FreeOrion

I am wondering, Among thouse who have played both which was better Original Moo or Moo2?

I prefer Original Moo in many ways. The design of Moo2 was rather unoriginal, all of its core changes from original Moo are Civ rip offs such as the managment of food, buildings, money and workers. Original Moo didn't have a lot of these things admitadly but it was clearly not trying to rip off Civ which Moo2 dose shamlessly in every "new" element of the game.

Moo2 probly makes the greatest advance in its space combat engine (Unfortunatly Civ didn't have a space combat engine to rip off). I am not fully desided on my feelings towards Moo2's space combat though as I havn't played enough of it yet.

What are your opinions on Moo1 and Moo2 respective strengths and weakneses, which is better and in what ways. Dont forgeet to mention how much contact you have had with each game and in what order (we tend to be biased to what we played first and I am no exception)

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Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

MoO2 was the first MoO I played and I never really got into MoO1. I think it's hard to get used to the horrible graphics if you're used to the awesome eyecandy of MoO2.

Yes I tried Moo1, I thought yeah I might try it, but the graphics were horrible and I couldn't really understand how to play it. Moo2 is good fun, and the space combat is the main reason I got it, and was it value for my money.

I like moo1 direct method of management. It of course gets tedious at end game a little. But if you leave most of your planets on research you can automate the entire thing.

So I prefer Moo1 in all ways except Space combat, where Moo2 was clearly the winner.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

No doubt, MOO1.
Far less micro'ing. I hated having to do all those buildings on the planets in MOO2 (the auto-build thing was a complete waste of time).
Everything in MOO1 was quicker to do:
research, developing a planet, building a fleet, designing ships, etc.
The best thing about MOO2 i can think of is that you could make battles 'auto'...don't think that could be done on MOO1.
Custom race creation was the other good thing from moo2.

For those who have winced at MOO1's graphics, i'd simply have to say that it's the gameplay that's important. IMHO the graphics of MOO2 are little better than moo1's these days, so if you can stomach ones' you should be able to get along with the other....

MOO2 and Master of Magic were both designed by Steve Barcia. Whether of not, they were "rip-offs" of civilisation is IMO, irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how much fun the game gives the player. Another game that ripped off the Civ concept were the games Colonisation and SMAC, but I didn't care when I played. Of course, in those games it was Sid ripping off Sid.

And now in the ripping off cycle is Age of Wonders Shadow Magic which is ripping off Master of Magic. But I don't really care, as long as the game is good!

On the point of production, I'd have to say that MOO2/MOM are somewhat different. Where in Civ as more units are produced, the city has to provide support and thus has less minerals - in MOM/MOO2 you can produce as many units as you like from the same city/planet and it makes no difference on production at that city/planet.

The old, never-ending MOO1/MOO2 debate, which is better. Neither. Both are fun to play and that is all that matters. I've played both and I like both. As for MOO3, it strayed from the civ ripoff cycle, but it ended up being (from what I've heard) no fun to play.

To alleviate the microing somewhat, MOO2 had a queue system. OK that wasn't good enough. GalCiv, IMO solved the microing problem, cause it has macros. I sorta didn't mind the autobuild in moo2, it built all the buildings on the planet, I didn't have troubles with it, but I went back to microing in MOO2 so that I can rush buildings.

As for MOO2 graphics not holding up compared to other TBS games out today, I'd say the complete opposite. I've compared the graphics between GalCiv and MOO2. In terms of combat graphics, MOO2 wins hands down. I also had a look at another galactic conquest game (SEIV i think) and I was surprised that after all these years, these types of games (galactic conquest TBS games) have graphics WORSE than moo2s!!! MOO3 is another big example that MOO2's graphics are better than current games of this type being made.

I liked moo1 better. I would have to disagree with moo2 having a better combat engine though. Moo2's comabt was good at the beginning of the game but became very bloated and slow late game. Moo1's combat engine was always fast and never became bloated.

Yeah but moo1s "combat engine" consisted of at most 6 big ships attakcing 7 big ships. it was just a game of bigger numbers. Moo2 though it was tedious at the end really gave you that "epic" feel. You could construct truely galactic battles and if it would have started your ships further back form the planet oculd have had a real depth in strategy. With the shield arcs and the various piercing and anti-piercing weapons, it was a quite good tactical engine, it just needed a little bit of refining. No complaint on moo1s combat engine as for the time it was terrific, but not nearly as deep as moo2s.

Also the he-who-fires-first-wins problem could have been allieviated if the fleets had started on the opposite side of the map screen from each other, particularly during late game, that would have allowed for significant planning and formations, alas... However our combat engine will be very refined and (hopefully) be the best of both worlds.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

I played Moo 1 first and fell in love with it. It was revolutionary at the time.

I didn't like sequel Moo 2. Moo 2 had all too annoying end game micro. Complicated things with directional shield that didn't do all that much. Added leader that had too big of impact. Stealing ship is wrong... Don't get me wrong, it's a good game, but just with some problems, otherwise I wouldn't be here at this site.

I played Moo 1 first and fell in love with it. It was revolutionary at the time.

I didn't like sequel Moo 2. Moo 2 had all too annoying end game micro. Complicated things with directional shield that didn't do all that much. Added leader that had too big of impact. Stealing ship is wrong... Don't get me wrong, it's a good game, but just with some problems, otherwise I wouldn't be here at this site.

Moo1 is, IMO, a much better game than moo2 in almost every way.

* The management of your colonies is almost perfect. Minimal micromanagement required. They almost run themselves.

* The tech tree is more balanced. No uber-techs which dominate the game. Also, the way you get access to a random set of techs in the game is much better, forcing you to trade or steal from your opponents. Moo3 had the right idea when they switched back to the moo1 system - but, as with so much else, botched the implementation.

* Okay, combat is simplistic, with 6 stacks of ships per side... but it still has FAR more strategic depth than Moo2's simplistic (and tedious) 'line of ships on either side which close and fire until no-one is left'. In moo1, big ships can be useful. Small ships can be useful. There is no uber-design.

* The limit of 6 ship designs in moo1 is a GOOD THING. It forces the player to make *gasp* actual choices about when to upgrade, instead of simply refitting their entire fleet every time their scientists invent a new type of coffee-cup holder.

* The AI in moo1 is actually capable of putting up some kind of a challenge. Which, call me old fashioned, is kind of important in a strategy game.

The only things in which moo2 scores over moo1 are: race customisation, ground combat (not the combat itself.. but the fact that you conquer enemy populations rather than wipe them out with your own people).

Daveyboy:


I'd disagree about the uber-techs... If a player gets the death-ray, and dumps a load of them onto a huge ship, there's nothing much that can stand up to them.
Combined with a black-hole generator (for turning stack's of 10,000+ ships into 1000 ships ), u don't need anything else.

... except that scatter-pack missiles do far more damage per unit space.

... AND if your stack of 2000 small ships has high enough manoeverability and shields you wont be able to kill enough of them (even with a black hole generator) that they wont still sidle up next to you and trash your whole stack of huge death ray machines in one hit.

Just the fact that you included a BHG in your ship design proves that the deathray isnt a totally uber-weapon. Sure it does far more damage per unit space against high tech ships, but on its own it does squat against a huge stack of gnats.

I admit that the weapon balancing in Moo1 isnt perfect, but at least it results in a bit of variation in successful ship design, as opposed to the 'bigger is always better' approach of moo2.

I never bother with missiles. Simply jump around using teleporter to skip them.

All u need is a BH-gen on a few small ships with teleporter, and give them enough initiative (or whatever it is) so they go first... Then it's all over for large stacks.