Posted April 29, 2016
OK. I've been playing MoO1 recently, but I simply cannot stand it. Every little thing has ended up annoying me to no end. The UI is really bad with the imprecise sliders, only being able to change the planet sliders in the main map (not planet screen), and being unable to disband just a single ship (rather than all of a class) just to name some of the more egregious issues. And this is sad because Civ1 and MoM have much better UIs. On top of that, the AI cheats more than I've seen in most other games, including Civ1. How is it that by the time I can have 3 planets, the AI can have 10? Diplomacy is awful (something a lot of 4X games suffer from, but this one pretty badly). Why does a non-aggression pact only apply to ships and not captured colonies, but only in favor of the AI? I've lost way too many planets this way, and it was really aggravating. Finally, the galactic council seems to artificially limit the time span of the game way too much. My last game, which was my best, I was playing as the Meklars, had a reasonable territory, but the humans had nearly 30 systems and won the council vote in 2445 (which is I believe is only 145 turns in). I hadn't even gotten past tech level 15 in anything at that point, so what's the point of the later tech levels if the game is going to force an end so soon? The thing is, is that I've tried at least a dozen games over the past week, all on "average" with a "huge" map and 5 AIs, and they've all played out rather similarly to this. I have never been able to even come close to getting a reasonable position against the AI for really dumb reasons. Compared to other 4X games, even those of the time, it feels like it's simply trying to make you lose rather than provide a reasonable difficulty, and all of this is due to excessive AI cheating.
So, apart from playing on a lower difficulty, which would indicate that the difficulty settings are broken, what am I doing wrong? I expand as quickly as I can, but I can never get a leg up on the AI. The galactic council has ended every game really quickly, and I never really have a fighting chance. I'm always behind on production and tech because I can't have as many planets as the AI, which means that if I try to focus on them, I can't have a fleet or defenses. I've tried several different strategies, and none of them turned out even remotely well. Is this normal, is there some special strategy that needs to be used in this game that is radically different than others, am I just having terrible luck, or is the game actually broken and really not that good? My experience so far makes me think that it's a broken game, even compared to other 4X games of the time.
I keep playing it, trying to like it, but I can't. I'm not trying to be overly harsh on it, but I find these to be real problems that hinder my enjoyment, and I have to believe that I'm not the only one.
So, apart from playing on a lower difficulty, which would indicate that the difficulty settings are broken, what am I doing wrong? I expand as quickly as I can, but I can never get a leg up on the AI. The galactic council has ended every game really quickly, and I never really have a fighting chance. I'm always behind on production and tech because I can't have as many planets as the AI, which means that if I try to focus on them, I can't have a fleet or defenses. I've tried several different strategies, and none of them turned out even remotely well. Is this normal, is there some special strategy that needs to be used in this game that is radically different than others, am I just having terrible luck, or is the game actually broken and really not that good? My experience so far makes me think that it's a broken game, even compared to other 4X games of the time.
I keep playing it, trying to like it, but I can't. I'm not trying to be overly harsh on it, but I find these to be real problems that hinder my enjoyment, and I have to believe that I'm not the only one.