1 Apparently it's selling so well that their web site is having trouble keeping up.  I noticed it was pretty slow when I went there after getting the announcement email.

I hope that will lead to more of the good old games being released this way, rather than a knee-jerk reaction of raising the price.

2

I didn't have any trouble when I bought it.

But I can't figure out the deal with the "look up the ship" copy protection. It doesn't seem to matter what I answer; the game keeps playing. Which is a good thing, because none of the accompanying documentation includes the ship names.

3 Ah, good ol MOO.  Love, love, LOVE that game.  I still putter around with SEV (Space Empires V) from time to time- it's the truest successor I've been able to find...  great fun.
I've been sucked into 'Frozen Synapse' this week- it's another successor, of X-COM in this case.  Things are certainly looking up roses for turn-based gaming of late!

4 I bought it too, but haven't installed the GOG version yet. If I recall correctly, yes, Ctrl-F12 increases the number of CPU cycles that DOSBox will use, which lets the emulated game run faster/better. I think I generally cranked it up to 12000 or so for MoM and MoO. Regarding the copy protection, it sounds like maybe they left in the ship ID screen (probably too much work to take out completely) but disabled the bad consequences of failing (I hope!).

5 Alt-Tab is the command for switching between windows, it works with most windowed games if you want to use the mouse outside it.

6 As if Steam's Christmas sales haven't already loaded me with games I don't have time to play... but, dangit, I finally closeted my Win98SE2 box last fall, and with it, my MOO2/MOM CDs that won't run on modern PCs.

I can already feel my willpower sapping... MOM will probably break it when they roll it out.  Why doesn't anybody make anything like SimTex did anymore?  I always wanted to see a MOM2, or at least a MOO3...

7

Some games don't need sequels. Sometimes the original game, while not necessarily being perfect, is good enough so that any sequel will turn out to be worse.

That was the case with the X-COM series. The first game was the best. None of the others really matched up. They may have had better graphics, but the magic was gone.

I am glad there was never a sequel to Master of Magic. It was such a mature game already that a sequel would have sucked. If they had taken exactly that game and just improved the graphics, then maybe.

But there's no way they would have done that. They'd have felt the need to tinker with it, and that would ruin it. Barcia knocked it out of the park the first time. How do you improve on a grand slam home run?

8

BigD: There was a MOO3.  Unfortunately, it was utter dreck.  And you can not blame it completely on executive meddling - if anything, the executive meddling was needed to get a playable game and released on time.

I would like to see a MOM2, though Atari seemed to have played hardball with Stardock when they tried to get the rights to make it.  But since Stardock is making Elemental, which is as close to MOM as any game has come, and they specifically said the modding aspect will allow you recreate MOM if you want...Yeah.

And as to Barcia hitting out of the ball park - only after you applied the patch.  Not before (The swordsman being the most powerful unit in the game, anyone?).

C.T. 

9 Adding to C.T.'s point - there's a reason you didn't hear about MOO3; it sucked, big time.  I bought it when it first came out, and well, there's a reason I'll be picking up GoG's release instead of digging out my MOO3 CDs.

They decided to add both a lot of micromanagement and a decent AI to handle it for you, just allowing you to go in and tweak settings once in a while.  Guess which one they failed at?  More, because the AI was supposed to handle it for you, they hid most of the controls, making it hard to do the now necessary micromanagement.  The idea was that emperors don't decide what each factory will make, just set grand policy and let the peons figure out the details.

A more detailed review is found here: http://www.quartertothree.com/reviews/moo3/moo3-1.shtml

10 A good example of "proper" micro-management reduction would be Civ4 (and to some extent, Civ3). The original Civ games needed a lot of tinkering in order to keep your cities running, happy, and productive. You constantly had to examine cities and make sure they had enough specialists (entertainers, basically) to keep their population happy, otherwise the entire city would break out in production-stopping riots.

Civ4's city management runs itself. It generally picks out tiles with a good mix of food and resource production, and keeps the city running without interruption. You get a warning when a city's starting to experience a lot of unrest (time to build a happiness structure, or close that trade deal to import a new luxury good). The pollution micromanagement was replaced by a "health" system, so that instead of pollution squares that had to be tidied up, you got less population growth in general. Essentially, this means that cities are self-managing and will grow up to the point where they're unhealthy enough that they have no more population growth, or they're unhappy enough that production is impacted until they have no excess food supply.

This really changes how you play a game of Civ. In Civ I and II, I was in and out of city screens constantly, tweaking how many little Elvises were there and reminding the mayor that my irrigated grassland produced more food than the god-forsaken desert square. But in Civ4, I can go the whole game without really messing around in the city screen at all...

11 Also, MOO2 was awesome. That is all.

12 I do agree that it is impossible to stack up to MOM- I *have* found that Dominions 3 made by a two man team of swedes scratches the same itch.  It's different in too many ways to call it a successor- but it's brilliantly fun nonetheless.

13

I would only add to the David's link, that even Quicksilver realized they had a problem in developing MOO3 just before the suits came in and took control of the game.  IIRC, the college son of MOO3's lead developer came home one weekend and played the game, at a point when the developers thought they were almost ready to release it.  After playing it, the son told his father that MOO3 was a great empire simulator - but not a good game.  A classic case of losing sight of the forest for the trees.

I do know that every other fantasy turned-based 4X strategy game since MOM has lack all the qualities that made MOM a favorite of mine, like research, creating new cities, sophisticated building tree that you can construct in the cities, different races and types of units, wide variety of magic spells, tactical combat, heroes you can customize, and the player avatar you can customize - I have yet to see any game have all of them.

C.T.

14

The single most brilliant thing about MOM is the spell book system. First, spell books were the prize of all prizes as far as treasures go, and were the biggest incentive to go out hunting lairs (or whatever they were called).

But the serious limit on how many you could have was even better. You could not have it all. You couldn't have top level spells in more than one or two colors per game.

And your play strategy was entirely different depending on which color(s) you chose to specialize in, or if you chose to not specialize at all. That was legitimate too: you could go for a small amount of knowledge of all the colors, and that was a different strategy again.

I always thought the Armageddon spell was the coolest. If you could keep it running long enough, you'd eventually end up with the entire planet covered with volcanoes except for your own territory. That was just too awesome.

15 Guys, stop making stuff up.  MOO3 never existed.

I love the spellbooks in MOM, but the thing that amazes me is how they crammed so many different features into the game, and then made them all roughly balance each other out.  The only real game-breaking move I've found is the summon champion/item creation combo--there are 4-6 overpowered magic champions (e.g., Mystic X, Xarax(sp), Morgana, etc.), and if you give them something like +20 magic ranged attack from items, and back them with a strong ranged stack, they just clear out entire armies (and are very useful in finishing up a game that's long since been decided without wasting 200 turns).  That said, there are few things more rageworthy than having your uber-champion hit with a successful insta-kill spell (Earthquake, IIRC?).

X-Com is sort of similar--it combines a number of different features, different decisions that have to be made, plus tactical combat.  The closest I've found in terms of pure enjoyment is probably JA2, which lacks most of X-Com's strategic management, but makes up for it somewhat with its humor.

16 Here's what GOG said about the ship recognition thing:

Thank you for reporting this. We will look into it tomorrow at work.

For now please use reference card that you can find in
menu start -> GOG.com -> Master of orion 1 + 2 -> Master of Orion 1 -> docs

There you should find ships recognition card

17 I didn't notice that one; they hid it in the executable directory. I looked through all the other PDF files they provided, though, and there was nothing.

18

Actually, I believe you are thinking of the spell 'Cracks Call'.  Very nasty one, indeed, as many a paladins and other powerful units have found out.

C.T.

19 You're talking about a tactical spell. I'm talking about a strategic one.

20

That is what I get for not using Earthquake too often - I forgotten it does have a base percentage of taking out units too in a city.

C.T.

21 Does anyone know how FreeOrion compares with the real MOO?

22 When the genuine MOO is only $6, why would anyone bother with an alternative?