SEIV vs. MOO3....

[Ceyan]

I've only been playing Star Empires IV for a few days now (friend let me borrow it, just ordered it this afternoon for myself), and I've been playing MOO3 (actually the reason my friend lent me SEIV after I complained to him about it since it came out.

Basically there are only two benefits MOO3 has over SEIV that I can see.

One is that in Master Of Orion 3 you can have both military and commercial build projects going on at once. One thing I've hated about all 4X games (and my biggest gripe against SEIV) is that you're dealing with planets, and somehow you can only do one build project at a time for an entire frigin planet?

Two is real-time combat. The tactical turn-based (haven't tried strategic yet) isn't bad but for ship to ship combat I get more satisfaction about trading blows in real-time over turn-based.

-------------------------------------------------

This isn't really the place to ask, but since it was part of my reply, is there any way to allow multiple build projects taking place at a time? (Feel free not to answer, I'll get around to asking it later in a new post if no one wants to divert from the subject for a sec)

[Suicide Junkie]

Talenn:
You're welcome

You will probably find the AI diplomacy a bit lacking in SE4 as well, but they are decent with brute force military, especially the modded AIs such as the TDM pack.

The Play by Email ability will really shine for you there too.
Be sure to visit www.PBW.cc as well, for automated hosting of SE4 games, and the option to upload turns through the webpage or email attachments.

[Talenn]

SJ:

Yeah, I've long since given up SE4's AI Diplomacy model. There are too many inconsistancies and not enough ways to influence it. I pretty much just treat AI players as 'Minor Powers' to all the human player's 'Great Powers'.

SE4's Diplomacy would be immeasurebly helped if they actually did what they say they would. For example, when you ask them to 'Break treaty with 'X', and they agree, they should break the darned treaty. If they dont want to break it, thats fine, but tell me to p#ss up a rope, dont agree and then not do it. The same goes for 'Attack 'x' in 'y' system'. Why have the option there at all if it doesnt do anything? I've never seen the AI taken an active role in an Alliance. Its these aspects (as well as never going back to peace once in a war) that make SE4's Diplomacy seem so bland. The first couple should be quite fixable and I'm surprised that they are still not really working after all this time.

Basically I just see the AIs as someone to trade points with and to skirmish with. They provide some initial opposition while the players maneuver to build their empires. In that role, it really doesnt bother me at all. Now that I have discovered TCP/IP playing, I cant ever go back to single-player!

PBW seems intriguing, but I dont really have the patience for a game that Lasts for months. I also play with a homegrown mod that probably wouldnt be for everyone. Besides, I'm too busy tweaking it out after every game we play, so it will never be stable enough to play a long-term game with...its just too much fun to keep fiddling with the data and whatnot!

Maybe some day I'll look into one of the PBW games.

Thanx,

Talenn

[3HattedDragon]

Originally posted by Ceyan:
One thing I've hated about all 4X games (and my biggest gripe against SEIV) is that you're dealing with planets, and somehow you can only do one build project at a time for an entire frigin planet?

I agree. It would be nice if you could do it like the research projects are done, include an option to divide production equally across all items in the queue. The ability to set the percentages for each queue slot would be even better.

[Talenn]

Cessna172 & Ceyan:

What would be the point of being able to build multiple things like that? Its almost never beneficial to do it as all you are doing is delaying the time before you get any return investment.

The only way something like that could work is if you had a diminishing returns for putting more resources into a specific project. I think MOO3 is supposed to work that way, but the feedback and documentation is so poor that I cant be sure. It looks like both queues use the same type of 'Production Points' so there is no real trade off like that.

A game would need maybe 4 'Build Slots' and they would be optimized for say, 25% of your planetary production. You could favor one slot over another by increasing the percentage of resources going to it, but it would have dimishing returns...so in order to get say, 50% of your resource going to any one slot, it might cost you 75% of your total pool for that turn.

If designed like that, I could see the point in having multiple queues, but as it stands now in SE4, dividing up your points among varying projects is never a good thing to do (much like dividing up your research projects is rarely a benefit). I suppose using the SE4 model, dividing up the points could be useful if you were building larger numbers of small items. Currently, a small ship still takes a turn to build regardless of how many Construction Points you have. If you had multiple 'slots', you could theoretically be building more than one ship at a time. But the times that this would occur would be few and far between.

Anyways, just some food for thought.

Talenn

[Ceyan]

Talenn:

What I was thinking of was some sort of division of resources you create. Say you devote a certain percentage of the planets manufacturing capability to facilities, and some to space based construction. Look at the Earth today (which is what almost all 4X (god I hate that erm) games use as a baseline), we have people who manufacture materials for buildings, and those that manufacture materials for space shuttles. The two don't mix because of differeing materials, machinery, and labor.

[ZeroAdunn]

I haven't actually played MOO3 yet, but I feel I am qualified to make prepostorous presumptuntions and outrageous claims about the games:

While the interface in MOO3 looks like it is slick and clean, it quickly gets overcrowded with adds for penis enlargement sprays.

Of course, the big new thing with MOO3 is its realtime 3D combat, unfortunately, the only ships available for the player to use are unarmed neopinto's.

Then there is the "story". The plot is contrived and boring, it consists mainly of how much god likes to see things blow up, and hence everybody should go to war, and of course there are those ancient tap dancing ferrets who are building a superweapon to turn the universe into fishnet stockings.

And of course, then there is all the poop flinging, which gets really old, and is extremely glitchy.

SEIV has none of this, and as such is a vastly inferior game.

- Reviewed by the highly uninformed Zero Adunn

[Desdinova]

regarding the problem of mulitple build ques. it is possible to get around it by using the planet to build a starbase with its own spaceyard then return the planet que to planetary building. you can then either build more spaceyards or start building ships from there. just think of the starbases as additional facilities. thus seperating military (starbases for ships) and civilian (spaceyards for planetary facilities). i realize this is just semantics but it works.