Stategy Guide Tid Bits

[kalbear]

What was interesting to me was to note exactly how crowded and fast the turns were going. By turn 8-10, most of the example games had had a first contact with at least one or more races. By turns 15-20, they were at war with actual battles that matter. The rate of expansion also seemed pretty quick. Maybe they're playing only small-type galaxies, where aggressive starts matter. Still, it was interesting to see 'the puny race cannot withstand our auto-fire laser tech'. Lol.

Something else that I hadn't realized, and I'd like to ask about - it has the Psilons switching government to Hive. I didn't think or realize that this sort of thing was possible, which begs the question - why would you ever NOT do this sort of thing? Hive is sick in terms of bonuses, and unless it causes massive unrest - heck, even if it does - it seems like this sort of thing would be so much more beneficial for future gains that it wouldn't matter. Anyway, my belief was that one could switch types within the government category, but not to another government in that category. Hope that's more correct.

The guide relies heavily on the AI doing the right thing, and then chastises it when it fails. Raising taxes to more than the pop can stand, then always having to lower them in a few turns to stop unrest, well..wacky.

The Evon example - using spies to deter attack - was nuts. Can you imagine that sort of thing happening in Moo1 & 2? For those of y'all who don't have the guide, the example was that the Evon get declared war on, they then seed a ton of spies into that government, and do something like reduce production, cause unrest, destroy military assets, assassinate a leader, and wipe out some tech. The Eoladi begged for peace immediately afterwards.

That's pretty damn cool.

[Alex-C]

That Evon example sounds VERY cool, and certainly goes to show that you gotta know who you're dealing with Its things like this that make the strategy of this game shine even brighter!

[Sherlock01]

Yeah, spies sound way more fun than in the previous games. Some of the things you can get them to do would really cause insane amounts of havoc in a MP game, especially if the spies are really loyal and aren't cracking under, ahem, 'questioning', and you have no idea where they are coming from.

I used to almost ignore spying because I had so little control over it. Now I'm going to have to rethink that.

[Xentax]

Originally posted by dulahan
And what do ya know, I was right. Citizen Kane too. PRetty much everyone I've suspected is on it. Just no littlefuzzy yet. But him being so might make sense considering how he suddenly got VERY quiet about the time testing started.

LF (and his father) are NOT beta-testing -- I don't know if either was asked; but I think they wouldn't even if asked; LF implied to me that they'd prefer to wait and judge the final product, and to be able to give unbiased and "uncut" evaluations of it.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by kalbear
Something else that I hadn't realized, and I'd like to ask about - it has the Psilons switching government to Hive. I didn't think or realize that this sort of thing was possible, which begs the question - why would you ever NOT do this sort of thing? Hive is sick in terms of bonuses, and unless it causes massive unrest - heck, even if it does - it seems like this sort of thing would be so much more beneficial for future gains that it wouldn't matter. Anyway, my belief was that one could switch types within the government category, but not to another government in that category. Hope that's more correct.

You can find the tables for government and race bonuses here

I'd love to know how governments will work because if you look at the government bonuses, they are insanely unbalanced!

[Xentax]

The balancing factor is that hive-type governments cost more race picks than representative, which cost more than absolutist.

[BraerFox]

Originally posted by Xentax
The balancing factor is that hive-type governments cost more race picks than representative, which cost more than absolutist.

The Strat Guide states, on page 140, that during Turn 1, the Psilons changed to a hive government. I also remember reading that you can only change from form of govenment in a series to another in that series. You can't jump fron the Absolutist series to the Collectivist series.

I suspect the the ability of the Psilons (originally a Representative series govt.) to change to Hive is one of the early testing bugs that has now been corrected.

I believe Xentax's comment is in relation to creating your own race which is possible in MOO3 also.

Several of the Beta testers have said on the IG site that they played on "easy". This leads one to believe there are indeed different difficulty levels.

One final comment & then I'll stop my rambling. The SG was written IMHO with the anticipated reader being a MOO2 fanatic. Weaponwise, all seem to be listed in the SG. Of course, we won't know until the game actually comes out, but I suspect at this late date they won't add any. There apparantly have been some subtle changes but for the most part they will all look very familiar.

I'm very curious to see how the play balancing affects what is in the SG.

[PriestOfDiscord]

Are the Harvesters Absolutist or Collective?

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by The diplomat


You can find the tables for government and race bonuses here

I'd love to know how governments will work because if you look at the government bonuses, they are insanely unbalanced!

Link doesn´t work, unfortunately. Is there a collection somewhere out there of what is known about Moo3 (from the strategy guide etc)?

[BraerFox]

Originally posted by PriestOfDiscord
Are the Harvesters Absolutist or Collective?

The Ithkul (presumably the harvesters) are absolutist.