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So I just learned they "updated" the series. Reviews on Steam are a mixed bag.

My question for Dakka, does the game provide anything that Galactic Civilizations 3 doesn't?

I've not played GalCiv 3 but MOO is a generic 4X game. Its well made but everything in it has been seen before.

From what I've read, a lot of complaints were about limited tech tree, and diplomacy options, GalCiv 3 is pretty solid on those. Also saw that MoO only has 100 systems in its largest map. GalCiv has thousands.

GalCiv's campaign was depressingly short, but I haven't seen any reason to pick up MoO when I have GalCiv already. Wondering if anyone disagrees.

 djones520 wrote:
From what I've read, a lot of complaints were about limited tech tree, and diplomacy options.

The tech tree was significantly expanded during EA and diplomacy seems decent (in so far as 4x diplomacy could ever be called decent).

I prefer MMO over Galciv 2 if thats any help.

 djones520 wrote:
So I just learned they "updated" the series. Reviews on Steam are a mixed bag.

My question for Dakka, does the game provide anything that Galactic Civilizations 3 doesn't?

Problem with the reviews is how many of them were based on the earlier builds of the game compared to the final version?

I, too, am curious about the game as someone who still occasionallyplays MoO2.

The balance seems out of whack to me. I've had seven games now on Normal and I simply can't find a way to win through combat.

If you try and rush early with low level low-teched ships, you'll maybe manage to kill one enemy civ before the production and pop growth deficit from building your fleet turn into a negative feedback loop you can't recover from.

If you wait until midgame and push out with a large, reasonably-teched fleet you find most other civs are roughly equivalent once you factor in you having to assault fortified planets, so you end up "trading" your forces pretty equally and it quickly becomes a stalemate.

There's no point waiting until late game, because even if you find and colonise Orion for the extra tech, there's no way I've found to fully defeat all opponents before one of them reaches one of the other victory conditions. I had one game where the Humans got the Economic victory while I was still building up my attack fleets, so I reloaded a couple of dozen turns prior and went early to force the AI to divert its resources into defence, seemed to be working, got a few turns passed the point where they got Economic previously...they got Scientific instead.

The only strat I found that even has a chance of keeping the other civs off-balance long enough to build up a fleet capable of beating them was to go Silicoid, rush for Bioweapons, and pump out little fleets of deathships to wipe out colonies at random...and that lasted for about five minutes before most of the other races formed a super-coalition and eradicated me.

By contrast, you can go Human or Psilon, build a basic civ, click on the Research tree a couple of times and then take a nap while you win.

Aye, plenty of work left to do to balance it I think - warfare shouldn't be the best way to win, but considering "Exterminate" is right there in the name of the genre it should at least be a practical possibility. Right now combat only seems useful as a way to stop yourself being overrun by the more aggressive AIs while you wait to research your chosen win condition.

Had it since early access, it's a kick in a nostalgia sense and it's all very pretty. It does feel a bit limited though, especially the lack of differentiation between the races themselves.

Its good, but I'll stick with Civ