Yamota

Moo 2 was and is the King of space 4X games. It had complexity, tactical battles that had room for alot of creative thinking, multiplayer and customisable races. However it is very old so Im not sure you wont like the gfx compared to todays standard. For more recent games there are Sword of the Stars and Space Empires V. The latter one I wouldnt recomend as it looks more outdated than Moo 2 even though it was released quite recently. However Sword of the Stars isnt bad if you l

Ok, then I agree with you. Vastly superior technology should ofcourse give you a huge advantage. But there has to be some kind of balance where someone with ten times the larger military should have a chance against someone with superior tech. Otherwise superior tech would trumph all and make it meaningless for someone to pursuit military might over technological superiority.

Im all for the choice of participating in PvP or not but you cant call them jerks for doing what the game allows them to do. Also, contrary to other games like DAoC, you always had a chance to escape being PKed in UO if you were alert and had your recall runes handy.

Best I like games that constantly challenges you and requires you to use your brain so this list will reflect that. 1. Ultima Online.... the first game that introduced me to the the magical world of massive multiplayer online games. It was truly magical with an open ended game with few limits and most important; it was in a world with thousands of real human beings, not stupid, predictable AI mobiles. The rampant PKing didnt bother me, on the opposite it added a new exciting el

If you have superior shields, your ships should be nearly invincible. Uhm.. why? Because that's how it is in Star Trek? For the sake of balance, nothing should make you invincible. By that I mean that any defence must have a way to be countered. So a ship may seem to be invincible if the attacker is using the wrong weapon type but once he switches then you no longer should be invincible, hence it is countered.

Thats the Drengin super ability, where they get swarms of tiny Dominator corvettes every time they declare war. It's quite useless, to be honest... they should be getting ships that scale throughout the game, not just more of the useless ones. There are alot of semi-useleless "super" abilities. The spying and trade abilities comes to mind. Imo the "super" abilities need to go rebalanced. As for the original post; The reason that you can bui

Ok, here goes: 1. Starbases. These could be made alot more useful if they could participate in combat. So my suggestion is that if combat occurs inside the sphere of influence of a starbase then the strongest starbase, the one with most military rating, will participate in such combat. This includes planets. 2. Ground combat. Seperate soldiers from civilians. Planets will have a percentage of their populations as soldiers garrisoning a planet, protecting it from attack. That wa

I cant continue my current game right now because everytime I dialogue "Buffer overrun detected" and then the game crashes to desktop. This is the contents of my debug.err: Debug Message: Version v1.50X Dark Avatar last updated on: Wed Feb 28 10:01:41 2007 Debug Message: Checking DX Version. Debug Message: *********DXDiag info follows.********* System Info Time: 3/10/2007, 14:16:23 DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) Machine Name: MAINFRAME

I require good gfx in any game I play. I didnt put all that money in my rig to play games that doesnt use it.

That'd only be a valid analogy if 50+% of the driving population didn't use or particularly want windows. MP gamers have had run of the gaming world for some time, partly because the gaming press is full of them (by their very nature gaming press are going to have friends that game and have time to play games with them, so you get a severely disproportionate view). The fact is that even a lot of people that play exclusively multiplayer games (like WoW and Guild Wars) p

Perhaps the very fact that they spent lots of their budgets on making the games multiplayer (to the detriment of other aspects) is what caused them to be average overall? Ofcourse you have to divide the budget between different parts of the game but you seem to think that multiplayer is a component that would spell doom for all other components because it can be very expensive but that could be true for any component of a game. Gfx for example i

Gfx is too bad/non existing.

Mostly, yes - and I don't just mean from the player viewpoint. It is clear in the new patch that wars between AIs go on much longer, and often indefinitely because they are not able to negotiate a peace treaty - you always saw the same sort of behaviour, but to a lesser extent, in games with tech trading disabled. huh what? In my last post patch games the AI has signed peace treaty many times. I still dont see how the diplomacy is now "broken".

Budgets are finite, and MP is a *very* expensive feature as compared to others. If MP is so expensive as all the stuff in DA then I can understand why it isnt implemented. If it is then why is that the case? The major component missing for multiplayer, as I see it regarding game mechanics, is simultaneous turns. Diplomacy ofcourse would not work the same for player vs player as it does vs AI but other than those two, why would it take so much more work t

I think the AI changes regarding tech trading is great. No longer can you stop researching and get almost all your techs from trading. Technology should be valued very high and as thus the AI should hold on to it alot more than it did before the patch. As for diplomatic victory is concerned. How has that changed? I can still make alliances and thus still can achieve diplomatic victory, so what is the problem excactly?

MP is the reason most startegy games have crap AI. The MP fans have plenty of MP TBS games to play with, let us SP fans have at least one title that isn't hobbled by focusing on the MP experience to the exclusion of all else. That's a bit simplified view I must say. The reason for AI being crap in other games is that AI, with the current technology, cant even come close to a real human player without massive bonuses so if you want opponents that are real

Nope

Also MOO2 had multiplayer, which was a blast. I played it months after stopped playing the game against the AI and I was challenged every time. However the turn based combat kinda made the multiplayer component a bit tedious at times. But a game like GC II with richer tech tree for combat and with tactical real time combat and multiplayer would indeed be the best 4X game ever.

one thing i'd add to some of the comments thus far is this. the entire focus of SE is combat. GC2 (both DL and DA) is a 4X game in a truer sense, IMO, becaue there are multiple victory options and a fair amount of development that's gone into each of them. Well I would say that as much as SE V is about combat, GC II is not. It's combat is probably the weakest of any 4X game I ever played. No tactical combat and very simplistic combat engine. Was

World of Warcraft builds on the reputation Blizzard has as a game-designer. I dont know if its good or bad, but all those people dont just play the game because they want dumbass games. No they dont play games because they want "dumbass" games and nothing else, they probably play them because Blizzard makes good, solid games wich are action oriented and easy to get into for casual gamers. However none of Blizzards games have any significant depth or

Not to threadjack, but this is an ignorant statement. There is nothing dumbed down about WoW. Removing unnecessary tedium and jacking up the fun in MMORPGs isn't dumbing down. Tedium != difficulty. Letting people solo forever isn't dumbing down - it's just different. The difficulty level of WoW is no different than any other good MMORPG. The big difference with WoW compared to some other MMORPGs is that you have a lot more choice. If you want to coast, solo, and never

The AI is very, very good and getting better all the time because it's the primary focus of development. Come on dont exaggerate. It took me maybe 3-4 games to beat AI on tough, which is the highest level before it starts getting bonuses. It's relative very good compared to AI in other games which is something else entirely.

SE 5 is a game with incredible depth and complexity. However the game seems unfinished as for example the AI is broken and the gfx seem to vary from very good to very poor. GC II is more even with alot better AI and more solid gameplay but many times I feel that this game is a dumbed down version of Moo 2 with no tactical combat, less options to customize your race and alot less variety of ship technologies. Basically its just engines that go faster, shields that absorb more damage or w

No. That would be considered an internal domestic matter in Russia and left for them to handle it. Do you think if the governor of Louisiana suddenly declared his state independent from the US and swore allegiances to France the US would go to war? Not with France any how. The governor would be removed, the state's National Guard placed under federal command, and whatever other measures needed (up to and including martial law imposed) to maintain order in the state; de

Well I think the +100% empire wide economy bonus which Evil aligment get is quite good. However Good aligment is kinda sucky compared to evil and neutral. That's a bug/exploit, not a bonus. I'd say the big advantage of evil is the weapons techs. Hm, if its a bug then why dont they fix it. It's been around for a while I believe.