@jpinard, have you loaded it up yet? ;-)
If you end up liking the sliders in MOO better than the production queues in MOO2, might I also humbly suggest you try MOO3 as well. It’s got a lot of sliders as well.
You certainly can consider that suggestion, but you might consider what it makes you look like first.
?
An anti-slider zealot?
:P
Your primitive sliders cower in the face of the all-powerful spherical triangle of economy!
Okay, I played both a lot, I like them both, however I’d rather play Moo 2 than 1 in these days…here is why…
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There are two types of Moo 2 playing, the easy kill the AI type, which sadly offers little challenge, and you will get to build EVERYTHING and win anyway… and the second one, where you play it in glorious MP where doing so will get you massacred early on.
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Combat in moo 2 is way better, moo 1 is single player and you don’t have that much in terms of options, moo 2 makes it way more personal too.
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Sliders, yes, they are fine, and they work well, when you need to deal with really big empires, but neither are really that big, so sliders was way more important when I did a SOTS campaign with 200-300 planets, than when you got 16 stars to deal with…
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Tech, moo 1 was better there, but I still like moo 2 handle on it.
I agree, the presence of sliders was the one thing keeping MoO3 from being the best game ever…
I remember pouring hundreds of hours into MOO2 and loving it. I don’t think I enjoyed MOO3. MOO was the reason I purchased 2. I’m pretty sure if asked, I would say 2 was the highlight of that series for me.
It had a lot more problems than that. But that was certainly one of the things that made it feel soulless, I agree.
Master of Magic was better than either, so whatever.
That said, MOO2 was superior. I played MOO first.(this ought to be a popular opinion)
I agree with you here as I rarely played the game solo.
MOO 3? What MOO 3?
Yeah, it’s true, I haven’t played MOO2 much solo. Let’s say if I have played MOO2 for about a thousand hours, then I’d say 950 hours of those have been in multiplayer. Either hotseat or on a LAN.
None of it has been competitive, mind you. We all always teamed up against the Impossible AI, and we won about 50% of the time.
If my google-fu were up to it, I’d post a screenshot of the Reach for the Stars development phase spreadsheet with a pithy comment about you entitled millenials and your fancy sliders.
e: I did learn that Jerry Pournelle talked about RFTS for Byte back in the day, so I feel like I came out ahead on this one. (His meandering makes its way to video games on page 114.)
e2: Holy moly, the man goes on and on. I guess you gotta fill in the cracks around the advertisements with something!
You know that point in civ where you discover a new building and your heart sinks a little bit because you’ll have each city in your empire build it? Moo gracefully sidesteps that by having a popup ask if you just want to spend 25% of each planets productions on the new eco-forming or factories.
You know those obsolete units that you just can’t use when you get to the end game of most 4x’s? They aren’t around in moo.
You learn a 4x well enough and you know what tech to race for? Not in Moo. That tech may not be available to you in Moo.
Pulsars vs streaming weapons vs small fighters vs black hole generators …the combat system was actually quite well thought through. No matter what the computer player through at you, there was a counter.
You want a huge game? Moo can do that. You want a 2 hour game? Moo can do that too.
It breaks so many 4x conventions it’s a bit shocking that it hasn’t been copied better.
If I have to chose a best 4x ever I’ll be thinking long and hard about Moo and Imperialism.
I played MOO2 almost exclusive MP too… is that difference then, why the split in opinion?
Sliders versus Build Queue is basically orthogonal to Soulless versus Flavorful. You can have a slider-based system that’s very dynamic and full of interesting choices and a building system with just mine I, II, III and farm I, II, III.
I agree with this!
But for the pair, MOO2 all the way. One game had multiplayer, one did not. And my love for the series stemmed from playing MOO2 with a great gaming buddy.
Oh, now that sounds like fun…
I’m a MOO1 defender, through and through. Elegant is better than expansive. But I also prefer Incan Gold to Arkham Horror and 7 Wonders to Twilight Imperium.
You’re not wrong. Fuck balance, LET ME RESHAPE THE WORLD WITH A SPELL. ;)
So @jpinard, have you loaded up MOO to at least try it yet? ;) I mean c’mon we’re giving you all these reasons it’s great, you should at LEAST try it.