Why do game sites compair this game to MOO2?

Interesting comments although I wouldn't agree. Master of Orion and Gal Civ are definitely the same genre. Both are a sci-fi reinterpretation of Civilisation. Alpha Centauri is Sid Meir's 'space edition' of Civilisation so thats where the parralels come from. They're all the same genre, the differences come in focus and ofc implementation. Moo1 was closer to Gal Civ than Moo2 as the focus was more on galactic strategy rather than military tactics. I think its perfectly reasonable to compare GC2 with Moo2, as Moo2 remains the most similar, accomplished and recognised title to it.

If you strip down any of the games we're talking about here you end up with the same basic elements. There will always be someone who prefered the way game X did it, and as Moo2 still retains a fanatical following people will be wishing GC2 had that feature they loved in Moo2. I think it all the more obvious because Moo3 was such a disapointment to so many.

Well let's just be honest here. GC2 and MOO2 are without a doubt in the same genre of computer game. Add to that the success of the MOO series even as old as it is, ensures that it is the gold standard by which all games in the X3 genre are judged. It is also very, very true that GC2 is a different game. It's not by any means a MOO clone or sequel, but the comparison is undeniable.

This is really quite similar to the folks watching the development of PotBS wondering why that game is compared and contrasted with EVE Online. The similarity is both obvious and natural, despite the fact that both have marked differences. It's hardly an issue to take offense at. If you wish to take offense, then take to those who refuse to accept anything but the idea that GC2 really is a MOO clone and nothing more.

Well very simple - becouse MoO and MoO2 (personally preffer 1st) are the best so when you compare you have to compare to the best of the genre.

Moo2 had awsome implementation. Moo1 was awsome for its day. I didnt play the original galciv for Os2 was it, but it was probably for its time a solid game.

Moo2 with its sweetness became the pilar of the genre everything else gets matched too. Making little notches on the lead pillar for every game in the genre to try to figure out how close it comes isn't a new way to review things. It's not to say no game can do things differently. I find it that the reviewer assumes that the reader has played the moo series, so by comparing the game to moo games, they can adequetly describe the game in question by showing their differences and simularities. If there was no such review a person would pick up the game, and trust me a large number would do this, and come back here to the forum after playing it a bit demanding their money back saying it was nothing like moo2 per se.

I'm not going to spin a web for you and say I didnt wish this game was more like moo2. Truth is moo2 hit the nail on the head when it comes to a lot of aspects of the genre. And I don't think galciv should go out of their way to be different as to avoid being called a copy-cat. The goal shouldn't be to make overtly original game, but rather a good one! There are few things in galciv so far i wish had been present in moo2. But still a lot in moo2 I wish I could see in galciv

I also would like to apologize profusely for the manner in which I am writing. Apparently I have located my thinking cap today.

GC2 and MoO2 are very similar.

Both have ship design.
Both have settling worlds in space.
Both have build queues.

Etc etc etc.

There are some differences. But in a gamer's perpective, they are more of different set of spices then a different dish.

That isn't to say that GC2 isn't going to be fun game. It isn't to say that GC2 is just MoO2 under a different title (it isn't). But when you talk game genre's, they are practically identical.

Of course, MoO2 wasn't a master stroke of gaming. MoO2 is really just Civ in Space. Right down to the grocer's list for world building. Now, the masterpieces of gaming, those would be MoO1 (in galaxy conquest), MoM (in civ world playing), and Civ1 (the grandson of Empire, and the game that brought the World Conquest genre into the mainstream of gaming).

Well very simple - becouse MoO and MoO2 (personally preffer 1st) are the best so when you compare you have to compare to the best of the genre.

The best according to..whom?  The MOO series revolves around tactical starship combat.  Galactic Civilizations revolves around building a civilization.  Tactical vs. Strategic.

I'm not going to spin a web for you and say I didnt wish this game was more like moo2. Truth is moo2 hit the nail on the head when it comes to a lot of aspects of the genre. And I don't think galciv should go out of their way to be different as to avoid being called a copy-cat. The goal shouldn't be to make overtly original game, but rather a good one! There are few things in galciv so far i wish had been present in moo2. But still a lot in moo2 I wish I could see in galciv

We don't go out of our way to be different from MOO.  We simply have our own ideas on what we want to enjoy.

I personally hated the tactical combat elements of MOO.  I didn't mind watching them fight, but I hated having to control the ships in order to be good at it.

When I was a kid I loved my Commodore 64 games. They were awesome. But a couple of years ago, I tried some of them out via a C-64 emulator. You know what? They weren't so great after all. MOO1 and MOO2 are kind of like that to me. I played MOO2 (getting MOO1 to run is a pain) recently.



That's MOO2. A game whose computer players were brain dead. A game that involved almost no strategy at all to play. The only thing that saved MOO2 was the spaceship battles which were admittedly done nicely, except that the computer players were morons.

Remember the Altarans? Ridiculously easy to beat. There was no challenge to the game. It was fun as long as the spaceship combat was fun.

MOO2 isn't even as good as the first Galactic Civilizations. Good to me means replayability. MOO2 lacked replayability because it was so easy to beat. The game was also a micromanagement nightmare.

The game did have some great ideas, some of which I do wish were in GalCiv. I like the assimilation of alien races. I like seeing the people assigned to different jobs ala Civilization.



Colony management was tedious but visually nicer in some ways than GalCiv 2.

The research tree in MOO was nicer too.


But at the end of the game all the neat ideas mean nothing if the computer cannot provide a challenge.

" A game that involved almost no strategy at all to play." - comes from a guy playing a crerative race on advanced start...

Complaining about the AI? AI is not one of the 4Xs... True the computer provides NO CHALLENGE to a seasoned player... that's why the game has multiplayer. For when it was made it has an AI comparable with the games of the time. There was no non-cheating AI back then and we all know it. The colony management is much much less teadious than GalCiv2. Aside from that the only problem the game suffers from is game balance issue, which make many races people might enjoy to play totally uncompetitive. You can ofcourse find a challenge in single player if you look for it. Starting in hotseat with a Uni-tol +1 production races or Uni Sub Aquatic +1 production, then loading the game as Lan game and launching it with one player. You will find yourself facing totally hard opponents (Make sure to set AI to impossible thou). As far as replayability, I'll give you one guess as to which game I still have on every pc I own after almost 10 years and which one I was done for life with after 6 months. To give you a hint, I didnt buy galciv 10 years ago.

I do want to compliment you thou, seeing that you found no challenge in this game, you John Hamp must be one smart guy. It took me a long time to get to a point to where I can say it's not if I win but when on impossible.

I personally hated the tactical combat elements of MOO. I didn't mind watching them fight, but I hated having to control the ships in order to be good at it.

Fair enough, some parts of the game not everyone enjoys. And its true if you turn the combat to strategic you may be greeted with an unfavorable outcome, like losing... Strategic option... not my favorite option.

We don't go out of our way to be different from MOO. We simply have our own ideas on what we want to enjoy.

Ok I can understand people havign their own ideas and promoting them. But anytime someone suggests something remotely resembling Moo2, you guys blast away the same old offensive barrage of "Well this is our game and we do it our way." Atleast accept the fact that there are infinite number of ideas, but a very finite number of good ideas. I may get the idea of walkign the light-rail tracks after work, but that probably won't fall into the finite category so as a reasonable person I won't act on it. And I sure won't walk the tracks cause no one else is doing it. I think I'll take the bus.

But anytime someone suggests something remotely resembling Moo2, you guys blast away the same old offensive barrage of "Well this is our game and we do it our way." Atleast accept the fact that there are infinite number of ideas, but a very finite number of good ideas.

I don't think that's really fair. Some things aren't taken up for budget reasons, other things because the design decision has been made for a reason. GC2 is intended to be strategic not tactical, so the battles are computer resolved. I think that's valid reasoning. I also think Stardock lack the resources to make a tactical combat mode as part of GC2 that would compare favourably to the competition, as I think comparison would be drawn to Homeworld 2, but thats getting off the point a bit.

The objection Stardock have is that there are alot of people coming to GC2 wishing that it was the next Moo, when they should be approaching it as a game in its own right. GC1 wasn't a Moo clone, it was an evolution of GC OS2. GC2 is the sequel to GC1, Not Moo2, and some people need to respect that and see the game for what its intended to be not what they wish it was instead.

The best according to..whom? The MOO series revolves around tactical starship combat. Galactic Civilizations revolves around building a civilization. Tactical vs. Strategic.

Well ask yourself why this thread is here and why this discussion come up each time, ask yourself why users "pressured" you so much to add ship design and additional playble races and you will know the answer

About Tactics with Strategic ... hm first of all a lot of people LOVED Tactical combat in MoO , but I mostly liked the CHOICE you had in MoO1 either to do tactical or press "Auto".
Yes the AI for Auto was bad but this is not a reason to abandon this aproach, it's just a reason to improve AI.

Anyway , GalCiv introduced a lot of interesting ideas (like influence for example) but at least I personally would like to see them as "additions to new MoO"

Well ask yourself why this thread is here and why this discussion come up each time, ask yourself why users "pressured" you so much to add ship design and additional playble races and you will know the answer

Hey, good point. I don't remember a Space Strategy game that had custom ship design before MOO. That was my favorite part about MOO2 - the customized ships.

The best according to..whom? The MOO series revolves around tactical starship combat. Galactic Civilizations revolves around building a civilization. Tactical vs. Strategic.

True. I really preferred MOO1 for combat. Tactical combat got boring in MOO2, and I really preferred the old MOO1 system of designing a ship class and then making lots of them. Do I want a small group of Battleships with good shields and armor, or do I want a swarm of 65535 tiny fighters with no defenses, 3 hit points, and 1 of my best type? Combat was resolved quickly and decisively.

My one disappointment with MOO2 (beyond the very existance of tech-trees) was the tactical combat after having been promised a more strategic vision. We were to be able to dispatch fleets for wide ranging, system-wide strategic fleet actions. But sadly it wasn't to be. I am one who would love few things more than to be able to lay out a plan of how my fleets will attack and take a system, then watch the battle unfold. See the troubles that mistakes make, or the flawless execution of the plan.

We didn't add ship design and multiple playable races because we wanted to make the game more like MOO2.  We added them because they're great features.  Gal Civ for OS/2 had Shipyards, which allowed you to design your own ships. We would have liked to do them in GalCiv for Windows, but we just didn't have the time to do it right, and it would have required a lot more art, which would have also increased the amount of RAM it used up.  It would have been kludgy, limited, and it probably wouldn't have looked that great. 

The 3D engine for GalCiv 2 has made a lot of things possible that just weren't practical, if not impossible, with the 2D engine.  We've also been able to reuse a lot of the code from GalCiv 1, so we're not starting completely from scratch like we were with GalCiv 1.  Well, we had interface code that was used in The Corporate Machine, but that changed a lot for Gal Civ; we pushed it past its limits and then had to fix the bugs that started cropping up.  There were a couple of bugs involving unsigned short integers.

There was also mention that MOO2's AI sucked and that only multiplayer made it fun. Multiplayer is something that a percentage of people have asked for a lot for the GalCiv series.  However, one of our strongest points has always been AI, and AI always suffers when multiplayer is included. 

It's true that lately we're a little sensitive about people coming on here and asking for MOO2 features.  However, some of the people posting threads asking for MOO2 features have been extremely aggressive and demanding.  It's frustrating, and discouraging.   People keep saying things like GalCiv is the true successor to MOO2, and that doesn't help.  Gal Civ is its own game. It's not a successor to MOO2.  We're not anti-MOO2.  We're just sick of seeing the attitude that GalCiv 2 will never measure up to MOO2 if we don't make it a clone of MOO2 with new graphics. There was one post in particular where a user very generously said that it's great that we've added our own features, but we really HAD TO HAVE all the existing features in MOO2, because MOO2 was the pinnacle of turn based space strategy games. It's that kind of post that makes us grind our teeth and start ranting.  

We didn't add ship design and multiple playable races because we wanted to make the game more like MOO2. We added them because they're great features.

Please do not feel ofended by this posts , that's exactly the point , its "great features" .
The point is that a lot of people want some other "great features" to be "importered" from MoO.

Btw: I personally more "in need" of MoO1 features not MoO2

About multiplayer - what you mean by "AI always suffers when multiplayer is included" I am programmer myself and as far as I understend multiplayer has nothing to do with AI - just "turn it off" for another player and add networking code
Or you meant that time spent on multiplayer usualy on expence of AI ?
(Personally I am not huge multiplayer lover, thats probably why I prefer MoO1 over MoO2, but I think multiplayer "feels" naturaly in GalCiv).

Or you meant that time spent on multiplayer usualy on expence of AI ?

That.

MoO1 is a much better game then MoO2. In MoO2, you just want to repeat the same build everywhere. In MoO2, you just want to build the biggest ships. yadda yadda suck. The only improvement MoO2 had was MP. Which was needed, because it's AI sucked.

MoO1 is much better balanced. Small ships have real value. A swarm of small ships can more then match big ships, the continual progression of new land you can colonize, the random tech tree that made teching something more challenging, etc etc etc.

Custom ship building, btw, wasn't new in MoO1. There's plenty of conquer the galaxy games that predate MoO1 that included custom ship building. They just didn't have the commercial distrubition of MoO1, because they predate commercial PC games being a reasonable market.

They just didn't have the commercial distrubition of MoO1, b

Hey , what "commercial distribution" , I have to admit that back then the only means of "commercial distrubition" was a 2400 modem BBS
I was just a kid and not sure that BSA and others already existed

But you know what ? - At least I could try ALL the games and believe me the bad once was scaped very fast

Oh golden days of MoO , MoM , Civilization , StarCon II , Tetris , Sierra Quests , Zeliard and Commander Keen and later Warcraft , Starcraft , Red Alert , Duke Nukem (not 3D) , F18 , DeathTrack , even Wolfshtein 3D and Doom and many many others ...
I played them all and had a lot of fun , now rare games such as Egosoft's X serires or GalCiv catch my eye.
Is the game industry that bad or uncreative or we all just getting old ?

Or you meant that time spent on multiplayer usualy on expence of AI ?

Yes.

This is one of the main reasons i love GalCiv. 4x games are so time consuming that i just don't see the point of MP. Normal guys (like me ) don't have so much time. If the AI isn't good, then there's no fun. GalCiv is one of the best franchise of Space strategy games (the others being the MOOs and the Space Empires) and has a great story on it's own. So i don't want a MOO 2.5 or the like. However, i'd wish some great features. One of the main reasons why i don't play CIV3 that much is due to the "random" victories in battles and the huge micromanagement of units (waiting 10 minutes watching the AI moving 100 units ). My point is that this, even if it's really not as bad (far from it), is what i dislike in GalCiv and hope to see improved in GalCiv2. I've got the feeling that's its being corrected but i am not sure.

My point is:

- If there's enough control on the outcome of a battle...great
- I don't want to have to control 100 of units or fleets.
- I would like to see some kind of "intercept" feature....meaning, i can place fleets at some point of the border and if an enemy enters my territory, the fleet will intercept it (if it's in range of course).

Everything else seems perfect (even if i don't like so much the icons on the planets surface)

So keep up the great work

About multiplayer - what you mean by "AI always suffers when multiplayer is included" I am programmer myself and as far as I understend multiplayer has nothing to do with AI - just "turn it off" for another player and add networking code Or you meant that time spent on multiplayer usualy on expence of AI ? (Personally I am not huge multiplayer lover, thats probably why I prefer MoO1 over MoO2, but I think multiplayer "feels" naturaly in GalCiv).

Stardock's objection to adding MP into GC2 has always been about development time. Not intending to kick off another multiplayer debate (theres several threads already so dont start it again here) but if Stardock thought an MP mode would justify the time and money taken away from other areas then GC2 would ship with one. As it is there may be one developed in an expansion pack instead (if enough pre-orders are placed to justify the investment - stated Stardock policy on many occasions please do not debate in this thread).

I do think its odd how many people forgive Moo2's poor AI because it has a multi-player mode. That's a damnable short coming in my opinion yet its ignored.

Yes the AI for Auto was bad but this is not a reason to abandon this aproach, it's just a reason to improve AI.

In order to improve a tactical combat mode's AI you first need a tactical combat mode. Stardock would have to build the combat system first as well as designing a good AI to use it. Your comment would hold true if Stardock were the Moo2 developers, then they would simply be improving on what they already have. It's not about abandoning the approach, its about Stardock taking their own approach.

n order to improve a tactical combat mode's AI you first need a tactical combat mode.

Actaually thats what I and many people expected when we heard of fleets in GC2.

Current fleet implementation is ... well ... like it or not "half way" to the tactical combat.

I dont think we'lls ee anything remoute to tactical combat as fleet battles will be generated automated cinematics. I dont think that tactical combat is that relevant. Altough I know that strategic combat is very furiating at times.

Of cause "we will not see" tactical combat in GC2 - dev. stated that clearly.
However the code developed for fleets batles is very easily can be "improved" to support tactical combat all that needed is a good tactical AI.
So if we continue to "ask " for it long enough we might see it in GC3 even if developers resist

Ok, now my 2 cents. MOO1 and MOO2 were great games for thier time. I even played the original GalCiv on OS/2, Until I really played the Original GalCiv, I had kept both MOO2 and Alpha Centari on my software self and did load them from time to time.
But, I have to really disagree with the MOO fans, the only comparable thing between the 2 is that they both are 3x space sims. IMHO, GalCiv beats MOO hands down, Oh and by the way, the ORIGINAL MOO series DID NOT HAVE MULTIPLAYER as part of the game. That was added some years later by group of fans that had started modding the game. MOO and MOO2 were Single player games when released in the early 90's.
I for the life of me cannot see any other ground that the 2 games have in common, at least in common enough to do an apple for apple comparison, soooooooo, let us stop with the wishing that a game could be a recarnation of MOO.
OBTW, there was another game that came out a year or 2 after MOO2 called Acendency, it had a true 3D star map, a tech tree that was displayed in a 3D format, customisable ships, fleets and an auto guard and other features MOO was lacking.
Maybe it was the prdicessor to MOO

GW