very enjoyable strategy board game brought to the computer. What I mean by that is that it feels like a real *game.* You do stuff and if you just sit there and hit turn, your empire would die. In MOO3, you can literally just press turn and not die easily (seriously, the game will even colonize for you).

Unlike in MOO3 the diplomatic system in GCII actually works. Most of the flavor text and "emphasis" options in MOO3 did not make any difference at all, and the AI had the most annoying habit of declaring war on you for no reason whatsoever. In fact it was kind of random. One turn in MOO3 you can be buddy buddy with everyone and the next turn everyone declares war on you, including your allies. If you reload then they don't declare war.

Finally, I actually like MOO3 and I like GCII. You should however play the game more before you go truly comparing the two games. There is a depth of strategic options in the game that you may not get after only playing the game for a couple of days.

Are we talking about the same MOO3?
The one that was abandoned shortly after release (with 1 patch), and destroyed the entire MOO franchise?

Its a very tough comparison, to compare a game that is almost three years old to one that has been released 1 month ago.

You may have the privilege of playing it recently and with mods, but you had to be there to experience the sheer unadulterated disappointment.

Lets compare Galactic Civilizations 2 to MOO 3 - after 1 month.

1. AI

MOO3's AI only built troop transports and never attacked the human player - EVER - no matter what the difficulty level.

2. Diplomacy
(still hasn't been fixed)
The AI speaks totally incomprehensibly and declares war for no reason that is ever disclosed to the player.

3. Lack of interaction
The Governors of each planet would override your decisions and change your spending habits.
Couple this with incomprehensible spreadsheets of a brain dead UI and you soon begin to wonder why you try so hard to play something that is that boring.

4. Manual and Encyclopaedia

Both games are reasonably outdated by the time of release and no encyclopaedia for either.

5. Graphics

You are saying you prefer to watch thousands of little dots on the screen using the most highly updated voxels available (cough), to watching beautifully rendered (if slow) videos of battle? MOO3's graphics dated back to the early 90's. Not to mention the UI was set at 800 x 600 or something abysmal and did not allow any changes.

You can also load up a scenario increasing your logistics ability for larger fleets.

6. Technology Tree

Ho hum, I just researched another 5 new technologies this turn for MOO3. Why do I care? The technologies were so meaningless.

Gal Civ 2 at least injects some humour into the text of the discoveries.

Summary:

I have tried to erase the painful memories of MOO3 which even after one patch was one of the worst games of all time. You can't count mods done by diligent and faithful players, especially after this game was simply abandoned.
MOO3 was hopelessly broken at release and there are countless more examples of errors and bugs throughout i.e. point defence systems not even working.

I've stopped buying all atari games due to that fiasco.

The only good thing about that time, was I learned about Gal Civ 2.
I never played Gal Civ 1, and Gal Civ 2 in my mind could be better.
However, its like comparing a BMW to an old skateboard.

The wonderful thing is that, it took 4 months for Atari to put out a patch for a broken game.
One patch has already been released for Gal Civ 2 and many more ar eto come.

One of the reviewers said it best.
Gal Civ 2 v Moo 3 was like a battle of David versus Goliath.
The only difference was, in this case David won because Goliath bludgeoned himself to death and fell off a cliff.

Sorry, I don't follow jargon. WTF is a 4X gamer? Where I live 4X is a brand of Beer. Does it mean a sad & lonely person with no friends who wastes all weekend playing sim/conquest games to sooth their ego and make them feel like they're accomplishing something with their impotent & inefectual lives? Burn your PC and get a real hobby guys, something that lets you meet people and possibly girls. Spending time pretending to conquer a galaxy is laughable really.

Personally I found MOO3 to be a Click Next Turn button game.

To each his own, although I really fail to see why anyone would post a comparison between 2 different games on the official forum of one. It's something I might do on a forum with a group of gamer friends which is not specialised for one game.

Sorry, I don't follow jargon. WTF is a 4X gamer? Where I live 4X is a brand of Beer. Does it mean a sad & lonely person with no friends who wastes all weekend playing sim/conquest games to sooth their ego and make them feel like they're accomplishing something with their impotent & inefectual lives? Burn your PC and get a real hobby guys, something that lets you meet people and possibly girls. Spending time pretending to conquer a galaxy is laughable really.

heheh what are you doing here then? Just back from a busy night of meeting girls and burning pc's are you?

You mean you can actually play MOO3, I thought the point of hte game was just to hit the next turn button and see how many transports the AI would build for no apperent reason.

cmotd is a n00b why would you post on a fourm for a 4x game (4x is the genre of this game) and say you are all anti social etc etc you're a big n00b it's just not logical

When I won at MOO3 by repeatedly pressing the enter button, that was the end of the game's life on my hard drive. Admittedly, I didn't have the AI set to a difficult level, but the game automatically populated my planets, sent out colonies, and populated those planets. After a while I had so much population that I was voted in as the galactic ruler. There were no wars or space battles, just population growth and expansion until the end of the game.

That being said, MOO3 had some nice ideas: the aliens that populated by eating other aliens, the fact that planets could be shared, and a few other things along those lines. The good ideas got mired down in an indifferent presentation, and everything was dragged down by a tedious game that was more work than fun at the best of times. Not only would I now not pick MOO3 out of the bargain bin, but I refuse to give away to friends the copy I pre-ordered and bought at full price, because I am afraid that doing so might ruin a perfectly good friendship.

Sorry, I don't follow jargon. WTF is a 4X gamer? Where I live 4X is a brand of Beer. Does it mean a sad & lonely person with no friends who wastes all weekend playing sim/conquest games to sooth their ego and make them feel like they're accomplishing something with their impotent & inefectual lives? Burn your PC and get a real hobby guys, something that lets you meet people and possibly girls. Spending time pretending to conquer a galaxy is laughable really.

LOL! Do you know how ironic your post is? You tell us, who play computer games to get a life and here you are: registering to a forum for the sole purpose of making a poor attempt at mockery. Really, grow up and get a life. It's not like everyone here spends their lives playing, either.

I really have to admit MOO3 wins GalCiv 2 when it comes to empire size and planet count. In MOO3, on the largest galaxy, I can be controlling 300+ planets in the mid-game while dominating 1/3 of the galaxy (total planet count would be almost 1000 planets). Contrast this in GalCiv 2 where I have about 50+ planets controlling 1/4 of the galaxy (projected total planet count of 200+). Of course, I have yet to colonize the Class 0 planets (which I hope will be possible in the late game).

I have had over 1000 planets in GalCiv 2. (Using Gigantic settings, with abundant in all options, and loose cluster stars.)

I have had over 1000 planets in GalCiv 2. (Using Gigantic settings, with abundant in all options, and loose cluster stars.)

God forbid I ever have 1000 planets in GC2. Over 100 is a royal pain to manage as it is. MoO3 definately had a better system for dealing with 100s (or 1000s) of planets than GC does. Though its a bit of an apples and oranges comparision, as you don't build the planets the same way in the games.

MoO3 on release, and even up to the 1.25 patch was not good. The transport issue basically kills the game as the AI can never invade, though they can still glass and recolonize, but invasion is necessary to diversify your populations and allow you to better use all the different types of planets.

MoO3 with the Bhurics patcher and a few other mods is an incredibly enjoyable game though. True the learning curve may still be high, and will suffer from being outdated compared to the newer games, but it offers something not found anywhere else. Namely a space empire builder where you have the *option* to use effective macro tools (again, once you get over the learning curve) to let you focus on the 'fun' part of expansion. Now 'fun' will mean different things to different people obviously, but I doubt many people actually want to micro 100s of planets a turn, or shuffle around 1000s of ships a turn.

Further you can play in higher resolutions with a patch, the diplomacy text has been fixed (this was confusing for alot of people), AI invasions has been fixed, or you can play the game with 'auto conquer' where you will take planets whole if you can bombard them...

Basically MoO3 as it stands today is an entirely different beast than it was when it was released. It still may not be your cup of tea, but to call it unplayable only shows ones ignorence.

as the keeper of the "higher resolution" mod for Moo3, you know i've got something to say about all this...

the game is sooooooo much better now than when it was released! we've taken it apart, put it back together, and it is actually playable and enjoyable now by a much wider audience.

on the boards we get a constant trickle of "tried it when it first came out and hated it" players who've found the CDs under the dresser, thought "what the heck, why not?" and reinstalled, got the latest mods and patches, and now love the game.

here are the usual complaints, and what's been fix or what we've learned:

"all the Viceroy ever builds is transports and ground troops."

this was a common complaint at release time, and was at least partially helped by the last patch that QSI/Atari dribbled out before slinking away in shame.

since then, we've learned that what is causing the remaining "problem" is that the player hasn't designed any ships that the Viceroy thinks are "affordable"... usually becasue they've gotten so excited about researching a new hull size that they've redesigned all their ships at maximum size, leaving nothing that less developed/smaller planets can build in reasonable time... except for? you guessed it: tranports and ground troops.

the solution is to design a range of ship sizes and costs, so that all planets have something that they can afford to build in a reasonable time.

"diplomacy is broken, the AI attacks me for no reason"

as mentioned above, there's be a mod to the diplomacy spreadsheets that makes the alien text make much more sense. it's still fairly disjointed (they are aliens, after all), but it's not complete garbage anymore.

the interlocking web of racial hatreds and friendships are now understood, so it you don't understand why an empire you just met wants you to die a painful death, it's becasue you haven't read this Link thread.

finally, if one of your old friends suddenly turns on you, we now know it's becasue you haven't been watching the diplomatic matrix, and failed to notice that they agreed to an Alliance with one of your enemies, and that enemy has demanded that they honor the Alliance... would it be nice if the game would tell you that? yes, of course it would. but you should be looking at the matrix anyway, and preventing your friends from getting cozy with your enemies long before they have an Alliance. if it gets that far, it means you messed up 50 turns ago and didn't nip that friendship in the bud like you should have.

the AI never invades

fixed with a patch. the AI was mobilizing transports, then one turn after they left port it would realize that it had just launched a task force with inferior weaponry, panic, and disband it.

but it's fixed now. the AI will actually invade. we've now seen AI players take each other out, fairly early in the game.

i just kept hitting Turn, and won the game

yes, the AI can be set to colonize for you, and the planetary Viceroys will select improvements and queue ships for you, but it will never design new ships for you, never mobilize a war fleet, and will not do diplomacy for you.

if you selected a high-growth race, get lucky and start the game in the Senate, get lucky and have no other high-growth races in the Senate with you, have the Senate Victory condition on, get lucky with who your neighbors are, and are playing at an easier difficulty level, then yeah, it is possible to just hit Turn and win: your population grows faster than the other Senate members, nobody attacks you becasue your neighbors all like you, and eventually you have enough votes to win.

solution is obviously to turn off the Senate victory condition. duh.

then you actually have to get our there and do some fighting, which will require designing ships, mobilizing them, and directing them into combat. with the Allied Victory patch, you don't even need to invade every last speck of rock in the galaxy.

alternately, you can win in the Senate faster than the Turn-pushing breeder, even with a low-growth race, by actually doing diplomacy, building a faction of friends, getting your enemies kicked out, and invading (by designing ships and mobilizing fleets) planets full of future voters.

for an example of how a Seante game goes when players are paying attention, check out the Succession game we played recently: Link

and the list goes on... people who've actually been keeping up with the current state of the game can easily recognize those that gave up and left in disgust right after the abomination was released, simply by the things they complain about!

yes, the game is an abomination... a breach-born, red-haired stepchild, changeling abomination. but now it is our abomination, and it's grown up to earn a place in the hearts of those that dare to brave the horror.

yes, the game is an abomination... a breach-born, red-haired stepchild, changeling abomination. but now it is our abomination, and it's grown up to earn a place in the hearts of those that dare to brave the horror.

Well said pedxing, my thoughts exactly.

Indeed I am finding myself getting more and more put off by GC2 and wishing they had implemented some of the better fetures from MoO3. Though those are more of a design thing, but colony management in GC2 is just... uggghh.

The viceroy in MoO3, once you figured out how to work with him, really made that part of the game so much easier and less time consuming. The governers in GC2 are fine for ships, but nonexistant for laying out planets. Oh well, you can't have it all I suppose

Master of Orion was not the first 4X, but it was the first one for the masses. A company called Simtex created it and "beta" version called "StarLords is in the public domain.

The 4X genre goes back a long, long time. In 1981 I wrote a game called Galactic Empire for the Sanyo MBC-550 (an early IBM PC clone) and it was a 4X, albiet a very primitive one. But it did have graphics, and gameplay could run for maybe an hour or two. I sold it to a magazine called SoftSector, which was one of those publications which printed program listings that you had to type in yourself. I think they paid me $500, which seemed pretty cool to me at the time -- I was 13. I got the idea from a similar (but even more primitive) game, still a 4X, which I saw running on a black & white text-only timeshare terminal at one of the military bases where my father worked, so that puts the origins back in the late 70's at the very least...

How about the 'Orion Initiative Bug'? That was the final straw for me!

Hi pedxing! I remember you from the MOO3 boards.

I dropped MOO3 'cause you have to work WAAAAAY too much to make it playable.

Galciv2 is playable out of the box.

Sure, I miss certain concepts of MOO3, like races carrying over on planets (instead of generic population), but overall the is the SUPERIOR game no matter what you do to MOO3.

hey there, Skyjack! good ta see ya.

so, yeah, that was where once you had taken one of the Orion planets, the remaining defenders of the system would use their superior initiative to make you defend that planet, instead of letting you attack the next planet in the system?

i never experienced it myself, but i heard about it...

anyway, there's a lot less work to bring the game into a playable state now. consensus is building around the UOP mods (available in Vanilla, Strawberry, and Tropical flavor, depending on how much you want the game changed) as de-facto standards for single-application paths to playabilty.

fresh install from the old CDs, 1.2.5 offical patch, then Strawberry patch mod, and you're good to go. it contains everybody's favorite Bhruic and Gerra patches, an improved UI (Gofur's, i think), and a couple of minor spreadsheet tweaks.

the 1024x768 mod still needs some work, but some folks like it applied on top of Strawberry as a garnish.

As someone who have spent a lot of time modding MOO3 into something playable myself, I have to say that Moo3 is a lot better now than the horror that QuickSilver released. The one thing that really irritates me about that game was that QuickSilver had a list of features lined up that would have massively improved the game had they actually finished it. Instead, they decided to start chopping features and shoving it out the door at the slightest pressure, and they didn't even do a good job at it, ending up releasing a broken game. The only reason that it's even playable today is thanks to all the fans and modders who have spent years trying to fix that mess they left behind. IMO, about the only good thing that came out of Moo3 is FreeOrion.

With that said though, I just don't think you can compare the fan base modded Moo3 to GC2. Simply because I have no doubts that in a few years (if Stardock has given up support of the game) GC2 will have equally if not even better mods available. Since Stardock is committed to fixing bugs and adding features, Modders will be free to do what they do best, make some awesome mods. (If you think otherwise, try visting civfanatics.com and look what people did to Civ3).


PS: to those who are dissing the GC2 governor for the Moo3 governor, yes, the Moo3 governor is an decent macro tool, but it is a horrendously inefficient one. No matter how well you "learn" it, the governor will only build one thing on a planet each turn in the planetary and hidden economy queue, and if you don't mod the tech tree, he will get stuck with a bottleneck spending years building all those 4 turn building. So you have to go in and manage it yourself if you hate the inefficiency (you need to have it build one 4 turn building, one 2 turn building, and one 1 turn building). This, IMO is 1000x times worse in GC2, especially because one of the queue is HIDDEN. Add to this is the fact that the spending in Moo3 is so god forsaken idiotic (giving millions into planetary grants for research, but doing so actually reduces the amount of research the planet produces because of inefficiency and waste) and you realize why Moo3 is often called the Micromanager's nightmare. Yes, planetary management in GC2 is a bit annoying, but no where near as bad as Moo3. Personally I think a planetary governor with saved up queue for buildings would be a good addition for GC2, and will solve most complaints on the matter. It won't surprise me if this makes it into the game, whether through patches or the addon. (Sign of a successful game? Addon in plan. Check.)