Journal Cliff's Journal: Anyone Playing Master of Orion 3? 1
I picked it up on opening day, and I must say after my initial flurry of excitement, my enthusiasm about this game is waning, and waning rapidly.
Now I've been playing this game on and off since I picked it up the day it came out and I still have yet to figure everything out. I even broke down and read thru (most of) the manual. While I appreciate all of the history and backstory they added into the game, I would have appreciated more, a better description of gameplay.
Maybe you all can help me out with figuring out what things mean or how to accomplish other things that I think should be easy to do (and I have yet to figure out):
- How do you build planetary improvements like "Hydroponic Farms"? After researching this improvement, it seems that the AI just builds them itself, and I can't figure out how to apply such improvements manually. I open the Planetary Improvements section in the Budget area and it's always blank! Bug? Probably so. I'll be hoping on Infogrames website looking for a patch very soon. I hope there is one.
- The AI is confusing. Well, that's putting it mildly. It's confusing bordering on braindead. Not to mention there are several problems with editing development plans. I keep changing an existing development plan, only to have it revert back to the old one in the same turn. Clearing the row and resetting the plan seems to fix the problem, but that's just another in several clunky interface decisions that take away from the gameplay for me.
- The entire interface, while useable, is just strange to me. I guess I'll get used to things as time goes on, but having to make one adjustment on one screen, only to have to click to another screen to see the results of a change gets old after a while (try affecting the build times on DEAs and see how many times you have to bounce back and forth between that screen and the Economics panel in the Planet detail).
- The technology sliders are a pain to use, I would have preferred a better interface for this. Having the "decrease" button unallocate to a "unassigned research pool" slider and the "increase" button remove from this slider would have been a better solution than what's currently available. As it is, I have to play with the sliders for minutes until I get them the way I want them, of course, adding insult to injury, the AI then changes them around the next turn anyways and I haven't figured out how to prevent this, either.
- The game pacing seems slower than what I remember from MOO2. Of course, this could just be because I haven't played a Turn-Based game in a LONG time and I've just grown used to RTS pacing.
- The manual glosses over a lot of detail that I would expect to be in there. I'll probably have to check the in-game encyclopedia, but there are several things that have gone unexplained to my satisfaction. The specific development plans (like "Infrastructure" and "Morale") I can only guess at what they encourage the AI to do. Also, certain icons on the economic panel are a mystery to me (ie the "!" and the "circle-cross" icon next to some of the sliders)
I'm not writing off the game yet, though. I'd be interested in seeing how many of you have noticed any of the problems I have, and would also be interested in any strategies you all have come up with for playing the game. Have any of you actually gotten the Economic AI to behave? What race do you like to play?
For those of you also playing this game, I'd be interested in hearing your experiences.
Micromanaging killed MOO2 for me (Score:1)
It's too bad. MOO1 was really good too.