Space Sims/Strategy Games Catch-All

Veloxi wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Endless Space feels like a shallow echo of MoO2.

Endless Space doesn't deserve to even be in the same sentence as...that other game...

So... I tweeted that I was looking for a 4X game. I finally installed Sins of a Solar Empire : Rebellion, put in 6+ hours and it's just not clicking with me. I feel like I just pump ships out, group them up and send them to slug it out planet by planet. There's no personality to it. Installed Sword of the Stars 2 and... it's interface has a "were they high when they designed this" overload. I tried the free weekend for Endless Space and while exceptionally pretty, it also felt sort of soulless.

Is there really nothing else out there on par with MoO2? I'm not a huge fan of grand strategy but I'm guessing I should look at Distant Worlds next? I'm about to start paging through the other 121 pages of this thread but I'm wondering if I should just head over to GoG and redownload MoO2.

I love DW, but be warned - it's a game that happens while you are at your PC, rather than you directing all parts a galaxy-spanning empire. Think of it as a space opera (or even a soap opera) and have a look at a couple of Youtube Let's Play series.

LockAndLoad wrote:
Veloxi wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Endless Space feels like a shallow echo of MoO2.

Endless Space doesn't deserve to even be in the same sentence as...that other game...

So... I tweeted that I was looking for a 4X game. I finally installed Sins of a Solar Empire : Rebellion, put in 6+ hours and it's just not clicking with me. I feel like I just pump ships out, group them up and send them to slug it out planet by planet. There's no personality to it. Installed Sword of the Stars 2 and... it's interface has a "were they high when they designed this" overload. I tried the free weekend for Endless Space and while exceptionally pretty, it also felt sort of soulless.

Is there really nothing else out there on par with MoO2? I'm not a huge fan of grand strategy but I'm guessing I should look at Distant Worlds next? I'm about to start paging through the other 121 pages of this thread but I'm wondering if I should just head over to GoG and redownload MoO2.

If you love MOO2, you will not find DW to be a good match. You don't play it, you watch it; it's realtime, huge, and very complex.

The 4X space is somewhat empty. There are a lot of games in approximately the same genre, but nothing that quite scratches the itch of true 4X exploration; I've enjoyed X3 a great deal, but moving from a single ship to an empire takes a long time.

GalCiv2 is OK, but rather sterile. It does come closer to capturing MOO2's general feel than Sins or DW, however.

LockAndLoad wrote:
Veloxi wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Endless Space feels like a shallow echo of MoO2.

Endless Space doesn't deserve to even be in the same sentence as...that other game...

So... I tweeted that I was looking for a 4X game. I finally installed Sins of a Solar Empire : Rebellion, put in 6+ hours and it's just not clicking with me. I feel like I just pump ships out, group them up and send them to slug it out planet by planet. There's no personality to it. Installed Sword of the Stars 2 and... it's interface has a "were they high when they designed this" overload. I tried the free weekend for Endless Space and while exceptionally pretty, it also felt sort of soulless.

Is there really nothing else out there on par with MoO2? I'm not a huge fan of grand strategy but I'm guessing I should look at Distant Worlds next? I'm about to start paging through the other 121 pages of this thread but I'm wondering if I should just head over to GoG and redownload MoO2.

Nothing is on par with MoO2, so hie thee hence to GoG.

ES is interesting but ultimately fails the replayability test. DW is a great game but is significantly different from MoO that it really doesn't scratch the same itch. Star Ruler falls into the same category as DW but without the ease of use DW has. Armada 2526 is closest in tone to the MoOs but is very bland and ultimately feels very sterile. SotS1/2 are essentially space fighting games with a some strategic stuff on top to serve as context for the fighting part. SotS2's problem is that they forgot that and tried to make it into a strategy game without knowing how and ended up with a hot glowing mess.

The problem with the space 4x genre is that it peaked early and everything else that has come after has not lived up to MoO2. I am glad people are trying, which is more than could be said for a lot of years before 2008. I try and support all the space 4x games in the hopes that if enough devs bang on enough keyboards for enough time we can get something the equal of, or superior to, MoO2.

Maybe StarDrive is it. I am not hopeful, based on history and what they are showing. Will it be fun? Probably. will it be the MoO2-replacer? Doubtful.

GalCiv2 is easily the best MOO2-like game, but it is definitely a bit dry. And you only get to watch the battles. Mechanically I love the hell out of the game.

DW is divisive, but it's the most innovative proper 4x game since Dos. I say proper because Sins is awesome, but it's an RTS through and through.

I want to like Endless Space, but it's so sterile. The names of the techs have almost nothing to do with what they actually do. There's no sense of urgency or excitement. It's depressing.

LockAndLoad: If you don't mind a 20 year jump back in graphics Aurora is very, very fun.

Learning curve is kind of steep, but several goodjers could help you through it. That thread has some good info.

Holy-moly Veloxi, how many Greenlight entries have you backed!?

Yonder wrote:

LockAndLoad: If you don't mind a 20 year jump back in graphics Aurora is very, very fun.

Learning curve is kind of steep, but several goodjers could help you through it. That thread has some good info.

Thank you! I'll check it out this weekend.

omnipherous wrote:

Holy-moly Veloxi, how many Greenlight entries have you backed!? :-D

Um...you know...a few there and there...

tboon wrote:

what made DW "click" for me was when I realized I was not playing a Master of Orion clone, I was playing Europa Universalis in Space. Ignore if that means nothing to you.

Well said.

It really makes me want to see what paradox could do with a space game.

LockAndLoad wrote:
Yonder wrote:

LockAndLoad: If you don't mind a 20 year jump back in graphics Aurora is very, very fun.

Learning curve is kind of steep, but several goodjers could help you through it. That thread has some good info.

Thank you! I'll check it out this weekend. :)

Out of all the choices you go with Aurora? Wow. Have fun learning that one.

garion333 wrote:
LockAndLoad wrote:
Yonder wrote:

LockAndLoad: If you don't mind a 20 year jump back in graphics Aurora is very, very fun.

Learning curve is kind of steep, but several goodjers could help you through it. That thread has some good info.

Thank you! I'll check it out this weekend. :)

Out of all the choices you go with Aurora? Wow. Have fun learning that one.

You leave him alone, he made the right choice!

Probably.

Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:
LockAndLoad wrote:
Yonder wrote:

LockAndLoad: If you don't mind a 20 year jump back in graphics Aurora is very, very fun.

Learning curve is kind of steep, but several goodjers could help you through it. That thread has some good info.

Thank you! I'll check it out this weekend. :)

Out of all the choices you go with Aurora? Wow. Have fun learning that one.

You leave him alone, he made the right choice!

Probably.

If he has a ton of time to kill and generally hates himself, sure.

I kind of liked Aurora. If I didn't have more of a life, I'd probably still be playing it.

Veloxi wrote:
Yonder wrote:
garion333 wrote:
LockAndLoad wrote:
Yonder wrote:

LockAndLoad: If you don't mind a 20 year jump back in graphics Aurora is very, very fun.

Learning curve is kind of steep, but several goodjers could help you through it. That thread has some good info.

Thank you! I'll check it out this weekend. :)

Out of all the choices you go with Aurora? Wow. Have fun learning that one.

You leave him alone, he made the right choice!

Probably.

If he has a ton of time to kill and generally hates himself, sure. ;)

To avoid scaring off Lock and Load, the game honestly is much more intuitive and forgiving that it appears at first blush, and it's definitely one of the most rewarding 4x games out there right now.

Robear wrote:

I kind of liked Aurora. If I didn't have more of a life, I'd probably still be playing it.

Oh god. I took one look at the Win 95 interface and got scurrrrred...

Yonder wrote:

To avoid scaring off Lock and Load, the game honestly is much more intuitive and forgiving that it appears at first blush, and it's definitely one of the most rewarding 4x games out there right now.

Translation: It's not quite as impenetrable as Dwarf Fortress.

I'm not disagreeing with the overall sentiment, but I just didn't have enough patience for the game. It's like playing a spreadsheet but for real. It's even more of a spreadsheet than Distant Worlds.

Aurora is great, stop with your misguided judgements, Garion!

As an added benefit, it makes the applications I support at work feel like they have cutting edge modern UIs, and that's really saying something. Once you get into the game though it really works fine.

Also, put another vote in for Galciv 2 being a good "modern MOO2." Nothing's really surpassed it in my book.

Is there a good 4x like game that doesn't get bogged down in combat? I prefer the building and exploration over the combat especially in the later part of the game.

Gal Civ 2 does that. Automated combat every time.

I found GalCiv2 a lot better than most of the folks here. Part of that is the sneaky AI, but a large part more was the economic model and ship and space techs. They were quite intriguing.

I really must give GalCivII a proper chance and try to get into it. Anybody have any links to a brief intro or what-have-you that would help? I guess as I get older I need much more of an interactive tutorial than I used to... That, or I just don't have the time to spend working it out sufficiently.

If you do, you must get all of the expansions up to Twilight of the Arnor, since I think ToA is where Stardock created unique tech trees and buildings for each of the factions. The way this works is dramatic, so you have to get it. In Civ V, each Civ gets 2 unique traits (units and a building or so) and a unique Leader trait. In ToA, the unique tech trees make each Civ function in a totally different way, usually by altering the economy or military in a really strange way.

An example of this is Terran Warp Bubbles. Other Civs generally have to put Warp drives on each of their ships and then fleet them up. Terrans get normal Warp drive technology but they also get Fleet Warp Bubbles. This is a really big (takes up a lot of ship space) drive that makes every ship in the fleet move at the designated warp speed, meaning you don't have to spend for or make space for drives on every ship - that's money and space that can go to weapons.

Arceans don't get much Warp Drive tech at all, and remain at really slow speeds for much of the game unless they can trade for good warp tech. They get Advanced Navigation Centers that allows them to move at normal(ish) speeds between worlds that they have already colonized. Do NOT trade Warp tech to the Arceans. What they lack in speed, they more than make up in military strength.

Iconians do not benefit from normal tech buildings as much as they do from their Precursor Libraries, which generates an insane amount of research for an early building and its listed maintenance. Problem with it is that you can only build one per colony.

GalCiv2 is OK, but rather sterile. It does come closer to capturing MOO2's general feel than Sins or DW, however.

My big complaint with GalCiv2 was that the tech tree didn't have very many transformative advances. In MOO and MOO2, the entire nature of the game would change with some of the things you could research, and MOO1's randomized techs made that extra fun. GC2 is more of a steady slog of minor improvements, and tech is typically less important than production power. Where the Orion titles were focused around technology, Galciv is focused around your economy. This makes it a bit flavorless and bland.

The AI, however, is quite good. It's surprisingly strong for a computer player.

Malor:

That's not accurate at all. It is possible to design a single ship or fleet of ships in GalCiv2 that can engage and defeat an infinite number of enemy units. This is, however, not hardcoded into any particular tech or tech relationship. You have to figure out what the AI is doing with its ships and pull a judo in tech. If you can do that, any production it can get away with is immaterial. Conversely, if your tech is outmaneuvered, no amount of production will save your planets.

In addition, Starbase placement and modules can allow Civs to put limitations on enemy unit warp speed, allowing them to overwhelm and overtake enemy planets faster than their own can be taken, without ever engaging in big fleet battles. The key to establishing these zones is warp interdiction technology.

I absolutely stand behind the bland and flavorless comment. Technology is much less important in GalCiv than it is in MOO. It's not unimportant, but it's emphasized much less.

What you're talking about is clever play, not technology. Tech in GC rarely makes much of an immediate difference. In MOO, a single tech can completely change the game. They are transformative. GC techs are largely incremental improvement; only rarely do you get game-changers.

It's bland.

As much as people complain about "giant stacks of doom" (MoO2, Civ4), IMO every attempt to eliminate them has resulted in a game that's tedious to play in a late game war scenario. Civ5 has individual non-stacking units that halt their movement if another unit happens to have ended their move on the first unit's destination. Endless Space and GalCiv2 have their infuriating "fleet size" that has you micromanaging a ton of small groups.

We may be using "technology" in different ways. There are two ways to make an invincible ship in GalCiv2. One of those ways is to make its defense so high that it's functionally indestructible. This requres that you know which weapons path the enemy is going down, and for you to research enough defense tech to render whatever firepower they can bring moot. This is a tech play. A handful of ships of the right tech can allow you to take over an entire Civ. This is as dramatic as tech play gets. No play of this type is possible in MOO2 unless the tech disparity is gross. You do not need a gross tech disparity to make an invincible ship in GalCiv2.

What you said is that the nature of the game can change with some techs in MOO2. I've played that game forward and back and side to side. I've finished the game with every race on Impossble on every galaxy size, with the exception of Psilons on the two smallest galaxy sizes, so I have some idea about what the game is about. The tech in MOO2 is flavorful and descriptive, but they don't change the game very much compared to the techs in GalCiv2. The GalCiv2 techs look blander with bland graphics and bland flavor texts and bland names, but their game mechanical effects are quite, quite dramatic.

For instance, there's a tech that allows you to equip your Military Starbases with modules that improve ship movement. Suddenly, your largely immobile Arcean fleet that everybody assumed would never make it anywhere without being obvious about it is going to the other end of the galaxy in a few turns. One turn later, a Civ is gone and the Arcean empire is twice as big as it was before. This is the effect of a Starbase improvement that doesn't improve firepower one bit. It improves movement!

Nearly every iteration of beam weapon in MOO2 has a "special" that it does in addition to its main function, but those specials are situational. For the most part, a Graviton Beam is really an upgraded Neutron Blaster. A Phasor is really a better Graviton Beam. GalCiv2 does away with the flavor bits, but the balance of weapons vs. defenses in GalCiv2 is more interesting.

Econ is similarly more interesting, but I've gone at enough length.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

As much as people complain about "giant stacks of doom" (MoO2, Civ4), IMO every attempt to eliminate them has resulted in a game that's tedious to play in a late game war scenario. Civ5 has individual non-stacking units that halt their movement if another unit happens to have ended their move on the first unit's destination. Endless Space and GalCiv2 have their infuriating "fleet size" that has you micromanaging a ton of small groups.

I typically have 5 ship types in GalCiv2 in the end game. Two of those are for invasion. Of the two, one is used for actual attacking. It involves one ship, and it always wins. It is the other kind of invincible ship - the type that always goes first and always kills the enemy fleet in one shot. I need about 5 of these ships at any one time, since they never die and always win.

Late game invasions in Civ V are... ...played differently. Typically, you should be able to end a war in one turn, three turns at the latest. If you can't do that, you have no business declaring war. If you're defending, all you need are a bunch of artillery, or nuclear defense and a bajillion aircraft. Because of the way tiles work in Civ V, the outside size of any land-based army in a warfront is about 10 units. Unit placement is part of the game. This is far, far less tedious than the 100+ size Stacks of Doom in Civ IV.

Whoa whoa whoa, this is what happens when I leave for a while? Y'all talk about how "good" GalCivII is? I'm disappointed, folks, VERY disappointed.