Galciv v MOO3

from Stardock Forums
I have played quite a few hours of the Galciv beta and MOO3 and offer the following observations:

1) I like designing ships and seeing how they perform in combat, especially in combination with others ship designs. Galciv does not have that feature. MOO3 does, but the combat animations are so small it is difficult to tell what weapons/defenses are working well or not. I understand that the Civilization-type combat is a design decision and not a defect, but I would really like to see the ship design/tactical combat option added to Galciv with perhaps a "quick combat" option like Age of Wonders has and Warlords 4 will have. I realize that means some serious AI programing, but why not ask?

2) MOO3 has one of the most frustrating interfaces I have ever seen. Many clicks are needed to perform the simplest and most routine tasks. Not so Galciv, which is much more intuitive.

3) MOO3's so-called "manual" and "encyclopedia" are also among the least informative I have ever seen. They tell you everything you can figure out for yourself, and nothing you need to know from a manual. Galciv's beta documentation is far superior.

4) MOO3's AI colonizes well but that's pretty much all it does well. The MOO3 AI does a reasonable job of managing economics on a colony, but it always wants to trot out troop ships and single ground units even from planets that can spit out 5 or 10 ground units in short order, and which should be building larger ships. You have to go through the build queues every turn an purge unwanted units (which takes time given the poor user interface) Galciv's "governor" build queues are a much more intuitive and responsive way to avoid late-game micromanagment. Galciv's "enemy" AI is so far superior from MOO3's that it is not a comparison.

5)MOO3 has multiplayer and Galciv does not. So what. I can't imagine many people having the time and patience to play the 300-400 turns you would need for a MOO3 multiplayer game. Who can take off a week just to play a game?

With some improvements to the AI, MOO3 could actually turn out to be a reasonably good game. However, the Galciv beta is already a much better game overall, and I would expect the gold version to be ever more superior, let alone the year's worth of updates and improvements that can be made with the benefit of lots of user feedback.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
For me, GalCiv's main selling point is going strictly SP with unique AI's for each race. I want to start a game with prejudices against certain races from previous games. To me that gives it TONS of personality. :)

I don't want the races to be sterile and react the same as each other.

The only improvement I would make to GalCiv would be allowing the player to pick any race to play. I know you can customize quite a bit but there is still something fun about being able to play something other than human.

I also would like Tactical combat but I'm not sure it fits well in a 4X game. I do like seeing my designs go to battle but I'd rather someone make a seperate game that does that, I think it get's too tedious to have both a deep strategy AI and a deep tactical AI. I would actually like to see a more Warlords III approach, where units are "sort of" a rock paper scissors type and depending on how your "stack" of ships lined up with the opponents stack of ships would determine the outcome of the battle (with some randomness).

I think this is much more doable given the current state of the game. I'm doubtful they could (or want to) add a full tac AI to the game after it's gone gold.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
1) SMAC did this very well - units looked odd, but you could see what they were. And, hey, since when does an Infantry man bigger than a city NOT look odd? ;)

2) Indeed. MOO3 has an odd UI. They are trying to change things in order to make it better, but they've not done it very well. When the demo comes out, I'll see if GalCiv's is better in the ways that I want, and if it is, I'll buy it.

3) There are holes here, yes. At least they have a decent online help framework, it just needs more content! (And better links between topics, and a better search system)

4) Yeah I noticed the thing about troop ships and ground units as well. I think it creates marines, then a troopship to carry them to a warzone.

5) I don't care about multiplayer in the slightest. It works in some games, but not in others. Empire builders aren't very good at multiplayer. I get annoyed when people criticise a game for not having multiplayer, but a game without single player is fine.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
>>5)MOO3 has multiplayer and Galciv does not. So what. >>I can't imagine many people having the time and >>patience to play the 300-400 turns you would need for >>a MOO3 multiplayer game. Who can take off a week just >>to play a game.

That's why some TBS games play by e-mail, whiich I think it great. You could play 1000 turn game in as long as you want, and have multiple games going at once.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I wonder if it's possible to mod the game to make you one of the other races? If all the text is alterable... I'm sure it would be a pain to do it and it wouldn't have any impact on the actual gameplay... but for those of you who absolutely must play the other races, I'm sure there's someone who absolutely has way too much time on their hands. :D
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, I don't care for MP either... Except PBE, that's really the alternative for TBS games. I have played MOO3 a lot over the last two weeks and I think where MOO3 is a lot too heavy with really bad feedback, GalCiv could perform much better. Although I think GalCiv is a bit too light in some places... even comical. :notsure: As for the combat: I really like Civ-type combat! Neat & easy! :)
Just wondering: Would it be hard to implement tactical combat into GalCiv? Maybe in a later version, given that there will be long-time dev-support as the developers already pointed out again and again?
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
After playing beta version of galciv for 2 months and moo3 since its release the following are some of my observations.

The biggeset fundamental difference , imho, is that moo3 was designed from the ground up as a multi player game, while galciv was designed as a single player game. If you want multiplayer buy moo3. Us single player types have a tough choice.

The old manual for galciv was poor, but adequate for someone who had played this type of game before. The moo3 released manual was worse than poor and woefully inadequate.

moo3 requires careful attention (micromanagement) of ships. Galciv betas requied a lot of time for starbases.

Diplomacy appears to be more fun in galciv, though the graphics are better in moo3.

moo3 offers more races to play with and provides a bigger sense of the unknown, (the going where no one has gone before type of feeling and more exploration)

The combat in m003 can be handled as simply as in galciv, or the user has an option of getting even more involved in controlling the combat.


The best, imo, is to buy both. If someone only has money for one, ouch. galciv will provide more fun quickly, moo3 will provide more of a challenge and a more diserfied game.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I could never understand the reasoning for creating a game like this to be multiplayer anyway. Like mentioned above, who in the world will have the time to play it? I like TBS games to drop multiplayer all together and focus on top quality AI instead. Save multiplayer for RTS games such as Warcraft 3 and the likes.

As for MOO3 vs GalCiv I think GalCiv will clearly be a much better game. I personally think GalCiv will also be the next true champion of the space strategy games. Surpassing even the mighty Space Empires 4.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree. I'm glad multiplayer was not included. The only thing attractive about multiplayer in other games is that you play a human opponent. In this case it sounds like the improved AI and the fact that there is a different AI for each race will simulate human opponents rather well.

I'm also glad the custom ship building and MOO type ship battles were left out. I've always thought of that as more of a mini-game than an intregal part of an overall strategy.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Personally I think that it is a mistake to try to compare the two games functionally. They are not the same game, nor copies of each other. They aren't intended to be.

But they do give choices, or even an alternative to each other. You can play one for a while, then play the other. You can go back and forth as you feel you need a change.

~SDC~
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I would love to see tactical combat and ship design to Gal Civ. If it were, it would be come my all-time fave game. Tactical combat works PERFECTLY with this genre, but only if it is a single-player game, as this is. In this respect, MoO2 is superior to GalCiv. In every other way, Gal Civ looks to be better. But ship deisgn and tactical, turn based combat is a big thing. One of my faves from MoO2. Maybe in GalCiv II?

I agree that this kind of game shouldnt be multi-player, unless you have a play by email type thing, and in that, a game could take a year!
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
QLORD's comments were quite enlightening. Thank you.
Having read quite a bit from the GalCiv forum over the last couple days, I have learned one thing for darn certain. Personally I have enjoyed the intelegent yet also emotionally invested input of you all. Discussions about fair yet challenging and diverse AI alone has been more fun than most demos I have tried. Although I will admit The Corporate Machine's AI has me intriged. In the mean time anyway. ;)
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
I"m glad Galciv has no MP, this is a big selling point for me. Since us poor souls here in Oz are stuck with dial up internet, unless we got a ton of $$$ for broadband, MP is totally out of the question for us.

Besides too many games are focussing on MP and not SP...glad to see a game like Galciv get back to gaming basics.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Although there is not ship design in GalCiv, from what I seen there are MANY different type of ships.
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
And you can design and add your own ships statically. You and the AI get to use them (which helps some to keep the game balanced.)

~SDC~
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
you poor souls in Oz ought to be making me a new pair of pants or reading a book. Nice to know our tax's are paying for scum bags like you to play computer games >:(
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Ok, that was just odd. What are you talking about?

~SDC~
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
lol

~SDC~
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Cant wait to get this game. I felt the same about MOO3 but I was disappointed in the release. I still like the game, but because of the hype and my own expectations that it would be an improved MOO2, reality fell short. I've never played the original GalCiv so expectations are different.
I do notice a huge difference in the forum boards though. Moo3 boards made me feel like I was in a Jr highschool schoolyard at lunchtime.The GD threads were basically: "Moo3 sucks/no it doesnt; You suck if you like it/You suck if you dont." Over and over ad nauseum. Come to think of it the HOI forum seemed that way too. This is a refreshing change.
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top

Wampyre;

I traded in Moo3 for HoI and I feel like a jr. highschool student (I'm almost 60 ;) ) but not because of their forum. It is because this is the first game in a long time that I feel totaly lost in. (but not in a bad way). I keep reading the manual and reading the forums and then read the tech tree some more and then push a unit or two around to see what happens. Then there's the number of and values of units, then the politics. . . and on . . . and on . . .

But I don't feel disapointed with it because even if I don't end up liking it, it will have taken me so long to figure it out that I will easily have gotten my moneys worth. ;)

My only thought right now is that it seems amazing and there is a thriving mod community of 'historical nuts' constantly adding tons of stuff. And like with GalCiv the creators have a good reputation for supporting their games.

I might have been better off getting EU2 though, to get my feet wet first. ;)

Elrikk





~SDC~
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Elrickk..Hoi is not as difficult as you think..well actually it is but you get the hang of it quickly. Now that the HOI boards have calmed down, you can visit them and get answers to ANYTHING you dont understand...just as I'm sure this board will do for ya once you get the game. My advice short term is...dont sweat the politics...dont even bother with them until you learn the game....start with Germany in 1936 and learn with that because they are pretty strong and you are not likley to get into too much trouble unless you go looking for it. And by all means...play on SLOW and turn off half of the pop ups or you'll be driven insane. It will be like playing whack a mole.I highly advise the patches by the way which you can download for free. I'm using ver 1.02...never got around to 1.03 or whatever they are up to now.
Your almost 60 and still playing computer games??? GOOD FOR YOU! I'm 51 and I aint gonna stop until they pry this mouse from my...you get the picture. Sorry for taking up GalCiv space with another game folks.
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
Hey, its srtategy, welcome aboard. The pop ups in Hearts of Iron were insane. I felt there was a great game in there, I just didn't have the patience. Maybe later. At a dollar a GIG theres room for a lot of games on the hard drive. Its a matter of finding the time. Or in my case making the time for actually making a living. Just turned 39 bye the way. so that means I have at least another 20 years good gaming ahead of me, and I will then have more patience like our friend Elrikk.
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
Wampire;

Thanks. Not only do I play on SLOW but I pause while thinking and give oders and then unpause. A bit chicken I'll admit but I got use to that when playing Baldur's Gate a couple of years back.

Is your nick a real name or are you just a vampire that takes after a certain 'wascley wabbit" ? ;)


RustyBlade;

Patience comes when you have the spare time to enjoy it; although my sixten year old son would argue with the puting the words 'Elrikk' & 'patience' in the same sentence. ;)

Elrikk

~SDC~
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
i not use multiplayer online for bts.....but i like hot seat...i have played many time hotseat a moo2

galactic have hotseat?