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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3927 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 20, 2024

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So I've been playing a lot of Master of Orion. I simply adored Master of Orion 2, and the pages of Computer Gaming World considered it the apex of 4X games until Galactic Civilizations 2 came out in 2004, where they begrudgingly admitted GalCiv2 was at least as good as Master of Orion 2, maybe.

Going back to the first one, I'm struck by it's simplicity. No more building individual improvements on planets, it's all more abstract with sliders for different production. Tech makes these cheaper, more efficient, etc. Combat is just the one two punch of fleet battle, and then sending in the shock troops. And that's just as easy as hitting the "TRANS" button to send population, the same way you'd shuffle it between your own colonies. No need to build specialized troop transports or anything. I kind of love it. It has a simple, but good enough, system of setting rally points for ships you build. And if you ever get tired of slowly conquering planets and then getting them up to speed and productive, you can just glass them from orbit instead. Easy peasy, no special tech required. You get nuclear bombs from the start, and it seems like all sorts of different weapon tech can bombard planets.

I find the end game to be a breeze, unlike almost any other 4X game I've played that devolve into micro management hell. I remember encountering people who always sword Master of Orion 1 was better than 2, and I think I can see why. In a world where 4X has grown into grand strategy, MoO1 is downright casual, and it's fucking fantastic for it.

Yeah. Its a rare case where the first in the series really nailed it, to the point where there was almost nowhere left to go and they had to change things up. The first really captures the feeling of "expand, expand, EXPAND," and being the dictator of a vast galactic empire. Other games add more details, but they make it feel you're more small scale, micromanaging things. Plus, the simplicity means that the AI is actually a decent opponent.

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