8 ms·

Master of Orion

182 points by simonebrunozzi 5y ago

hyperpl 5y ago
Probably my favorite 4X game ever made. Been playing as the Darloks for the past 6 months on Impossible but looking to switch to another fun race to play. Any suggestions?
- i_like_apis 5y ago
  I remember playing this as a kid. It was always Psilons for tech dominance, or Klackon for overwhelming population. I think I was on a Macintosh Classic II. I miss the 90’s.
- dingleberry 5y ago
  darlocks can be fun tho, you can win without having any fleet. just spy, sabotage missile bases to 0 and then send troops.
  - Dwedit 5y ago
    Their ships still shoot down your troops. Then you get bombed into nonexistence. Trying to take a planet without a fleet there won't end very well.
    - billyhoffman 5y ago
      Get Transports Teleporters, and your troops have a 50% change to bypass the ships in orbit. If its late game, the planet you take should have high population and production, so it can build a bunch of missile bases on the turn after you take the planet.
- chem83 5y ago
  Meklons were fun for the added production boost. Felt like playing with the Borg. My experience is from playing more MOO2 than MOO1, though. Playing with a custom race was also fun.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  The cat-people are the hardest. They have no significant racial traits.
christkv 5y ago
Master of Magic another cult 4X game is also getting a remake soon https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623070/Master_of_Magic/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623070/Master_of_Magic/
- hyperpl 5y ago
  If MOO1 is my favorite game, this is my 3rd (2nd is HoMM3). Thanks for posting this. Looking forward to purchasing and playing it.
- corysama 5y ago
  In the mean time, the original Master of Magic recently had a huge overhaul with a native Windows build and major content updates https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557960/Master_of_Magic_Caster_of_Magic_for_Windows/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557960/Master_of_Magic_C...
  - christkv 5y ago
    Same company doing the remake it seems, will have to check it out for nostalgia :)
- antisthenes 5y ago
  Age of Wonders series is also excellent, mechanically based mostly on Master of Magic. Shadow Magic in particular is probably the best game in the series and also a cult classic.
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  I loved the original MoM, and then years ago played the heavily modded and customized "Caster of Magic" version, created by a Japanese programmer. I am not too excited about the remake. It will be more polished, but the AI will be terrible and the game will be less fun than the original. It's a pity that with a large budget and 20+ years of tech evolution, game studios still have a hard time matching the fun of the original game.
Arrath 5y ago
I came of age just a hair late, and cut my teeth on the ambitious but disastrous MoO 3. What a disappointment that was.
rzwitserloot 5y ago
There is an excellent remake (with an active modding community and real tricky AIs if you want to enable them) available; open source, no less! Remnants of the Ancients: https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of-the-precursors https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of-the-precursors
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  How true to the original is it?
  - Dwedit 5y ago
    It tries to stick very close to the original game, but I noticed that when you capture a planet, you don't keep the factories.
- hyperpl 5y ago
  I believe I tried this a year or 2 ago but I've always favored https://gitlab.com/Tapani_/1oom https://gitlab.com/Tapani_/1oom as I feel it delivers the closest experience to the original - also I prefer the old pixel graphics.
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  Merci; Purchased, we'll see how it fares :-> (though I've historically been more of a Moo2 / MOOII fan :)
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Remnants is a lot of fun. Of course, like frogcomposband, I find it a lot more fun when I figure out how to attach a debugger and the source code and hack the underlying values... Size 1000 homeworld that is both Ultra Rich and Artifacts? Add 40 technologies to be discovered upon entering a system? Set your empire reserve to 99,999,999? Remnants is such an impressive work of love though. The artwork in ROTP alone is worth the download. Strangely, as a java programmer I've done far more custom code modifications to the frogcomposband (C code) fork. It is a guilty pleasure with open source games hacking their code to do fun things. Also strangely, it was easier to compile frogcomposband than RotP.
deleted 5y ago
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rhn_mk1 5y ago
It's an amazing game, but it also shows how useful modern UI affordances are. A star system for scroll wheel support.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I wonder if you could map scroll wheel to arrow keys in dos box.
thriftwy 5y ago
Civilization, Master of Orion, Master of Magic and Alpha Centauri are the four 4X gems. Unfortunately they don't seem to make those anymore.
- zem 5y ago
  stellaris is a pretty good recentish one. it has the same quality that the article called out in civ, which is that you're playing a story as much as a game, and deriving enjoyment from both aspects.
- Arrath 5y ago
  SMAC is one of my all time favorites, and I still have an install directory I move around from computer to computer to play now and then. As another commenter said, Stellaris is a great newer one. A bit rough on initial launch, but well shaped up after patches and dlc. The Endless X series is another one, but personally they never clicked for me, feeling oddly soulless and empty.
- chem83 5y ago
  I thought MOO: Conquer the Stars was a very fair/faithful remake. It's more of the same, though.
  - simonebrunozzi 5y ago
    Nah. I tried it once and was disappointed. It was unfinished, and barely a copy. Better graphics and sound, sure, but nothing else. If I recall correctly, the tactical combat system was real-time, instead of turns, and it had flaws. There was a community patch as some point that fixed some of the issues.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  Yes they do. The Civ series is still ongoing, Galciv and Stellaris have taken over for MOO, Distant Worlds came out this year. Only Master of Magic doesn't get the same kind of love as Civ and MOO. There's even a darned good FOSS implementation of Civ5 called "Unciv" that I got extremely addicted to.
ThePhysicist 5y ago
Ascendancy is my favorite classic 4X, still have the CD version and sometimes fire it up in DOSBOX.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  Ascendancy is an example of how gameplay limitations ruin the game experience. In Master of Orion I you could have huge fleets of warships roaming through the space. In Master of Orion II (significantly less successful if you ask me) there were a mechanics of "control" or smth along these lines, which limited you from having a large number of large warships by ramping up upkeep. I guess you could live with that. Ascendancy is nice, but: You can only have N+1 ships, where N is number of your planets. This means you need to spend 90% of time developing planets (pushing "next building") with no ways to utilize your industrial output when not building a ship replacement. Boredom of managing insignificant colonies by hand is what ruins many 4X games. It would be an understandable limitation if Ascendancy was a board game, but in a video game it's just a sign that game designers could not balance the gameplay. Otherwise, great game. The music and the races are awesome. Tech tree is very funny.
  - ThePhysicist 5y ago
    Hah, you can just press M (I think it was M?) to automate the management of colonies. Never managed planets by hand as it's super boring and a bit pointless as you said. In general the late game is a bit bland as the AI is not very good even with the patch they delivered, but still it's quite a fun game and the 3D view was really innovative at the time.
kadoban 5y ago
Really enjoyed this game. My real favorite is Space Empires 3 though. Anyone else? The multiplayer for that one is especially great. A few friends and I still play it to this day, it's a blast.
- frabert 5y ago
  I was never able to understand how to "git gud" at that game :( The AI always seemed to be able to outperform me on any front, and the only solution was to use ministries for everything, which turned the game into a battle between AIs
  - kadoban 5y ago
    Ah, interesting. I'd definitely recommend playing against humans if you can, I never found the computers quite as fun to play against. Which may have helped me avoid that issue, by the time I ever played against a computer they were pretty easy just because I'd played my friends a lot. If there's any big advice I'd give though, it's just definitely focus on expanding your production and planets as quickly as you can near the beginning.
seanwilson 5y ago
Are there any games like Civilization and Master of Orion where the number of units and choices in the later game don't get so overwhelming? I usually lose interest at this point but enjoy the early game. It's not the same kind of game or as grand in scale, but I really enjoyed Into the Breach because each turn you only have a limited number of choices and units each turn, and each choice feels important.
- bhelyer 5y ago
  I quite enjoyed The Battle of Polytopia -- it's a very cut down Civ style game. Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War is enjoyable too -- it's quite simplified (the space marines can only build the one city, as appropriate for a 40k game there's zero diplomacy, etc). Warlock - Master of the Arcane is a Master of Magic spiritual successor, and I found it a lot less taxing than Civilization in the late game.
- chongli 5y ago
  I usually lose interest at this point but enjoy the early game. I suffer from the same problem. I love these games. I've played Civ 1-5, Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion 2, Master of Magic; all quite extensively. Every single time I get bogged down in the late game. I automate my bases/cities/planets with all of the available automation options and then try to wrap things up as quickly as I can but it always takes longer than it should. I agree with you that the number of choices you need to make in the late game is overwhelming, and many of these choices are trivial, but there's an additional problem: you are often so far ahead of the computer AI opponents that it feels like you'd have to make some huge mistakes to give them any hope at all. It can then feel very frustrating that you're so far ahead but must still go through the whole song and dance to finish the game. What these games really need is a diplomatic option for you to demand they surrender to you completely and become a client/puppet of your empire. Furthermore, the AI should always accept this offer if they can see they have no chance at defeating you in a war.
  - pavlov 5y ago
    I feel the same way. It might be fun if the goals of the game turned upside down when you're winning. The AI players surrender and you're the newly crowned Galactic Emperor, congratulations! Everybody works for you. Now comes the second half of the game where you try to keep your empire together while it decays into bureaucracy. In a thousand years, a Hari Seldon appears and you have to decide whether to exile him...
shadowtree 5y ago
Playable in any modern browser: https://playclassic.games/games/4x-dos-games-online/play-master-of-orion-online/play/ https://playclassic.games/games/4x-dos-games-online/play-mas... Enjoy!
bombcar 5y ago
For those interested in playing MOO or MOO2 on a Modern Mac - you can use https://boxer.thec0de.com https://boxer.thec0de.com and open the App that Steam gives you with View Package Contents and find the .boxer file and run it with the modern boxer; it'll load just fine (they're all wrapped dosbox anyway). And the strategy guide mentioned is available on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/MasterOfOrionStrategyGuide https://archive.org/details/MasterOfOrionStrategyGuide
- dwighttk 5y ago
  I haven’t tried boxer since M1… does it still work?
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I don't have an M1 to try boxer on - but it works fine on Monterey on a x64 Intel, so at worst I assume it'd rosetta.
- RelentlessOpt 5y ago
  There are also MacOS releases of DosBox-X, including one for M1 (ARM64), and MOO and MOO2 work correctly on my M1 MacBook.
- chaostheory 5y ago
  You can also buy it nicely packaged from GOG
Pxtl 5y ago
TIL that the the term 4X was coined by a guy who thought > that Civilization‘s inclusion of global warming as a threat to progress and women’s suffrage as a Wonder of the World constituted some form of surrender to left-wing political correctness ... ick.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Inhibit 5y ago
AI War and the Dominions series (generally whatever release the latest one is) are my go-to for that type of engrossing gameplay.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I have once played a hot seat game of Moo2 with two friends. I had an increased production race, one friend had an improved science race, and second one had silicoids on steroids - he picked all kinds of maluses to get eating rocks and surplus birth rate. ... and he wiped the floor with both of us, silicoids are OP, please, nerf. Great games and happy memories from childhood. Moo1 was better in feel, but moo2 was better at actual gameplay.
- FredPret 5y ago
  I always found population trumps all else. So if you have modifiers like subterranean (higher max pop per planet) plus maybe a pop growth increase, you’re likely to win. Another one I always went with was to pick Repulsive (no diplomacy) since you’ll end up at war with everyone anyway.
  - nurettin 5y ago
    You can wipe the floor with everyone early using a warlord + telepathic + trans-dimensional combination. Fire missles and run around. As soon as the planetary fortress falls, the planet is yours, no invasion needed. I abused it so much that friends banned the combination from multiplayer.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      Interesting! Reminds me of a Civ 1 hack: build your cities one square apart, research until you can build chariots, then build a tidal wave of them. It’s against the spirit of the game but you can beat almost any other strategy this way.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    I liked Telepath and silicoid - you skip all food and ground-combat skills, since you take over planets with your mind! Better than the Psilon who get all tech branches - you don't even need half of them! And can do industrial development on all planets (no wasted population making food)
giantrobot 5y ago
I was always partial to Stars![0] though I did enjoy MOO. It looked a lot like a Windows productivity app so I could play it with no one being the wiser. It wasn't as deep as MOO other some other games but I enjoyed it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!
- omnibrain 5y ago
  I remember from around the same time another game in this windows "productivity" optic. Something with ships. You don't happen to know the name of that one?
  - giantrobot 5y ago
    The only other games in that vein I remember were Yoda Stories and I Indiana Jones Stories from LucasArts. Hopefully someone else knows the one you're thinking of.
    - omnibrain 5y ago
      I found it. It must have been one of the Harpoon games. Most probably "Harpoon Classic 97" https://www.mobygames.com/game/harpoon-classic-97 https://www.mobygames.com/game/harpoon-classic-97
      - giantrobot 5y ago
        I can't believe I didn't think of Harpoon, I certainly played a lot of it. So much nerdy detail. I'm glad you figured it out.
- astockwell 5y ago
  Stars!! Finally another living human who has heard of it. I remember finding the limited demo on one of those "101 games!" $1.99 CD-ROMs, and then tracked down a full version at some remote Circuit City. Still have the installer and the key, and occasionally load it up on a VM (plays fine, only needed like 32mb of RAM :P ) A great game, but another one which suffered from the burden of overwhelm in the late game stages, and was hampered by the un-expected and abrupt limitation that you could only have 255 fleets (or some such thing). I read a breakdown that the cause was due to the designers only using an 8 bit integer for the FLEET_ID, so once you had that, the game would just discard any additional fleets you made. Ahh, nostalga.
chrchang523 5y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22140337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22140337
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
My favorite win: ally with the Darlok, the reprehensible race. Share all technology with them profligately. They grow with you to be the top 2 races in the galaxy. Upon the first election nobody will vote for the Darlok (a racial characteristic - everybody hates them) so they all vote for you. Win!
beloch 5y ago
The sequel to MOO, and most 4X games made since then, have always felt inferior to me. MOO was like a game of chess. The rules were relatively simple, but complex enough to give you the "box of chocolates" games this article talks about. MOO2 bogged you down in micromanaging colony buildings, etc. and other 4X games made since have added far more complex systems. The results feels like chess where each piece now has bolted-on RPG stats that have to be individually micromanaged. The game becomes more complex, but not in an elegant way. I don't want to manage maces and chain-mail and morale. I just want to play chess! I haven't really kept up with 4X games. Are there any that have tried to get back to the basic chess of MOO instead of bolting on complications that bog you down in micromanagement?
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  I liked the micromanaging of buildings in MOO2 in the early game, but later game, when you're invading multiple planets, it definitely gets annoying. > I haven't really kept up with 4X games. Are there any that have tried to get back to the basic chess of MOO instead of bolting on complications that bog you down in micromanagement? Such a game would probably fail to achieve commercial success in today's world. It would be criticized for lack of depth.
  - gilgoomesh 5y ago
    I think there's room for commercially successful games that lack apparent depth. I think the success of match 3 mobile games is an indication that the market is out there. But it's possible that it no longer overlaps with the market of self-selected 4X gamers.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Yeah, it's a certain type of trap. At first it is something to do and some near term goal that exist there. Later when you complete everything in a turn it just becomes exercise of going through a list of actions repeated over half-a-dozen to dozens systems. Maybe games should offer some tools for this, like templates what to build and what ratios and so on. You could automatically set one of these or have custom one made for those needing more special actions.
OrvalWintermute 5y ago
The new version of Master of Orion was available for free from Wargaming https://wargaming.com/en/games/master-of-orion https://wargaming.com/en/games/master-of-orion installable via their wargaming center launcher https://na.wargaming.net/en/wgc https://na.wargaming.net/en/wgc
chem83 5y ago
Are there any noteworthy Civ1 and Civ2 remakes (other than FreeCiv)? I know about https://github.com/SWY1985/CivOne https://github.com/SWY1985/CivOne, which was supposed to recreated Civ1 in C#, but they stopped development before implementing the AI, which is always tricky to faithfully replicate without some solid/time-consuming disassembly of civ.exe. Those are two games that AFAIK haven't been re-released through the normal Steam/GoG channels. Seems like only Civ3+ are available, not sure why.
- racnid 5y ago
  What about C-evo?
katabasis 5y ago
As a kid I remember playing an old MS-DOS game that was kind of similar to MoO but may have predated it. You were in command of a new government on a resource-rich planet called Harmony and you had to steer your society through a star cluster full of intrigue and war. There was more of an over-arching narrative than something like MoO or Civilization, but much of the gameplay was similar. It had a bit of a Dune vibe. For the life of me I can't remember what this game was actually called. Does this ring a bell for anyone else? Would love to look it up again.
- SloopJon 5y ago
  I never played it, but Google turns up a game called Maelstrom that seems to fit the bill.
  - katabasis 5y ago
    Thank you! This is it. There isn't a lot of information online about this game (not even a Wikipedia article – though there is one for another 1992 game called "Maelstrom" that is unrelated). However, someone created an old-school fan website as a labor of love: http://www.overlordofharmony.com http://www.overlordofharmony.com I wonder how feasible it is to play an old DOS game like this on a modern Mac...
    - hulitu 5y ago
      Works fine in Dosbox
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
Check out Moo2Mod [0], by far the best mod for MoO2. [0]: https://moo2mod.com/ https://moo2mod.com/
dandare 5y ago
I just finished a MoO2 on Impossible this week :D (Democracy + Charismatic). It always fascinates me how Steve Barcia managed to balance so many different game mechanics, traits and science paths into a single game.

Probably my favorite 4X game ever made. Been playing as the Darloks for the past 6 months on Impossible but looking to switch to another fun race to play. Any suggestions?

i_like_apis 5y ago
I remember playing this as a kid. It was always Psilons for tech dominance, or Klackon for overwhelming population. I think I was on a Macintosh Classic II. I miss the 90’s.
dingleberry 5y ago
darlocks can be fun tho, you can win without having any fleet. just spy, sabotage missile bases to 0 and then send troops.
- Dwedit 5y ago
  Their ships still shoot down your troops. Then you get bombed into nonexistence. Trying to take a planet without a fleet there won't end very well.
  - billyhoffman 5y ago
    Get Transports Teleporters, and your troops have a 50% change to bypass the ships in orbit. If its late game, the planet you take should have high population and production, so it can build a bunch of missile bases on the turn after you take the planet.
chem83 5y ago
Meklons were fun for the added production boost. Felt like playing with the Borg. My experience is from playing more MOO2 than MOO1, though. Playing with a custom race was also fun.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
The cat-people are the hardest. They have no significant racial traits.

christkv 5y ago

Master of Magic another cult 4X game is also getting a remake soon https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623070/Master_of_Magic/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623070/Master_of_Magic/

hyperpl 5y ago
If MOO1 is my favorite game, this is my 3rd (2nd is HoMM3). Thanks for posting this. Looking forward to purchasing and playing it.
corysama 5y ago
In the mean time, the original Master of Magic recently had a huge overhaul with a native Windows build and major content updates https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557960/Master_of_Magic_Caster_of_Magic_for_Windows/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1557960/Master_of_Magic_C...
- christkv 5y ago
  Same company doing the remake it seems, will have to check it out for nostalgia :)
antisthenes 5y ago
Age of Wonders series is also excellent, mechanically based mostly on Master of Magic. Shadow Magic in particular is probably the best game in the series and also a cult classic.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
I loved the original MoM, and then years ago played the heavily modded and customized "Caster of Magic" version, created by a Japanese programmer. I am not too excited about the remake. It will be more polished, but the AI will be terrible and the game will be less fun than the original. It's a pity that with a large budget and 20+ years of tech evolution, game studios still have a hard time matching the fun of the original game.

Arrath 5y ago

I came of age just a hair late, and cut my teeth on the ambitious but disastrous MoO 3. What a disappointment that was.

rzwitserloot 5y ago

There is an excellent remake (with an active modding community and real tricky AIs if you want to enable them) available; open source, no less! Remnants of the Ancients: https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of-the-precursors https://rayfowler.itch.io/remnants-of-the-precursors

rhn_mk1 5y ago
How true to the original is it?
- Dwedit 5y ago
  It tries to stick very close to the original game, but I noticed that when you capture a planet, you don't keep the factories.
hyperpl 5y ago
I believe I tried this a year or 2 ago but I've always favored https://gitlab.com/Tapani_/1oom https://gitlab.com/Tapani_/1oom as I feel it delivers the closest experience to the original - also I prefer the old pixel graphics.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
Merci; Purchased, we'll see how it fares :-> (though I've historically been more of a Moo2 / MOOII fan :)
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Remnants is a lot of fun. Of course, like frogcomposband, I find it a lot more fun when I figure out how to attach a debugger and the source code and hack the underlying values... Size 1000 homeworld that is both Ultra Rich and Artifacts? Add 40 technologies to be discovered upon entering a system? Set your empire reserve to 99,999,999? Remnants is such an impressive work of love though. The artwork in ROTP alone is worth the download. Strangely, as a java programmer I've done far more custom code modifications to the frogcomposband (C code) fork. It is a guilty pleasure with open source games hacking their code to do fun things. Also strangely, it was easier to compile frogcomposband than RotP.

deleted 5y ago

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rhn_mk1 5y ago

It's an amazing game, but it also shows how useful modern UI affordances are. A star system for scroll wheel support.

bombcar 5y ago
I wonder if you could map scroll wheel to arrow keys in dos box.

thriftwy 5y ago

Civilization, Master of Orion, Master of Magic and Alpha Centauri are the four 4X gems. Unfortunately they don't seem to make those anymore.

zem 5y ago
stellaris is a pretty good recentish one. it has the same quality that the article called out in civ, which is that you're playing a story as much as a game, and deriving enjoyment from both aspects.
Arrath 5y ago
SMAC is one of my all time favorites, and I still have an install directory I move around from computer to computer to play now and then. As another commenter said, Stellaris is a great newer one. A bit rough on initial launch, but well shaped up after patches and dlc. The Endless X series is another one, but personally they never clicked for me, feeling oddly soulless and empty.
chem83 5y ago
I thought MOO: Conquer the Stars was a very fair/faithful remake. It's more of the same, though.
- simonebrunozzi 5y ago
  Nah. I tried it once and was disappointed. It was unfinished, and barely a copy. Better graphics and sound, sure, but nothing else. If I recall correctly, the tactical combat system was real-time, instead of turns, and it had flaws. There was a community patch as some point that fixed some of the issues.
Pxtl 5y ago
Yes they do. The Civ series is still ongoing, Galciv and Stellaris have taken over for MOO, Distant Worlds came out this year. Only Master of Magic doesn't get the same kind of love as Civ and MOO. There's even a darned good FOSS implementation of Civ5 called "Unciv" that I got extremely addicted to.

ThePhysicist 5y ago

Ascendancy is my favorite classic 4X, still have the CD version and sometimes fire it up in DOSBOX.

thriftwy 5y ago
Ascendancy is an example of how gameplay limitations ruin the game experience. In Master of Orion I you could have huge fleets of warships roaming through the space. In Master of Orion II (significantly less successful if you ask me) there were a mechanics of "control" or smth along these lines, which limited you from having a large number of large warships by ramping up upkeep. I guess you could live with that. Ascendancy is nice, but: You can only have N+1 ships, where N is number of your planets. This means you need to spend 90% of time developing planets (pushing "next building") with no ways to utilize your industrial output when not building a ship replacement. Boredom of managing insignificant colonies by hand is what ruins many 4X games. It would be an understandable limitation if Ascendancy was a board game, but in a video game it's just a sign that game designers could not balance the gameplay. Otherwise, great game. The music and the races are awesome. Tech tree is very funny.
- ThePhysicist 5y ago
  Hah, you can just press M (I think it was M?) to automate the management of colonies. Never managed planets by hand as it's super boring and a bit pointless as you said. In general the late game is a bit bland as the AI is not very good even with the patch they delivered, but still it's quite a fun game and the 3D view was really innovative at the time.

kadoban 5y ago

Really enjoyed this game. My real favorite is Space Empires 3 though. Anyone else? The multiplayer for that one is especially great. A few friends and I still play it to this day, it's a blast.

frabert 5y ago
I was never able to understand how to "git gud" at that game :( The AI always seemed to be able to outperform me on any front, and the only solution was to use ministries for everything, which turned the game into a battle between AIs
- kadoban 5y ago
  Ah, interesting. I'd definitely recommend playing against humans if you can, I never found the computers quite as fun to play against. Which may have helped me avoid that issue, by the time I ever played against a computer they were pretty easy just because I'd played my friends a lot. If there's any big advice I'd give though, it's just definitely focus on expanding your production and planets as quickly as you can near the beginning.

seanwilson 5y ago

Are there any games like Civilization and Master of Orion where the number of units and choices in the later game don't get so overwhelming? I usually lose interest at this point but enjoy the early game. It's not the same kind of game or as grand in scale, but I really enjoyed Into the Breach because each turn you only have a limited number of choices and units each turn, and each choice feels important.

bhelyer 5y ago
I quite enjoyed The Battle of Polytopia -- it's a very cut down Civ style game. Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War is enjoyable too -- it's quite simplified (the space marines can only build the one city, as appropriate for a 40k game there's zero diplomacy, etc). Warlock - Master of the Arcane is a Master of Magic spiritual successor, and I found it a lot less taxing than Civilization in the late game.
chongli 5y ago
I usually lose interest at this point but enjoy the early game. I suffer from the same problem. I love these games. I've played Civ 1-5, Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion 2, Master of Magic; all quite extensively. Every single time I get bogged down in the late game. I automate my bases/cities/planets with all of the available automation options and then try to wrap things up as quickly as I can but it always takes longer than it should. I agree with you that the number of choices you need to make in the late game is overwhelming, and many of these choices are trivial, but there's an additional problem: you are often so far ahead of the computer AI opponents that it feels like you'd have to make some huge mistakes to give them any hope at all. It can then feel very frustrating that you're so far ahead but must still go through the whole song and dance to finish the game. What these games really need is a diplomatic option for you to demand they surrender to you completely and become a client/puppet of your empire. Furthermore, the AI should always accept this offer if they can see they have no chance at defeating you in a war.
- pavlov 5y ago
  I feel the same way. It might be fun if the goals of the game turned upside down when you're winning. The AI players surrender and you're the newly crowned Galactic Emperor, congratulations! Everybody works for you. Now comes the second half of the game where you try to keep your empire together while it decays into bureaucracy. In a thousand years, a Hari Seldon appears and you have to decide whether to exile him...

shadowtree 5y ago

Playable in any modern browser: https://playclassic.games/games/4x-dos-games-online/play-master-of-orion-online/play/ https://playclassic.games/games/4x-dos-games-online/play-mas... Enjoy!

bombcar 5y ago

For those interested in playing MOO or MOO2 on a Modern Mac - you can use https://boxer.thec0de.com https://boxer.thec0de.com and open the App that Steam gives you with View Package Contents and find the .boxer file and run it with the modern boxer; it'll load just fine (they're all wrapped dosbox anyway). And the strategy guide mentioned is available on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/MasterOfOrionStrategyGuide https://archive.org/details/MasterOfOrionStrategyGuide

dwighttk 5y ago
I haven’t tried boxer since M1… does it still work?
- bombcar 5y ago
  I don't have an M1 to try boxer on - but it works fine on Monterey on a x64 Intel, so at worst I assume it'd rosetta.
RelentlessOpt 5y ago
There are also MacOS releases of DosBox-X, including one for M1 (ARM64), and MOO and MOO2 work correctly on my M1 MacBook.
chaostheory 5y ago
You can also buy it nicely packaged from GOG

Pxtl 5y ago

TIL that the the term 4X was coined by a guy who thought > that Civilization‘s inclusion of global warming as a threat to progress and women’s suffrage as a Wonder of the World constituted some form of surrender to left-wing political correctness ... ick.

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Inhibit 5y ago

AI War and the Dominions series (generally whatever release the latest one is) are my go-to for that type of engrossing gameplay.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I have once played a hot seat game of Moo2 with two friends. I had an increased production race, one friend had an improved science race, and second one had silicoids on steroids - he picked all kinds of maluses to get eating rocks and surplus birth rate. ... and he wiped the floor with both of us, silicoids are OP, please, nerf. Great games and happy memories from childhood. Moo1 was better in feel, but moo2 was better at actual gameplay.

FredPret 5y ago
I always found population trumps all else. So if you have modifiers like subterranean (higher max pop per planet) plus maybe a pop growth increase, you’re likely to win. Another one I always went with was to pick Repulsive (no diplomacy) since you’ll end up at war with everyone anyway.
- nurettin 5y ago
  You can wipe the floor with everyone early using a warlord + telepathic + trans-dimensional combination. Fire missles and run around. As soon as the planetary fortress falls, the planet is yours, no invasion needed. I abused it so much that friends banned the combination from multiplayer.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Interesting! Reminds me of a Civ 1 hack: build your cities one square apart, research until you can build chariots, then build a tidal wave of them. It’s against the spirit of the game but you can beat almost any other strategy this way.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  I liked Telepath and silicoid - you skip all food and ground-combat skills, since you take over planets with your mind! Better than the Psilon who get all tech branches - you don't even need half of them! And can do industrial development on all planets (no wasted population making food)

giantrobot 5y ago

I was always partial to Stars![0] though I did enjoy MOO. It looked a lot like a Windows productivity app so I could play it with no one being the wiser. It wasn't as deep as MOO other some other games but I enjoyed it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stars!

omnibrain 5y ago
I remember from around the same time another game in this windows "productivity" optic. Something with ships. You don't happen to know the name of that one?
- giantrobot 5y ago
  The only other games in that vein I remember were Yoda Stories and I Indiana Jones Stories from LucasArts. Hopefully someone else knows the one you're thinking of.
  - omnibrain 5y ago
    I found it. It must have been one of the Harpoon games. Most probably "Harpoon Classic 97" https://www.mobygames.com/game/harpoon-classic-97 https://www.mobygames.com/game/harpoon-classic-97
    - giantrobot 5y ago
      I can't believe I didn't think of Harpoon, I certainly played a lot of it. So much nerdy detail. I'm glad you figured it out.
astockwell 5y ago
Stars!! Finally another living human who has heard of it. I remember finding the limited demo on one of those "101 games!" $1.99 CD-ROMs, and then tracked down a full version at some remote Circuit City. Still have the installer and the key, and occasionally load it up on a VM (plays fine, only needed like 32mb of RAM :P ) A great game, but another one which suffered from the burden of overwhelm in the late game stages, and was hampered by the un-expected and abrupt limitation that you could only have 255 fleets (or some such thing). I read a breakdown that the cause was due to the designers only using an 8 bit integer for the FLEET_ID, so once you had that, the game would just discard any additional fleets you made. Ahh, nostalga.

chrchang523 5y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22140337 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22140337

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

My favorite win: ally with the Darlok, the reprehensible race. Share all technology with them profligately. They grow with you to be the top 2 races in the galaxy. Upon the first election nobody will vote for the Darlok (a racial characteristic - everybody hates them) so they all vote for you. Win!

beloch 5y ago

The sequel to MOO, and most 4X games made since then, have always felt inferior to me. MOO was like a game of chess. The rules were relatively simple, but complex enough to give you the "box of chocolates" games this article talks about. MOO2 bogged you down in micromanaging colony buildings, etc. and other 4X games made since have added far more complex systems. The results feels like chess where each piece now has bolted-on RPG stats that have to be individually micromanaged. The game becomes more complex, but not in an elegant way. I don't want to manage maces and chain-mail and morale. I just want to play chess! I haven't really kept up with 4X games. Are there any that have tried to get back to the basic chess of MOO instead of bolting on complications that bog you down in micromanagement?

Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
I liked the micromanaging of buildings in MOO2 in the early game, but later game, when you're invading multiple planets, it definitely gets annoying. > I haven't really kept up with 4X games. Are there any that have tried to get back to the basic chess of MOO instead of bolting on complications that bog you down in micromanagement? Such a game would probably fail to achieve commercial success in today's world. It would be criticized for lack of depth.
- gilgoomesh 5y ago
  I think there's room for commercially successful games that lack apparent depth. I think the success of match 3 mobile games is an indication that the market is out there. But it's possible that it no longer overlaps with the market of self-selected 4X gamers.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Yeah, it's a certain type of trap. At first it is something to do and some near term goal that exist there. Later when you complete everything in a turn it just becomes exercise of going through a list of actions repeated over half-a-dozen to dozens systems. Maybe games should offer some tools for this, like templates what to build and what ratios and so on. You could automatically set one of these or have custom one made for those needing more special actions.

OrvalWintermute 5y ago

The new version of Master of Orion was available for free from Wargaming https://wargaming.com/en/games/master-of-orion https://wargaming.com/en/games/master-of-orion installable via their wargaming center launcher https://na.wargaming.net/en/wgc https://na.wargaming.net/en/wgc

chem83 5y ago

Are there any noteworthy Civ1 and Civ2 remakes (other than FreeCiv)? I know about https://github.com/SWY1985/CivOne https://github.com/SWY1985/CivOne, which was supposed to recreated Civ1 in C#, but they stopped development before implementing the AI, which is always tricky to faithfully replicate without some solid/time-consuming disassembly of civ.exe. Those are two games that AFAIK haven't been re-released through the normal Steam/GoG channels. Seems like only Civ3+ are available, not sure why.

racnid 5y ago
What about C-evo?

katabasis 5y ago

As a kid I remember playing an old MS-DOS game that was kind of similar to MoO but may have predated it. You were in command of a new government on a resource-rich planet called Harmony and you had to steer your society through a star cluster full of intrigue and war. There was more of an over-arching narrative than something like MoO or Civilization, but much of the gameplay was similar. It had a bit of a Dune vibe. For the life of me I can't remember what this game was actually called. Does this ring a bell for anyone else? Would love to look it up again.

SloopJon 5y ago
I never played it, but Google turns up a game called Maelstrom that seems to fit the bill.
- katabasis 5y ago
  Thank you! This is it. There isn't a lot of information online about this game (not even a Wikipedia article – though there is one for another 1992 game called "Maelstrom" that is unrelated). However, someone created an old-school fan website as a labor of love: http://www.overlordofharmony.com http://www.overlordofharmony.com I wonder how feasible it is to play an old DOS game like this on a modern Mac...
  - hulitu 5y ago
    Works fine in Dosbox

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

Check out Moo2Mod [0], by far the best mod for MoO2. [0]: https://moo2mod.com/ https://moo2mod.com/

dandare 5y ago

I just finished a MoO2 on Impossible this week :D (Democracy + Charismatic). It always fascinates me how Steve Barcia managed to balance so many different game mechanics, traits and science paths into a single game.