I created a username for this site just to make this review. I'm a fan of some older games not because I'm on a 486 or anything weird, but it's because there're some good games out there and they're cheap and no worries about your hardware with these gems.
Simply put, MOO1 and MOO2 belong on your hard-drive if you think you're a 4x fan. I honestly don't know where to start. I bought MOO1 probably 15 years ago and MOO2 around the same time. I had a lot of fun with MOO1. One of the things I think it did better than MOO2 had to do with its design screen for ships. If I recall right, the selection of weapons and upgrades for ships in MOO1 was wider and less linear than in MOO2. There were probably some other things I liked about MOO1, but it has been a long time since then. I actually lost my copy of MOO1 several years ago. (Recently, I played the pre-MOO1 game that Barcia made. I think it was named Star Lords. It's an ok game, but it's not on the same level of completion as MOO1. I'd still try it if you haven't tried MOO1. Just keep in mind that MOO1 is a much better deal than it's.)
I've played MOO2 off and on for well over 10 years. In fact, I can remember playing it in 1998 while doing 8 hour shifts at a cannery. It adds a lot to the game, and removes little. Overall, it's a better game than MOO1. As I already stated, there were some things I liked better about MOO1, but MOO2 has enough on its plate that its few shortcomings can easily be forgiven. A few things off the top of my head are its improved graphics (a big bonus), the leaders (and pilots), and its customizations. There's more too. It's a rock solid game. For some reason, I keep coming back to it every 2 to 4 years and play for a few weeks stretch. It's that good. It's easy to get into, but hard to master.
As others have said, each game in MOO2 is different because of random placements of things (at the start of the game) and events that happen later from various sources, The random events (monsters, disasters, antaran attacks) can be disabled at the start of a game, but the universe will always be a new one unless you load a saved game. I'm not sure whether the races make the same choices in saved games, so cannot comment about that. I can say that I have been paying for the past couple days and there's one saved game that I keep redoing. I saved it on the first turn - 3100.1. I've lost 3 times now. The good thing is, I keep getting better results with each new attempt. It's a hard map because the psilons and sakkra are on it and also because my race customizations are not the best. But this game has a habit of keeping you coming back because you want to figure out how to win a certain setup. Maybe that's why I always come back. And that's the nice thing about MOO2 because you can customize things and new games are different.
I'm sure there're thigns that can be better about MOO2. I myself have thought of a few things. None of these are worthy of a whole new game series, but could be put into special edition patch or deluxe version. A few of my ideas are:
1) more functionality with the auto build feature so that you can have auto build profiles and can also dictate what a colony can and cannot build
2) improved graphics and resolution - perhaps even a 3d revamp, but this should retain the 2d top-down view
3) ability to rename any/all star systems at any time
4) more leaders and pilots (extra flavor)
5) A range calculator tool that allows you to measure the distance (in parsecs) between two star systems
6) Etc
All my ideas are not meant to make a new game, but to enhance the original in a way that I think is ok.
I also have Galactic Civilizations Deluxe. I haven't played Galactic Civilizations nearly as much as MOO2, so i cannot fairly make comparisons. But I will say that it's an amazing game as well. There're many things in it that you cannot find in MOO2. Some people will say MOO2 is better or that GCV 1/2 are better, but as a 4x fan you deserve to have both.
