Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch

[Rev222]

Couldn't start a new thread, so I thought this was probably the best place to post this. I'm thinking about picking this up. I've never played it, but have heard its name uttered in the same sentence as that most sacred game, Masters of Magic, for years, so I thought I might want to give it a chance.

If anyone could pm me suggestions for just starting out, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to hijack this thread with off-topic material. Also, is it MoO1 that everyone says is so amazing, or MoO2? I know it's not three, because that received horrific reviews everywhere I looked.

Thanks for all the work on the patch though. These aged diamonds of old games are fantastic resources, and those who put the time into maintaining and improving them are awesome.

Rev

[Zed-F]

MOO1 and MOO2 are both looked on as excellent, but generally not by the same people as usually one prefers one or the other. MOO2 has more Civ-style micromanagement and caters to the crowd that likes that sort of thing while MOO1 avoids most of the micromanagement for a higher-level strategic feel.

If you want to see some good examples of MOO1 strategy I would recommend looking at the RBMOO SGs and past Imperia here as a good place to get started. There's also a few sites around that give good overviews, such as Jon Sullivan's site and Sirian's old site.

[kyrub]

Exactly.

MoO 2 is in fact, probably, the closest game to Master of Magic in terms of game functionality you'll ever find (the combat is different). Spearmen -> space vessels, cities -> planets, heroes -> captains, diplomacy, perks, races... Some people say, if you like MoM, you'll like MoO 2. For others (and me), it's more of the same and there is little improvement (and the combat sucks, personal opinion). There is certainly more game "content" than in MoO 1, more flair, more epic, it's more pleasing to the eye etc.

MoO 1 is very different, a game that is quite simple on its surface with almost childish interface, but that kind of genious simplicity that fits together incredibly. There are complex formulas beneath the surface. There's one of the best ever technology trees seen in the strategy games as well. MoO, for all its conceptual simplicity, is not easy to win, it's harder than MoM for instance; even best players lose the game from time to time. One reviewer has written that: "Master of Orion eats formulaic strategy players for breakfast". He's not far from the truth.

[Rev222]

Now I really want to get the pair.

The thing I most loved about MoM was exploring and finding loot (I'm a treasure fiend in everything from MoM to the Diablo series, etc.). It was the exploring, building up my heroes with fantastic equipment, and then destroying everything in my path that I really enjoyed.

I think I'll pick these up in the near future. I don't know if either of you have had the chance, but you should read the first review to MoO3 on gog.com...it's pretty ridiculously hilarious.

Thanks for the advice!
Rev

[outcast]

Long time MOO1 player, and I just finished my first game with this. I was impressed, and noticed that, even though I'm pretty sure the game was on hard it didnt seem to have the huge and unreasonably sized fleets (with dozens of huge ships, hundreds upon hundreds of large ships, thousands of little stuff, basically their entire navy folded into one giant stack of doom) that it did before. This helped make the game much more interesting by opening new avenues in the overall strategic environment.


One thing I did notice was a bizzare later game tendency for other races whom I was not at war with (but had tense relations) to stage several large scale (as in a full on fleet) attacks on important targets. I was playing the Klackons and had the northwest corner of the map in a huge galaxy with 5 races. My navy was fairly substantial, consisting of more than 50 cruisers (large) and half a dozen destroyers (huge), all of which had much better performance than their competitors except for the Psilons. But the Meklar's to the south launched several of these attacks, in particular a big one on one of my major production planets. All of these were repelled of course, with the Meklar's taking very very heavy losses while I lost a total of a dozen older cruisers (basically a very lopsided win). But then the Humans, who were on my eastern border and had no alliance with the Meklars suddenly came out of nowhere and siezed an important artifact world on the border. I was caught by surprise and couldnt mount an effective defense. But the AI seems to have retained its appearent unwillingness to actually defend any of its gains, and their fleet withdrew almost immediately, allowing me to easily retake it. Unfortunately I then lost the council vote and the game ended before I could launch any punitive campaigns against either the Humans or the Meklars. But still, to date I had never seen this behavior in an AI before, let alone two of them. It does spice things up a bit, but I wonder was this intention?

I also wasnt able to determine if the AI not attacking Orion bug was ever really fixed. I've played MOO1 on and off for the past 10 years and to date I had seen an AI player go after Orion exactly one time (even though they had the firepower to take it on in many many other games), and I figured it out after it came after me with death ray armed destroyers.

So far I must say, good job.

[kyrub]

Long time MOO1 player, and I just finished my first game with this. I was impressed, and noticed that, even though I'm pretty sure the game was on hard it didnt seem to have the huge and unreasonably sized fleets (with dozens of huge ships, hundreds upon hundreds of large ships, thousands of little stuff, basically their entire navy folded into one giant stack of doom) that it did before.

This, actually, is a flaw of the original AI that was hidden because of a bug. AI tends to separate its fleet into too many subfleets, but a bug in the original game congested all subfleets into a massive one. The downside was, that the placement and movement of the ONE fleet was illogical, which often resulted ïn a sudden withdrawal from a winning position and other curiosities (can be seen in many game reports).

One thing I did notice was a bizzare later game tendency for other races whom I was not at war with (but had tense relations) to stage several large scale (as in a full on fleet) attacks on important targets.

Sounds like a great game, really. I love it when AI can mount a challenge, sadly, it is more of an accident in MoO.

I also wasnt able to determine if the AI not attacking Orion bug was ever really fixed.

Nope. It's problematic for a couple of reason, the main one being that the AI fights are not actually fought, but simulated with an equation. The way the equation works, it would be far too easy for the AIs.

But the AI seems to have retained its appearent unwillingness to actually defend any of its gains, and their fleet withdrew almost immediately, allowing me to easily retake it.

Spot on.
- The AI in MoO has never got the real attention in the first patch. But, having repaid my debts (promises) elsewhere, I have finally restarted my work on a much better AI for MoO. I will make a thread for this kind of observations.

[outcast]

This, actually, is a flaw of the original AI that was hidden because of a bug. AI tends to separate its fleet into too many subfleets, but a bug in the original game congested all subfleets into a massive one. The downside was, that the placement and movement of the ONE fleet was illogical, which often resulted ïn a sudden withdrawal from a winning position and other curiosities (can be seen in many game reports).

Well it appears that bug was solved because I didnt see anything too outrageous. Each of the Meklar fleets consisted of 2-5 destroyers (each double hulled), two dozen cruisers, and a hundred or so medium sized gunships. Their cruisers, despite being large were loaded to the gills with death spores and had no anti-warship capabilities at all. Their trouncing had more to do with having older designs and inferior technology, which were still a threat to my older cruisers which is why they bore the brunt of my losses.

I also noticed the humans updating their fleets fairly frequently, and what they attacked me with was 5 destroyers armed with death spores and 23 state of the art cruisers. Because I had nothing in the area (almost everything else was fending off the Meklars) I couldnt mount an effective defense. In case you're wondering, while I do make sure to build out my planetary defence shields, I always avoid building missile bases because it makes the game more interesting and wars more fluid.

Sounds like a great game, really. I love it when AI can mount a challenge, sadly, it is more of an accident in MoO.

Me too, and distributed attacks like that can be interesting, however these were all sneak attacks on fully built up worlds, which had never happened before and used to be limited to newly settled colonies. I wasnt at war with them and actually the humans were at war with the Psilons on their other border, and losing.

Nope. It's problematic for a couple of reason, the main one being that the AI fights are not actually fought, but simulated with an equation. The way the equation works, it would be far too easy for the AIs.

Which actually explains how an AI planet with even the weakest planetary shields, a dozen nuclear missiles and no friendly ships can defeat the space crystal and space amoeba. That seems more like a bug to me.

I also noticed not too many random events in the last game, just one plague and one neutronium deposits event, and that's it. Has the occurance of random events been changed or was it just one of those games?

Spot on.
- The AI in MoO has never got the real attention in the first patch. But, having repaid my debts (promises) elsewhere, I have finally restarted my work on a much better AI for MoO. I will make a thread for this kind of observations.

I look forward to trying it out. BTW, one thing I've never been too clear on, exactly what cheats does the AI use?

[toddestan]

I have to say that I have noticed the AI trying to poach my planets too in the mid-late game. Particularly in impossible mode where they can send a death fleet to one of my worlds and have a decent chance of being able to penetrate the defenses, but even too in average/hard mode where I'm bouncing fleets away from my worlds from time to time. Kind of interesting when I have good relations with that opponent and they try some sneak attack. As I haven't played the game in a while, I wasn't sure if this was new behavior or not (I definitely remember the AIs would challenge and take new colonies in the early game).

I have to concur that I too have noticed that the AI doesn't tend to generate a large single fleet either. That's one thing I do remember when the AI would create some gigantic fleet of doom that would make things...interesting. I had been looking for such a fleet in some of my games, assuming that it must exist and didn't find it, though at the time I assumed that maybe it was off on the other side of the galaxy causing problems for one of the other AIs.

Only real definite bug I have run across is when the AI has a one-planet empire and I attack it (but don't destroy their planet), if they retreat their ships they just kind of disappear - probably because there is no destination for them. Probably the AI should not retreat any ships if it's their only planet as it's really a last stand for them. But it doesn't seem the AI manages one planet empires very well overall.

[outcast]

After having played through a few more times, I've become convinced that somehow the random events generator is broken. In each of these games there has only been a few random events and still no space amoeba or space crystals (although they would be a lot more fun if the vs. AI equation bug got fixed to force the AI's to attempt to mount a defence).

[Doomk]

confirming the mentioned ameba/crystal disappereance - no more threats for our citizens