That's right.
Lord have mercy!!!!
This game is complex. I've spent... let's see... upwards of 10-15 hours at the game so far (thank god for snow storms sometimes...) and I'm now just making headway. I'm actually
winning the game I'm currently playing.
Spying - got it down and well. I've gotten rather good (I think) at doing the strategy with spies. So far, this is my favorite part of the game (partly because I actually know what I'm doing and partly because I always liked playing the Darloks in original MoO anyways
). Not surprisingly, I've found playing the Humans and Evon to be my favs thusfar, but I've also moded other races to raise Cunning up to Dangerous. I really like the model here... QS did a nice job.
Diplomacy - I've noticed some of the problems others have noticed, but I recall the comments of the beta testers in this regard. The AI
seems inconsistent, but sometimes this is the AI "deciding" that you are a threat and going after you regardless of other issues. Just have to see.
Orion Senate - I like the Senate, but I find it frustrating that I find myself forgetting about bills. For some odd reason, the thing I'm most likely to forget to do before hitting "end turn" is to vote on that Senate bill. That's just a personal issue, though.
Planetary development - After numerous, numerous games being frustrated to all hell with this aspect of the game, I think I'm at least savy enough to survive at it. I now have at least SOMEWHAT figured out how to use the planetary development plans and those are a godsend. As with other people, though, I find that I'm always micro-managing the military build queues because while the planetary AI is awesome at managing my planetary economies, I personally think its fettish for ground unit support is just a means of wasting resources (why build 4 command centers and 5 hackers without building the actual INFANTRY and troop transports for them to go with???).
Ship Design - I've figured out how to do this pretty well, but I find it frustrating. As the reviewers complained, I want the string length to be longer for design names. The other problem (related to the planetary AI) is that I would like for the planetary AI's to re-do the military build queues when I obsolete an old design so I don't have to micromanage all of those military build queues to take out obsolete designs.
Fleet Composition - This is the area that has caused me the most frustration lately, but that's to be expected. My problem is that I don't yet know enough about all of the details of the weapons and the game and how the AI operates to have any clue what some optimal fleet compositions are. I've been using some educated guesswork and combining that with what I have technologically avaliable (I got a really nice warhead advance from a ruins in my last game, so I went missiles rather than what I'd originally planned). I've found that using fleets of point defense frigates escoring cruiser or light cruiser carriers have been most effective so far, but that was just something I built because I *figured* it couldn't do TOO badly. Missile frigate rock, but I've had trouble protecting them from fighters in the latest game. I'm not that worried about my frustration here, though, I see it as a sign that this game is GOOD and that I'll have to figure it out. Some level of help from the manual would have been nice, though....
Racial advantages - My theory, it seems, was wrong. The Humans really do suck. As far as I can tell, the Humans are horribly handicaped versus most other races, ESPECIALLY the Evon, who are basically Homo Superior (they have Dangerous Cunning like the humans, economics only 1 level less, and are better at EVERY OTHER CATEGORY other than diplomacy, which you can easily mod up to average by sacrificing a mere one level somewhere else). As I pointed out before I even had the game, why ever play the Humans but for sentimental value when the Evon are 'Homo Superior'? If there's something to the Humans we're missing, QS
PLEASE tell us. If not, the Humans are in
desperate need of some help in the patch.
Technology - I think I've figured out how this works pretty well and I actually really like the model. My only gripes are similar to those others have made (the reviewers, for instance): perhaps it's just the races I've been playing, but technology flows in so quickly that I have to redesign my ships every few turns. I also don't have a clue what half of the planetary development advances I'm gettting do and I'm just letting the AI do all that mess for me so far (as it seems to be doing a nice job all on its own - leaving me to worry about my inadequate fleet composition savvy
). Overall, though, I really like the system and what problems I have figuring out what many of the advances DO will likely be solved on their own after I've played more.
Unrest - for my first several games (where I tryed to play as the Humans), unrest was the bane of my existence. I actually had a game where 3 empires were formed from new colonies. The mistake I made was that I'd followed the POS Strategy Guide's advice and jacked up my empire tax rate a bit... which meant I had to lower all of my planetary tax rates accordingly to keep unrest even seemingly under control. Which meant that whenever I founded a new colony and it set the default tax rate at 18-20%, the colony would revolt and form its own empire in a matter of turns if I forgot to lower the tax rate down to 5-8% until I got a government, military, or recreation DEA there (eventually, I could raise all of them to 10-12% once a colony was up and running). So my military was spending too much time sending troop ships in to quell independent colonies and leave the troops there to make sure they didn't rebel again rather than concentrating more fully on my war with the Eoladi (boy do the Eoladi expand FAST FAST FAST... geesh).
My other unrest problem was piracy. It wasn't until I figured out that piracy is caused by # of regions or planets in a system and that the way to reduce it was having ships present that one of my systems could be brought under control. I had a system of 6 colonized planets and no starships (in an area WELL behind the chokepoint to the rest of the galaxy)... the place was a
basketcase until I finally built a fleet of system ships. Before that, I'd been frustrated to all hell lowering tax rates and upping the imperial unrest slider to no avail.
Finances - behind espionage, this has thusfar been my second favorite area of the game. I'm obsessive about tweaking the sliders and I had this part of the game somewhat figured out within my first game or two. My only problem is figuring out exactly how the interest rates work, but generally, I've been trying to take advantage of the system to the extent I understand what I'm doing by using a higher economics rating (I've used the Humans or a slightly moded Evon to do this).
Sound - I was bored of the background music for the galaxy screen within about half an hour. The same thing happened when I played MoO2, actually. Also as with MoO2, I really LIKE the diplomacy music for each race, which leaves me torn. I want to set up mp3's to run rather than that boring background music when I'm in the galaxy screen, but jack up the music volume when I negotiate
The problem isn't that the background music is bad, it's actually good. It's that it's annoyingly repetitive. If they even had... say... 3-4 tracks rather than a single track over and over and over, it wouldn't be so bad. I like variety in my music... but that's just a personal nit-pick.
Overall, I
think it looks like a very good game, but I'm not really fully playing it yet. I'm still just trying to figure it out. There are some areas where I'm actually playing to an extent now (man do I love espionage in this game), but they are few and far in between.
THINGS THIS GAME COULD USE (desperately):
1. A difficulty setting easier than "easy" for when people are just learning the game. When people are still trying to just figure out what things do, it doesn't help the learning process when the Ithkul fleet comes over the horrizon and gives them too many things to worry about at once while just trying to figure out various game elements. To give the player a fair shot at figuring the game out before you hit hiim with eveything at once, it would really help to offer tutorial scenarios (that would have REALLY REALLY helped...) and an ultra easy difficulty level where the AI basically just rolls over for you and leaves you alone long enough to figure out what you're doing. When you're ready to progress to "easy" and beyond, then you can do that.
2. A strategy guide. Not the P.O.S. Prima sold, a real one. Something that provides real advice on not how everything works, but also on what good options are on WHAT TO DO. This would tackle stupid problems I had like not knowing how to combat unrest, not even knowing (other than by lucky guesswork) what some good fleet compositions might be, etc. Thankfully, the guys at Orion Sector are working on this one. I assume others will do so independently as well... I expect GameFAQ will have some useful stuff in about a month or so.
Overall, a good game (I think). But a good game critically suffering from an
extremely painful lack of tutorial/learning experience time for the new gamer.
