Hey. I've never played a 4x game before. I've come to own both MoO 1+2, Master of Magic and Alpha Centauri. I was wondering what your recommendations for playing these games are. Is there a reason to play MoM when you have MoO? Are they sufficiently different? And how different is Centauri from MoO, except for the fact that it has tile-based ground view?
I just want your personal opinion, it's an open question of course. I am fine with similar games, but not when they are so similar that it just feels like you need to slightly tweak your strategy in between games.

MoO1 and MoM are definitely different enough. Personally I enjoyed MoO more than MoM. I guess me playing the Age of Wonders games first spoilt MoM for me.
Haven't played the others yet.

Oh, I just used a big thread on the Codex of you playing MoO 2 for the first time while researching this ^^

TBH, there's more similarity between Master of Magic and Alpha Centauri in terms of style/appearance since they're both tile-based Civ-like games focused on a single world-map (the Arcanus/Myrror divide in MoM is essentially just two halves of the same map). Neither of the Master of Orion games follow that model.

The theme and the particulars of gameplay between MoM and AC are completely different, of course - but the differences between either of them and the MoO games are much larger.

So you consider MoM and SMAC sufficiently different games? What of SMAC if preceded by playiong MoO?
But it looks like I'll be playing all three. I think I'll start with MoO. It's atmosphere has captivated me :)

MoM and AC are completely different games apart from the common use of a Civ-like tile-based map structure.

AC doesn't really have any conceptual relation to the others. MoM has some easter egg-style references to MoO and vice versa, but they're unrelated in terms of gameplay.

Thanks.