Master of Orion 1+2

Not many come along like this. I had this game back when it first came out and it ate up a lot of my time. It is very addictive and the replay value is great. It can be tedious at times taking care of all of your planets and making sure they are working efficiently, but that is a minor issue compared to everything it does right. If you like turn based games this is one of the best.

The "Keep Aspect Ratio" option under Win7 is made unusable with nVidia or Intel drivers for LCD monitors including HDCP filters to limit users. This seems to be due to the HDCP crippling of hardware that has the side effect of crippling game aspect ratios. One solution is to use an AMD/ATI video card, which has a work-around: Set video to a resolution less than the display native value. This allows setting up the fixed aspect ratio, which is then retained when native display resolution is restored. Another solution is to dual-boot to Linux (I use Mint 13). Proprietary nVidia drivers under Linux allow the original aspect ratio to be retained. I corrected slightly-choppy sound by raising what appears to be the sound sampling rate in dosboxMOO1.conf (from 22050 to 32050). As for my MOO1 rating, my effort above should show how highly I value getting it to run correctly. I preferred playing it to finishing Skyrim, and may play another game before returning. MOO1 construction and play is a work of art by any standard, which is amazing for a 19-year-old game.

MOO 1 was and is incredible. There are several major game changing concepts that I have never seen implemented so well in any game using more than 640kb of memory. 1. Spies can frame and therefore push competing empires into wars against each other. 2. A diplomatic system that is amazingly deep. 3. A wonderful and balanced variety of races with deep affinities or distrust for other races which affects diplomacy, and definite racial advantages and disadvantages. None of them feels over powered 4. No Techs are ever guaranteed. At the start of a game there is a random tech tree assigned to you. This means you must spy or trade for unknown Techs or NEVER have them. 5. An amazing but not overwhelming set of tech trees rarely seen in other games. Make Stargates to rapidly respond to threats. Deep space scanners can warn you of invasions well in advance. Biological weapons to annihilate populations (BIG political hit). Different terraforming tech to enable you to make colonies on, and change planets you discover 6. Built in shrinking of, and obsolescence of, older tech. Just like the real world. 7. Stars of different ages yield different chances of mineral rich or hospitable planets just like the real universe 8. The random events like pirates, weird alien life forms, and the Global News service adds a lot of unexpected challenges. 9. You can REJECT the diplomatic victor and end up being the pariah state of the universe, and then go on to defend against, and finally conquer the rest of the galaxy by force. It is well worth playing. Read the manual. It is fantastic and deep.

I remember playing it as a kid, and it was hard, both part 1 and 2. Played it recently, and it was still decently challenging on highest difficulty level. More so 1 than 2, but luckily part 2 can be played with a -10 picks race, making it a good challenge. Graphics are appropriate for its age, but it is about strategy and atmosphere more so than graphics.

While not the first 4X space game to launch (a nod to Reach for the Stars back in 1983), Master of Orion was the first game to solidly put that genre on the map. The first title was absolutely terrific. The game’s approach minimized the impact of micromanagement… something that most 4X games fail to achieve. The variety of races, with their unique strengths and weaknesses, including which technology fields they excel or struggle with, adds to the flavour of the game. No race can research every technology available in the game. Each game randomizes what technologies a particular race can research… which just adds to the replayability. Graphics in MoO1 are getting dated. A recent free remake of MoO1, Remnants of the Precursors, is fantastic. MoO2 added a lot of improvements. Complexity, graphics, terrific tactical combat. It also tried some things that weren’t so great. For example, planetary improvements followed the early Civilization games of building a variety of buildings that you have researched. It became a micromanagement bore whenever you try setting up new colonies in a game that’s advanced to mid/late game. The technology tree/approach is not as good as MoO1…there is no randomness in the three and the choices often fall into a cookie-cutter pattern. Overall, I still prefer MoO1 over MoO2 but both are great, legendary games.