Why I still love this game

[haphazard1]

Unpredictability.

MoO has many excellent qualities as a 4X game, but what keeps bringing me back at least a couple times a year is how you never know what to expect when you start a new game. I enjoy many other 4X games including MoO2, Civ, and many more but almost all of them are more about optimizing within a known framework and executing on a given map. MoO can completely scramble your options depending on your tech tree gaps, forcing you to work with what is available rather than pre-planning your Industrial Era moves before leaving the Ancient Era.

I was in the mood for some MoO this morning (it's been a few months) and started up a large galaxy on Hard as the Meklar. I was expecting a decent challenge (I am not the greatest player) with the computer-savvy, production-boosted borgs and the initial screens looked like I would certainly get one: Psilons, Klackons, Humans, Darloks, and Sakkra as opponents -- a pretty tough pack. But MoO decided to give the game a twist, and it ended up being very un-Meklar-ish.

My computer tech was terrible: ECM I... ECM II... ECM III.... ECM IV... Ummm, I am the borgs here, right? Good at computers? BC VI was at least something different, then finally Robotic Controls V for some factory upgrades at last. Missed all the scanner techs, IRC3, and IRC4, when the Meklar are supposed to be tops at Computers.

Construction was also horrible: Improved Industrial 9... 8... 7.... 6... 5... Some options, please?

Force Fields was at least a bit better: Deflectors II... III... Planetary 5! At last, an actual choice! And something useful.

Planetology was amazingly good: Terraforming +10, Barren, Improved Eco, Terraforming +20, Inferno, Soil Enrichment, Radiated, Atmospheric, Terraforming +50...ummm, again, I am the borgs here, right? The Sakkra are the green flags over to my east.

Propulsion was also good: Range 4 and 5 (with 4 being useful on this map), Inertial Stabilizer, Sublight, Uridium Cells, Impulse Drives. Regular upgrades for range and speed plus the useful IS.

Weapons was another horror show: Hand Lasers... Anti-missile Rockets... Fusion Rifle... Not a gun, missile, or bomb in sight. Stinger missiles were available (after missing 3 generations of tech) thankfully for my defensive situation, followed by Anti-matter Torpedoes, then Scatterpack VII. Stlll no sign of a gun or bomb even with Weapon tech levels approaching 30.

I was picturing all my borgs with little beards in this weird mirror universe of Computer-poor, Planetology-strong Meklar. And pacifists by necessity since they apparently were unable to conceptualize spaceship weapons.

Fortunately for my borgs, what the MoO RNG taketh away with one hand it giveth with the other. The land draw was ridiculously lush. I was able to expand to five planets without any range or planetology tech -- didn't even open research until 2349, just busy building colony ships and factories. I grabbed 3 more worlds with range 4, then another 4 with range 5 to reach an even dozen. Controlled Inferno would open up 5 more planets (1 tundra, 2 dead, and 2 inferno), although the Darloks beat me to the tundra by 1 turn. Rich planet, too, grrrr. I managed to fit reserve tanks on a large hull with a regular colony base and grab another world just after that for my 17th planet, triggering the second population warning, and a bit later Controlled Radiated would open 4 more planets including two ultra-riches. Due to some lucky placements of no-planet stars the entire southwest quadrant plus a bit was mine without any serious warring, just a few cold war skirmishes.

With that much land I was obviously in a very strong position even despite the gaping chasms in my tech trees. There were a couple close calls in the high council since the Humans were the second largest empire, but my strong planetology tree allowed me to grow enough population to squeak through and keep the game going while my planets built out their huge factory totals. By the time the Psilons declared on me and brought in their Sakkra and Darlok allies, I had just managed to tech to Stinger missiles and rapidly built defenses strong enough to keep the invaders at bay. Some missile boats cleared a path for a coordinated invasion from 5 planets against Sssla (that forced Fusion Rifle research helped after all). From that key battle I finally obtained some Reduced Waste tech (I had been spending incredible amounts on waste clean up), a gun (mass drivers, ended up not really using it), and Personal Deflectors. The additional gropo tech was important as I began a long campaign of conquest, growing my control of the galaxy and filling my many tech holes.

I never did get a bomb upgrade, or a scanner of any kind. Certainly made figuring out where all the AI fleets were going a pain. But I used my production advantage to swarm the galaxy with Meklar ships, first with stinger missiles and later with anti-matter torpedoes. Taking out missiles bases was tough, especially once the Psilons got to 12 total shielding. But enough ships could get the job done, and swarms of transports overan world after world. I exterminated the Sakkra, had the Darloks down to one world, and the Psilons down to three...council victory in 2500. I didn't want to push for extermination victory since the Humans had remained peaceful, despite being allied at various times with all my enemies and rather unhappy wth my empire's immense size (well over half the galaxy by the end). The apes weren't very pleased about events, but they were smart enough to not want AM torpedoes raining down on their worlds.

It was an extraordinarily fun game of MoO. Not at all what I expected going in with the Meklar, but even more enjoyable because of that. I find it incredibly puzzling that no other game has managed to reproduce the unpredictability of the MoO tech system to capture that "never know what will happen" aspect of the game. Until (if?) someone does, I expect I will keep coming back to this game. And probably even after, if someone does -- MoO is just that good.

[Cyneheard]

Unpredictability.

It was an extraordinarily fun game of MoO. Not at all what I expected going in with the Meklar, but even more enjoyable because of that. I find it incredibly puzzling that no other game has managed to reproduce the unpredictability of the MoO tech system to capture that "never know what will happen" aspect of the game. Until (if?) someone does, I expect I will keep coming back to this game. And probably even after, if someone does -- MoO is just that good.

I'm as surprised as you that no one else has really tried to replicate MOO's system, but I think the "secret sauce" that makes it work is the use of multiple versions of the same tech. 9 times out of 10, missing Improved Terraforming +20 isn't a bad thing...unless you're also missing +10, +30, and +40.

MOO is an incredibly elegant game in my opinion: it was built in a world where processing power was precious, so the designers had to be very thoughtful about its systems. Case in point: the ship design system
- Because there are holes in the tech tree, miniaturization is there to mitigate the pain of building semi-obsolete ships, which is critical to game balance.
- The game's interface can only handle 6 ship types. So you can only have 6 ship types galaxy-wide: deciding when to scrap a ship design is a very interesting problem, but one that modern game designers would look at including in a new game and thinking "why do we need to do that? Our games can handle 2400 ships on the screen at the same time!"
- The lack of "one right answer" in most cases. Do I go with a Huge Invulnerable ship filled to the brim with bombs, or do I go with the swarm of 500 Medium or 5000 Small bombers?

Note: one big weakness of MOO in my opinion is that the AI is playing a fundamentally different game from the human player. On Impossible, the AI gets 100% bonuses to most things, and usually loses.
The AIs are very much at the mercy of their RNGs for ship design and other things. I wish MOO had multiplayer functionality - could you imagine the PBEM games we'd get if that worked, and you had to go up against another human with the controlled flexibility of this game?

Case in point: I just finished a Klackon/Medium/Impossible game where despite being 1st to 6 and 13 worlds, I ended up in a Final War (runaway Bulrathi - a huge break for me, as Psilons were in the game). The AI had a Fleet of Doom that I couldn't kill in time, as Scatter VII Missile Bases won't do crap to a fleet with 30 Huge Ships that can punch through my shields, and I didn't have a decent gun to go ship-to-ship with. But I could play Whack A Mole with Medium Neutronium Bombers and burn his worlds, and know that the AI wasn't going to use that fleet to methodically burn through my worlds - I'd lose a newish world every 5-10 years, but nothing I couldn't deal with. This kind of trick simply will not work against a human player. (Well, Whack-A-Mole could, but if he's got a fleet that I cannot stop, I'm so dead it's not even funny)

[haphazard1]

Very good points, Cyneheard, especially about the AI lacking a killer instinct. The MoO AI is pretty good in detecting weakness and refusing to make peace when it feels it has the advantage -- both areas many games fall down on. But the lack of persistent ruthlessness does allow a human player to survive situations where the AI should rapidly consolidate a victory by steamrolling world after world.

Of course there are other flaws: ship design being an obvious huge hole, along with not knowing how to handle speedy fleets (both yours and theirs), various other things. But overall the game does such a good job, especially when compared to so many other games, that it is easy to live with the problems and still love the game. AI is hard, and the more complex the game the harder it tends to be to build a good AI. So many games have tons of neat features and then the AI can't even use them properly, or even manage the basics sometimes.

I guess that is one factor driving many games towards MP -- let the customers provide opponents for one another. Certainly MP MoO would be a vastly different game -- so many things taken for granted against the AI would be impossible against other humans. It is interesting to think about.

Also, runaway Bulrathi? Especially against Psilons? Don't see that every day.

[haphazard1]

Started another game, this time as the Silicoids. Large galaxy, 5 opponents, hard. It has been a while since I last played the rocks...I had forogtten how different the game feels as the only non-carbon-based race. Hugely different gameplay than the usual, but still reasonably balanced -- another reason this game is a classic.

I am out to a solid start...or at least I think so. I have a bunch of planets anyway. All these lovely planets, with so very few rocks inhabiting them. Approaching 2380 and I am about to settle my 17th world, but I have no more population than the Meklar (with 5 planets) or Darlok (with 7). Only 2 of my planets are maxed out on pop, Cryslon and my third planet. Cryslon to carry the colony ship load plus occasional escorts, and the third planet because it is rich and started as size 15. Everything else still so, so empty and growing so, so slowly. New planets are lucky to get half of what I would consider "normal" seeding pop for another race, many get less because I just don't have the pop available.

If I can hold all these worlds (very questionable for a handful of them) and grow them to full strength (which will take forever) I will be amazingly powerful down the road. Lots of work ahead, with avaricious neighbors eying my planets everywhere I look. Still trying to claim more planets, too, which may be very stupid of me. But I don't want to just leave them for the AIs, especially an artifacts world to my south and what is possibly the best single planet I have ever seen: Jungle, Fertile, size 130. What an incredible gem! (Do Silicoids get the growth benefits of fertile planets? They can't create them since they can't get the soil techs, but if I find an existing one would I get the bonus?) Too bad they are both so far from Cryslon and I still have warp 1 engines.

So many games can only dream of having gameplay this good.

[Zeraan]

Those stories are exactly why I'm basing my game on MoO I, not MoO II. Randomized tech trees to spice things up is a huge part of the game. While you say that it's well balanced, the game still have its flaws:

Mrrshans and Darloks are just weak
Torpedoes and beam weapons are inferior compared to missiles of equal tech
AI bugs (retreating from a planet with bases, and other exploits)
No multiplayer (Yes, many people like to play it single-player, but imagine a multiplayer MoO I, it'd be interesting!)

After I'm done with my base game, I plan on creating a method of importing the MoO I files directly into my game so DOSBox isn't needed to play it anymore. Later I will look into adding multiplayer for both my game and MoO I. I've already started disassembling the MoO I exe files, but progress there is slow...

[haphazard1]

Those stories are exactly why I'm basing my game on MoO I, not MoO II. Randomized tech trees to spice things up is a huge part of the game. While you say that it's well balanced, the game still have its flaws:

The game is not perfect -- I don't think I claimed it was. But it is very good, especially compared to many other games. "Well balanced" is a relative measure. I am not sure perfect balance can be achieved other than by making every race identical in all ways, which is not interesting.

As for MoO II, it is also a tremendously fun game and one I return to with regularity for additional games. But it certainly mutated/evolved significantly away from its ancestor, and I enjoy it for different reasons than I enjoy MoO. They stimulate different portions of the 4X lobe of my gaming brain.

Mrrshans and Darloks are just weak

And Psilons are too strong. Yes, there are things that could be tweaked and adjusted.

Torpedoes and beam weapons are inferior compared to missiles of equal tech

Torpedoes and beam weapons do not run out of ammo -- that is a pretty hefty advantage. The different weapon types are different, and make for interesting choices. If you calculate that you can muster enough strength with missiles to finish your opponents in 2 (or 5) rounds, then missiles may be the right choice. But what if you can't guarantee to finish things in a short fight, or your opponent has anti-missile specials, etc.? And of course maybe you don't have the equivalent missile tech available. I have been quite glad to have beams and torpedoes on my ships at times, and have been quite successful with them.

AI bugs (retreating from a planet with bases, and other exploits)

A lot of this is more a matter of the game not having ongoing support/development. Obvious bugs like the negative fleet bug, etc., could be patched. But exploits and balance tweaking really need an ongoing development effort after a game is launched and the player community can provide feedback. What exactly is an exploit can also vary a lot, as personal opinion is involved.

It is also important to keep game balance/difficulty in mind if the AI is modified and improved. Give the MoO AI a true killer instrinct, and Impossible would become truly impossible as the boosted AIs overrun the human played with ease before 2350 in 99% of all games. Even Hard would become an extraordinary challenge, probably considerably tougher than the current Impossible difficulty.

No multiplayer (Yes, many people like to play it single-player, but imagine a multiplayer MoO I, it'd be interesting!)

Interesting to those who enjoy MP, utterly pointless to those who do not. SP and MP are very different things even for the same game, and many people prefer one over the other just because it is SP (or MP) regardless of how well done each form of the game may be. Balancing a game to SP or to MP can wreck the balance of the other form, if not handled very carefully.

After I'm done with my base game, I plan on creating a method of importing the MoO I files directly into my game so DOSBox isn't needed to play it anymore. Later I will look into adding multiplayer for both my game and MoO I. I've already started disassembling the MoO I exe files, but progress there is slow...

Your project sounds very interesting. Good luck!

[Cyneheard]

I would argue that MOO is not balanced, but because the challenges and advantages of an individual game (tech options, map friendliness, civ bonus) vary so greatly, limited balance is not an insurmountable problem; something will always be not-right in a MOO game.

In Civ IV, tech options are fixed, and the map is reasonably balanced - your power level is much more consistent. That makes balance issues more obvious and more problematic, as there are fewer levers to counteract a power disparity.

[Sullla]

Master of Orion has better balance than 95% of the strategy games I've ever played, and it came out in 1994 from a small development studio in an age where there was no Internet worth mentioning. I think the game is nothing short of incredible.

[Zeraan]

You have some good points there. I'll concede them to you

Something that's on my mind about balance in MoO I: One big problem in 4X games (especially MoO I) lies in technologies. Instead of having technologies solve different problems, they're basically a few main groups but with different levels. For example:

Laser Cannon - 1-4 damage (can't recall exact numbers ATM)
Death Ray - 100-200 damage

The only differences between them are size, cost and damage, but they perform the same function, shooting one ship. Granted, having many small ships would make lasers worthwhile as the damage isn't lumped together, but you get the idea.

Why can't the technologies do different things, instead of replacing another technology? Sure, it's nice to have options between No Computer to Computer X, but it's like in RPG's, Iron, Steel, or Durasteel Armor for your character, but some options are limited by your class and weight limit.

People who have higher levels of technologies easily wipe the floor with those who have inferior technologies. In real world, this isn't the case. "Higher" level technologies often have serious drawbacks. For example, Americans could have destroyed Japan with atomic bombs, leaving nobody alive. But the drawbacks include environment damage, radioactive fallout, crimes of genocide, etc, and they prevented Americans from dropping more than two. Also, in real world, if USA decide that it want to attack Mexico, it can easily do so in terms of technology and manpower, but the world at large will condemn USA, and impose sanctions and other undesired side effects of the action.

In MoO I, you get no such penalties other than a war directly with the empire you're attacking or destroying. Committing xenocide don't even raise anyone's eyebrows (or equivalents thereof) unless they're allies with that empire you just massacred. So you're encouraged to annihilate everyone, and there's no drawbacks to using death rays. So it don't really feel like you're leading an empire, but more of military bases scattered across the galaxy, and no civilians (Even population on a planet get involved in ground combat!)

Wait, I forgot the biological weapons, but that's weak because the only side effect of using biological weapons are disapproval from others. There's no environment damage, no lingering sickness for your people if they colonize, etc.

If in real life, a country totally destroyed another country's city with bombs, troops, etc., it don't matter the method, what's important is that everyone in the city is killed, whether or not the buildings are intact. Same should be said of planets in an empire.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Most 4X games lean heavily towards eXtermination aspect, and touch lightly on other three X's. I'd like to see a game where the four is balanced. And where technologies play an important aspect, but not overpowered in that a technologically inclined race dominate others. A musket can still kill people, just not as efficiently as a modern rifle. We've been using the same physics for ballistic weapons for over a hundred years now (a barrel, a form of explosion, and a bullet makes it all work). Why isn't it like that in 4X games? In 30 turns, an empire discovers a new weapon, then repeats the same process in another 30 years. Why not instead of those gigantic leaps over short time, we instead "refine" and add options to our existing weapons. For example, machine gun, assault rifle, chain gun, lever-action rifles, shotgun, pistol, submachine guns, etc, all use the same concept, but operates differently.

With that approach, it'd just give the technologically inclined races more options to handle different situations better, but not in an overwhelming way. Production and economy should be king here. Alright, I'll stop here

[haphazard1]

Zeraan, I think in MoO that many of the duplicative and seemingly redundant technologies exist as part of the radomized tech tree mechanic. Since many techs will be randomly taken out of the tree when a new game is started, there has to be a lot of duplication so that the player can still have a shot at that type of technology.

There is also a lot of duplication but with incremental improvements -- Reduced Waste 80/60/40/20, Improved Industrial Tech 9/8/7/6/etc., Lasers/Ion/Fusion/etc. beams, Nuclear/Hyper-V/Hyper-X/Merculite/Stinger/etc. missiles, the armor techs, Terraforming +whatever, and so forth. These are also partly for the randomized tree mechanic, but they are also about allowing progression in the game. One tech rarely ever completely "solves" a problem; instead you get progressively better partial solutions. This allows for the player to gain a feeling of progress in the game as their weapons get stronger, planets get more pop and factories, ships get tougher, etc. Consider the Civ IV BTS tech which has Sid reading (rather than Nimoy): "What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, and that resistance is being overcome." Incremental techs are a reward mechanism for the player at least as much as they are a game mechanic.

The incremental techs also provide choices for the player, as you must evaluate which of your options will provide the best payoff given current circumstances. A new Improved Industrial Tech option could be of little value if you just finished one, or of high value if your tree has lacked the last three chances at IIT. And maybe you are worried about a neighbor amassing a big fleet and decide to stop research in this tree at all so you can push for a new missile tech. Choices, choices indeed.

As for higher tech levels enabling one empire to destroy another...well, historically that has generally been the case unless the lower-tech empire has a lot more people/economy. And sometimes even then tech dominates if the gap is severe enough -- Europe vs the New World comes to mind. (I expect that a history expert like Sullla could provide quite a few more examples.) But I think the real reason this applies in games is because it works as a game mechanic: if you can acquire the advanced tech, it gives you an advantage. Otherwise why would anyone bother?

Technological dominance usually flows from economic dominance anyway in the 4X genre, as your empire must have a decent economy to perform the research and then build useful quantities of military using the new options. It is rare for any option other than focusing on your core economy to prove better than pumping growth and production, although of course there are always special circumstances -- usually existential threats of some kind. But even with these mastery of a game system usually involves learning to balance growth and economy with whatever is needed to deal with threats, with the best players being the ones who can fend off losses/destruction while still keeping at least some growth going.

Anyway, now I am the one rambling. To summarize, I feel that 4X games should reward players for doing the hard work of growing/developing/teching -- if effort is not rewarded with increasing power/ability, then a game is not really a 4X game. It may be a different kind of game and quite successful in its own way, but it would not be 4X.