OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely

[djtool]

Ive had much more fun with Space Empires IV (available here from Shrapnel). I like it for alot of the same reasons as Dom2 [/QB]

yeah i've played around with the demo of se4 but just never got into it.

[FarAway Pretender]

For myself, I found Galactic Civilization extraordinary. Had a lot of the same replayability as Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri--various different ways to play and win the game which make it a lot more fun. Every bit as enjoyable for me as Master of Orion.

I'm not the crusader on machine privacy/control that a lot of you guys are, but we each choose areas of our lives to understand in more detail or less because they might or might not impact us unfairly (e.g., tax codes, local business ordinances, software copyright protection, PC system security).

As for the StarDock App, if you're fundamentally opposed to installing apps on your system, I can see that being a limitation. I myself have found the App to be perfectly reliable and nonobtrusive--the fact that StarDock doesn't make most of their money publishing games (they mostly develop GUI utilities and such, I gather) means there's less potential for commercial conflict of interest...

I think the MoM sequel would be a very cool thing. Dom2 is the best game in the genre since MoM (with Heroes 2 coming in a close second place), and is perhaps better in its own right. Sort of like comaring girlfriends from when I was 17 and when I was 32? The things that I loved most about MoM:

1) Random sites populated with varying levels of evil nasties that would occasionally go rampaging out in my kingdom.

2) Developing those Heroes to "Legendary status". You can do it in Dom, but it relies more on a lucky break for your Heroic bonus and loading him up with the right magic items, as opposed to growing and nurturing a Hero's skills. Maybe I'm just too slow, but I regret building a Dom Hero up over 20 turns and then having him die in one silly battle because I forgot to change his orders.

3) Finding those distant, mouth-watering city spots early in the game, and spending 20 turns extending my "sphere of control/stability" so I could colonize it and bring the resources Online.

4) Having different cities produce different types of value. Some city sites were great research centers, others were awesome troop factories (yeah, Adamantium!), others were all about income, and many were just thriving metropolis sites. Valuing different city sites differently for different sides was also fun (e.g., Dwarves love gold-rich cities and don't care so much about cities with huge hind-end population limits because they grow slowly).

[ July 17, 2004, 17:44: Message edited by: FarAway Pretender ]

[Taqwus]

Played GalCiv. Eventually got turned off by the crash bugs, the slow beginning of the game, the AI knowing all the yellow stars, the inevitable waste due to empire-wide sliders, the asymmetrical diplomacy (e.g. AI's discriminated against players in willingness to trade tech, IIRC), and the minors starting with loads of cash.

Played SEIV for quite a longer time; that's actually when I registered for this board. Had more fun with it, and with the intricate ship design (not unusual for me to end up with double-digit numbers of non-obsolete ship/item classes... heavy-cannon ships, fire-every-turn ships, fast/heavy invasion transports, biowarfare ships, warpships, carriers, recon ships, recon sats, defense sats, point-defense ships, repair/shipyard ships, missile ships, pro/anti-mine ships, cloaked deep-penetration raiding ships, capture ships, fast/heavy colony killers, and the occasional cloaked star destroyer). And with the ability to augment the tech tree, even more fun. I eventually stopped after the level of micro got to me (e.g. keeping a notepad indicating which colonies needed atmosphere converters, which colonies were next in line for conVersion from M/O/R resource items to Monolith IIIs, which systems needed system-wide computers etc).

[major^3]

For thos ppl talking about JA2 etc etc...

There is a game called Silent Storm by Nival/JoWood which is TBS in the vein of JA2, and whereas not as good, it is pretty close and the graphics are amazing.

With a few tweaks to the engine, it could be a great place to base JA3 on.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by major^3:
With a few tweaks to the engine, it could be a great place to base JA3 on.

Alas, the utterly brilliant folks at Strategy First (an oxymoron of a name to call themselves given their behavior) have elected to go with a different development outfit, and one that has a lousy product record to boot.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Arryn:

quote:

---

Originally posted by major^3:
With a few tweaks to the engine, it could be a great place to base JA3 on.

Alas, the utterly brilliant folks at Strategy First (an oxymoron of a name to call themselves given their behavior) have elected to go with a different development outfit, and one that has a lousy product record to boot.

---

The market is in major cutback right now. Companys going down, no new ones starting up, development crews and projects are being dropped.

I cant knock any of them for cutting costs but I do wish they would hold off of the good names rather than give them to inferior crews to try and squeeze some saving bucks out of the name.

[Arryn]

The "market" isn't in a cutback, per se. Its development resources (money, people) are being diverted away from PC games and towards console projects. What true cutbacks exist typically occur in companies that (in general) have lousy reputations to begin with, so their loss is nothing to shed tears for. Unfortunately, some of these lousy companies may own dev studios that do have good talent (Black Isle being canned by Interplay comes to mind), and that is something to cry buckets about.

With the large, loyal, and vocal JA community, it's madness for Strategy First to give the nod to an obscure (and worse, low-grade) Russian outfit when there are plenty of other shops (Russian and otherwise) with proven ability that would likely drool over the chance to work on JA3. It proves (to me at least) that SF doesn't give a damn about their customers and is only interested in doing things they can milk for money (as exemplified by the string of shoddy games SF has already put out).

EDIT: BTW, there *are* new companies popping up. However, it's mainly happening in Eastern Europe and Russia.

[ July 18, 2004, 01:13: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Blitz]

The "market" isn't in a cutback, per se. Its development resources (money, people) are being diverted away from PC games and towards console projects. What true cutbacks exist typically occur in companies that (in general) have lousy reputations to begin with, so their loss is nothing to shed tears for. Unfortunately, some of these lousy companies may own dev studios that do have good talent (Black Isle being canned by Interplay comes to mind), and that is something to cry buckets about.

And of course, piracy is much harder in the console market, requiring not only a PC, but a highspeed connection, a console, and a mod chip. Despite the studies, I think this has a lot to do with the sluggish PC sales.

As for Black Isle getting canned, it's ourrageous. Any studio that produces the finest series ever in it's genre should never face the firing squad. The same thing happened with Sirtech (JA2 was by far the best squad-based TBS, fallout notwithstanding). Looking Glass is gone, despite the masterful Thief... which was never surpassed by two sequals. But the dissolusion of Black Isle, who produced in my opinion the finest PC game that didn't have Sid Meyer's name on it is a complete disgrace. Baldur's Gate 2 hasn't been surpassed by any RPG, despite advances in technology in the 5? years since it's release. That game was a brilliant fusion of RTS and RPG with enough TBS to satisfy even a nut like myself. The depth and replayability of the game was incredible... save for dynamic worlds like Everquest and UO, no game has held my attention for anywhere near as long... except perhaps the Civilization and Master of Orion series.

[ July 18, 2004, 01:28: Message edited by: Blitz ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Blitz:
[QB]Baldur's Gate 2 hasn't been surpassed by any RPG, despite advances in technology in the 5? years since it's release.[/QB}

I thought you were going to talk about Fallout, since Black Isle developed that series. Baldur's Gate II was a Bioware product, and Bioware is still a very financially healthy developer located here in Edmonton.

[Blitz]

Black Isle's closure is a sad end for the once-great developer. BIS had a hand in some of the most acclaimed PC RPGs of the late 1990s, including the Fallout and Baldur's Gate series.

I believe Bioware was the publisher of BG2, not the developer.