11 replies to this topic

[voidstalker_woe]

So, what are your top ten things you would want to see changed in 'your' moo2?  For me, I'll just throw these out there and welcome everyone else to comment on them or add their own.

 

Race picks that were unbalanced.

 

Creativity.  Get all techs, at all levels, in all fields, everywhere, without penalty.

• For me, lets first talk about limiting to ONE of the eight R&D types, and only getting 1 extra tech per level.
• Then, decide if there will be options for lowering the picks cost by:

1. Selecting a corresponding 'un-creative' type (where the race looses 1 option, per level, and either it is random (big reduction) or player selected (lesser reduction).  Allow multiple uses of this pick to either, help in a different type, or give 2 extra tech per level within R&D type.  Another option would be to pre-assign the matches, so a player knows that "X" R&D types being better in will make the corresponding "Y" R&D type worse.  This way, they cannot just take "Sociological" for every negative pick, and 'get over'.
2. If player chooses no penalty R&D type, then double base cost of pick!  Use this as often as they choose this pick.

 

There are other race picks that could use some work, but the above can serve as a template for a discussion point and 'wish list' kinda thing.

 

Diplomacy and knowledge:

We all have had the situation where, you have a NAP with one race(A), and an alliance with another(B), and then when you finally get race (A) into your alliance, they shortly thereafter go to war with race (B), thus ruining all your hard work and alliance.  This seems to me to be a glaring example of where the original design team left things less than optimal.  I got ticked off enough on one occasion to actually check how the two races were even in contact with each other, and discovered that the problem was coded right into the "Alliance" option itself.

1. First, there needs to be some sort of protection against this happening, like joining an alliance automatically enforces at least a NAP with all other members of the alliance, or the new race cannot join.  If a member of an alliance wants to go to war with a fellow member of the alliance, then perhaps they should be required to cancel the alliance with all members (and be downgraded to a NAP), and then they can go to war with each race that they so choose.
2. Second, the idea of letting all of your worlds serve as refueling stations for your allies is bunk.  Maybe have several different "Alliance options", where in the closest one, you share just like in Moo2, but in other options, you can opt to not share any refueling stations at all, or perhaps just for those they can already reach on their own, thus they cannot suddenly reach further and further into the Galaxy, without ever building so much as an outpost.
3. Third, maybe there could be a 'veto' voting process involved when one race wants to go to war with a fellow alliance member.

 

Knowledge:  You make first contact with another empire, and right away (and for as long as you maintain contact) you will auto-magically know every system in the galaxy that this empire controls, no matter weather or not you could even reach those systems or not.  In a alliance, this could be the norm, but in any state short of that, why would they tell you anything about what other systems they were in control of?  So how about, you only get to 'see' who controls a star system when you are capable of sending an outpost ship there, AND you have at least a NAP with the guys that control it.  Otherwise, you have to wait till you get there to find out if there is someone there or not.  Using something like this is a way to have something like the "Fog of war" that other games use to great effect, and helps to "preserve the mystery" in the game.  I would also like to be able to establish 'listening posts', where I keep my presence in a far off corner of a solar system a secret, and just use such an installation for intelligence gathering & espionage possibilities.

 

So there are just a few of my own 'wish list' things that I would want an option for implementing in game via a setup screen.

[M002mod]

voidstalker_woe, on 21 December 2015 - 11:08 AM, said:

 

Race picks that were unbalanced.

 

Creativity.  Get all techs, at all levels, in all fields, everywhere, without penalty.

There are other race picks that could use some work, but the above can serve as a template for a discussion point and 'wish list' kinda thing.

 

Creativity is often mentioned as OP, but is really not.

None of the race builds that allows you to win the game in the fastest way includes the Creative ability.

See it like this: You are competing in a 100m distance with one other guy for fastest time.

For your 100 meters you can freely choose between a train, a speedboat and a fighter jet.

The other guy is called Usain Bolt and only has a fancy pair of runners shoes.

He wins in a casual 11 seconds while you are still busy climbing on the train.

You then go by saying "hey the fight was unfair, next time I should not be allowed to choose from all three vehicles".

 

 

As for alliances, agree that a.i. Diplomacy is really not that great in moo2 and there is much that could be improved in that area.

- A.I will quickly ask you to declare war on someone after you have an Alliance. And usually they will make peace again after 1-2 turns, leaving you with a new enemy.

- When you have an Alliance with the last standing players you cannot win the game, but are forced to break treaty and declare war.

Just to name two things here.

 

Edited by M002mod, 21 December 2015 - 01:03 PM.

[voidstalker_woe]

M002mod, on 21 December 2015 - 07:24 AM, said:

 

Creativity is often mentioned as OP, but is really not.

None of the race builds that allows you to win the game in the fastest way includes the Creative ability.

 

As for alliances, agree that a.i. Diplomacy is really not that great in moo2 and there is much that could be improved in that area.

- A.I will quickly ask you to declare war on someone after you have an Alliance. And usually they will make peace again after 1-2 turns, leaving you with a new enemy.

- When you have an Alliance with the last standing players you cannot win the game, but are forced to break treaty and declare war.

Just to name two things here.

 

I have to say, I think your right on the money with the things you mentioned within the alliance structure in Moo2.  I would hope to get some good ideas for alternative diplomatic treaties in this thread.  What about the idea for having a 'fog of war' type thing in Moo2?  Any thoughts on that or along those lines?

 

For the part about 'fastest win', while you are correct, that assumes that every player is interested in a 'fast victory'.  I myself don't play a game for the goal of achieving victory as quickly as possible, but rather to fully explore the map, to fully research as close to every technology as I can (creativity ruins this by just giving me everything, so there is nothing left to steal/trade for), and I enjoy the whole espionage aspect of the game.  When I play chess, my best friend complains that I like to 'toy with' him and rather than going or the checkmate, I go for maximum queens.  Back when we were in high school, we would both of us 'throw in the towel' if we goofed and got way behind, but now he insists on playing out every game even if I am a queen up on him, rather than admit defeat and get started on a new game where he has a much better chance of actually winning the game.  This bores the heck out of me, and so I have to find something to entertain myself with until he traps himself and gets a stalemate, or I get to bored and just checkmate him after I get my last queen.

 

Personally, I would love to see the Moo2 game re-written in JAVA, so I could play with everyone, everywhere, on any platform.  I am fine with the look and sound of the game as is, but would rather have added content and customizations, to fit the game to my playing preferences, rather than trying to make me play the way the game designers intended.  For instance, how about a game where the victory conditions are that the game is a loss if any AI is defeated?  Make the players protect the AI's final worlds, so they have to break the power of all the other races before they take out Orion (if an AI does this, all players loose.

[M002mod]

voidstalker_woe, on 21 December 2015 - 02:30 PM, said:

What about the idea for having a 'fog of war' type thing in Moo2?  Any thoughts on that or along those lines?

Galciv III has the fog of war. It is a means to make the exploration phase a bit more elaborate and potentially more interesting.

From what I understand, in MOO4, you will also have to visit planets in your own system to be able to determine their specs. 

So I guess moo4 devs are trying to make the first X a bit more interesting too.

 

 

voidstalker_woe, on 21 December 2015 - 02:30 PM, said:

 

For the part about 'fastest win', while you are correct, that assumes that every player is interested in a 'fast victory'.  I myself don't play a game for the goal of achieving victory as quickly as possible, but rather to fully explore the map, to fully research as close to every technology as I can (creativity ruins this by just giving me everything, so there is nothing left to steal/trade for), and I enjoy the whole espionage aspect of the game.  

No, it does not assume that. I am just responding to your claim that Creative is OP.

Luckily moo2 allows for many different play styles; Blitz War, Economy Plays and Long Plays, etc. etc.

When you are playing a more Civ style game, I can understand the issues with Creative.

Conceptually moo2's Creative/ Uncreative is not a really nice mechanic to begin with as it causes many problems for the a.i. players.

Moo1's mechanic was much better in that respect, although the tech tree ended up with more generic techs.

 

voidstalker_woe, on 21 December 2015 - 02:30 PM, said:

 

Personally, I would love to see the Moo2 game re-written in JAVA, so I could play with everyone, everywhere, on any platform.  I am fine with the look and sound of the game as is, but would rather have added content and customizations, to fit the game to my playing preferences, rather than trying to make me play the way the game designers intended.  For instance, how about a game where the victory conditions are that the game is a loss if any AI is defeated?  Make the players protect the AI's final worlds, so they have to break the power of all the other races before they take out Orion (if an AI does this, all players loose.

For a Javamoo2, you can ask Ray, perhaps he has some spare time.    

Edited by M002mod, 21 December 2015 - 03:56 PM.

[RayFowler]

voidstalker_woe, on 21 December 2015 - 08:30 AM, said:

Personally, I would love to see the Moo2 game re-written in JAVA, so I could play with everyone, everywhere, on any platform. 

 

I am very far into a rewrite of MOO1 in Java and you don't get the "run anywhere" feature you'd expect with Java. Mainly because IOS and Droid are now popular platforms and neither will run native Java programs.

[Seablaze1234]

I think if you had to headcannon in reasoning for things in Master of Orion 2, there was either an issue, or something that needed more explaining.

 

Things like being able to see the whole opponent's empire on first contact can be attributed to spying, but it was likely done so that players had a chance to respond to threats. If you come into contact with a blitzing race, but all you can see is a single planet/outpost, it's much harder to know whether that player will be an immediate threat. You can say the same about the galaxy rankings, but a defending player would be much more vulnerable to an already powerful strategy if this 'feature' was more realistic.

 

With regards to switching production from one object to another, you can think of it as building universal parts that can be applied to a different type of construction, but it's again, unexplained, and if you have to headcannon it in - it's an issue.

 

 

Despite many people thinking so, Creative is not overpowered - you simply need to react to it. Any player that picks up Creative is investing a lot of picks in a perk that only really pays off in the mid to late game. Non-creative Research Races will out-tech them, Production races will swarm them, Population races will turn their population into both production and research, and Blitz races will kill them before their perk is relevant. If you are trying to fight a creative race in the mid to late game, and you are not a creative race yourself, you have probably played  the game incorrectly, and deserve to lose to a race that you've given every advantage.

 

A lot can be said about the quality of the AI in Master of Orion 2, with a lot of it attributable to the time the game was made. For the time it was produced, it did well, however, the AI struggled with decision making, particularly in certain areas - Ship Design, Diplomacy, Multiple-Front Offensives, 'Tactical' Combat, Planet Design and Management. I'm sure anyone who has played the game knows areas that were lacking.

 

Espionage was fairly shallow in Master of Orion 2. While it wasn't necessarily bad, there was a lot to improve - the ability to target certain planets/technology fields, or set up diplomatic boons/frame other empires as the goal of espionage could be excellent. Needing to actively spy for information could be interesting, as well; a Spy could act almost as a scout that can traverse empire borders. It would be interesting to see larger empires be more vulnerable to espionage, as it's more difficult to spy-check among a larger population - there's more gaps for the spies to slip through.

The only time I saw Espionage worked in effectively as a sub-branch of Diplomacy was when you had a Darlok in your game, who basically reduced relations between all Empires by framing them every other turn - creating a climate of anarchy and constant turmoil for the whole game.

 

Finally, I'm not sure what to think about MoO2's victory conditions, compared to what we've seen at PAX, i.e. the 'Civ'-style victories. In the past, a research victory was essentially a military victory, anyway - you amassed enough technology to be an unstoppable force. On the other hand, 'Congratulations, you won because you researched the super-future-tech' victory seems hollow. In Civ 5, you basically built a spaceship and Nope!'d out of the game. In Master of Orion 4, you, what? Create the equivalent of a Cold-War Nuke, and it's assumed that you nuke anyone who doesn't surrender (but does it offscreen?)? Do you follow the Orions and Transcend this plane? -shudder-

 

In MoO2, it was good that your options were to Unite the Galaxy against the Antarans, through Diplomacy or War (Allied victory would have been nice, although in both cases, it didn't actually deal with the Antarans), or you defeated the Antarans which granted you... the lion's share of the advanced tech salvage, leading to an assumed dominance of the other 'lesser' races? Essentially, your victory condition was to rule the galaxy, through diplomacy or war, and I enjoyed that - I would be interested to see whether other people think this was too narrow, just right, and whether the 'Magic weapon' Research victory Civ-style is something you're looking forward to in MoO4.

[plasmacannontime]

Yeah, Creative seems powerful at first glance, but I would rarely choose it. I could do more with a UniAquaProd+2 race than a Creative one.
Your Diplomacy and Knowledge arguments are valid. It is annoying to sign a non-agression pact, then to see an AI colonize a good planet in your empire that you wanted to backfill later.

 

Seablaze1234, yeah, I don't want to see a Transend option either. It's like committing suicide when you want the game to go on. The universe contains multiple galaxies. Why stop at controlling one?
I would prefer researching an engine tech kind of like Dimentional Portal, lets call it Intergalactic speed, and show up in a new galaxy with my high tech fleet, colonize a planet or conquer one and keep the game going. Especially, if I beat the first galaxy before getting to the end of the tech tree.
 
Victory Conditions could include, Elimination, Domination, Technology, Diplomacy aka Galactic Peace, Economic (You bribe the AIs into voting you Supreme ruler of the Galaxy), Construction (Build every building on every planet).
Here's a new one, Powerless.
Basically, bomb your opponents back to the Stone Age. You have to render your opponents effectively powerless either by directly bombing their planet's buildings or by Spy Sabotage. The remaining planets left in the game can't each have more than 25% of the average number of buildings that you have per planet.
Time Travel - ala Terra Nova style, back to the beginning of the game. You receive a message saying that after your group fought back a few dinosaurs, they began to establish civilization again. You begin on turn 0. You start with the first level of your tech knowledge and your personal knowledge of where the opponent's homeworlds are, however this time, things will be different. They may not colonize the same planets. They may not go to war and eliminate each other. Even random events that change a planet won't occur. Everything is different and the same at the same time.

[diehardtwinsfan]

creative wasn't bad until they changed the cost structure from 4 points to 6.  But yeah, you could win MOO2 without it. I always liked the extra techs b/c there were a lot you could give to races like the Bulrathi or Silicoids which tended to leave them a bit more amenable towards you.

[Alexencandar]

voidstalker_woe, on 21 December 2015 - 11:08 AM, said:

So, what are your top ten things you would want to see changed in 'your' moo2?  For me, I'll just throw these out there and welcome everyone else to comment on them or add their own.

 

Race picks that were unbalanced.

 

Creativity.  Get all techs, at all levels, in all fields, everywhere, without penalty.

• For me, lets first talk about limiting to ONE of the eight R&D types, and only getting 1 extra tech per level.
• Then, decide if there will be options for lowering the picks cost by:

1. Selecting a corresponding 'un-creative' type (where the race looses 1 option, per level, and either it is random (big reduction) or player selected (lesser reduction).  Allow multiple uses of this pick to either, help in a different type, or give 2 extra tech per level within R&D type.  Another option would be to pre-assign the matches, so a player knows that "X" R&D types being better in will make the corresponding "Y" R&D type worse.  This way, they cannot just take "Sociological" for every negative pick, and 'get over'.
2. If player chooses no penalty R&D type, then double base cost of pick!  Use this as often as they choose this pick.

 

There are other race picks that could use some work, but the above can serve as a template for a discussion point and 'wish list' kinda thing.

 

Diplomacy and knowledge:

We all have had the situation where, you have a NAP with one race(A), and an alliance with another(B), and then when you finally get race (A) into your alliance, they shortly thereafter go to war with race (B), thus ruining all your hard work and alliance.  This seems to me to be a glaring example of where the original design team left things less than optimal.  I got ticked off enough on one occasion to actually check how the two races were even in contact with each other, and discovered that the problem was coded right into the "Alliance" option itself.

1. First, there needs to be some sort of protection against this happening, like joining an alliance automatically enforces at least a NAP with all other members of the alliance, or the new race cannot join.  If a member of an alliance wants to go to war with a fellow member of the alliance, then perhaps they should be required to cancel the alliance with all members (and be downgraded to a NAP), and then they can go to war with each race that they so choose.
2. Second, the idea of letting all of your worlds serve as refueling stations for your allies is bunk.  Maybe have several different "Alliance options", where in the closest one, you share just like in Moo2, but in other options, you can opt to not share any refueling stations at all, or perhaps just for those they can already reach on their own, thus they cannot suddenly reach further and further into the Galaxy, without ever building so much as an outpost.
3. Third, maybe there could be a 'veto' voting process involved when one race wants to go to war with a fellow alliance member.

 

Knowledge:  You make first contact with another empire, and right away (and for as long as you maintain contact) you will auto-magically know every system in the galaxy that this empire controls, no matter weather or not you could even reach those systems or not.  In a alliance, this could be the norm, but in any state short of that, why would they tell you anything about what other systems they were in control of?  So how about, you only get to 'see' who controls a star system when you are capable of sending an outpost ship there, AND you have at least a NAP with the guys that control it.  Otherwise, you have to wait till you get there to find out if there is someone there or not.  Using something like this is a way to have something like the "Fog of war" that other games use to great effect, and helps to "preserve the mystery" in the game.  I would also like to be able to establish 'listening posts', where I keep my presence in a far off corner of a solar system a secret, and just use such an installation for intelligence gathering & espionage possibilities.

 

So there are just a few of my own 'wish list' things that I would want an option for implementing in game via a setup screen.

 

As has been previously said, creative is not a great trait. It severely limited race design due to the shear cost of the trait. The other issue is, although I wouldn't say there are a ton of useless techs in every play style, there are useless techs in particular play styles. So, if you are playing a unification race, any morale bonus techs are not a gain. If you are playing a repulsive race, any diplomacy techs are worthless. If you are playing a -ground combat race, any ground combat techs are pretty much useless. Most custom races have focuses which means creative is of limited use in most situations. Again, it isn't a terrible trait but personally, I haven't used it in years.

 

In regard to diplomacy, yes I doubt many would argue the diplomacy system was even the second worst feature. It was pretty bad.

 

In regard to the lack of fog-of-war, that isn't something MoO2 did poorly, that is something it should have done.

 

My personal complaints would probably be: Spying (random) and Fleet Combat (Camera doesn't snap to active ship).

[Vahouth]

I never sat down to think about a top 10, but seriously, my major gripe would be the auto build function and the tedious building micromanagement of late game.

[M002mod]

Alexencandar, on 22 January 2016 - 03:05 AM, said:

 

My personal complaints would probably be: Spying (random) and Fleet Combat (Camera doesn't snap to active ship).

 

Yes for spying, moo1 spying was so much better than moo2's.

Don't know about moo3 spying, as i have never finished a single game and never got to the spying part (still have the cd's though)

 

About Fleet Combat 'doesn't snap to active ship' - it means you are playing with Initiative setting off.

Playing with Initiative on (was introduced in 1.31 and is unfortunately off by default) is much better 'more fair' for tactical combat.

[Anguille_1]

M002mod, on 22 January 2016 - 04:32 PM, said:

 

Yes for spying, moo1 spying was so much better than moo2's.

Don't know about moo3 spying, as i have never finished a single game and never got to the spying part (still have the cd's though)

 

About Fleet Combat 'doesn't snap to active ship' - it means you are playing with Initiative setting off.

Playing with Initiative on (was introduced in 1.31 and is unfortunately off by default) is much better 'more fair' for tactical combat.

 

The spying part of MOO3 is the one i like the least.

 

Some things i don't like in MOO2 (especially compared to MOO1):

 

- Small maps....in MOO1 you have less planets but a lot more stars

- Dark Interface

- Spying system (individual spies vs networks) that doesn't allow to say what you them to do.

- Artwork...i really prefer the one from MOO1 (except ships....love the ships and the battles in MOO2)