Rob Elliott
CIS 487
Assignment 2
09/18/2003

Title		Master of Orion 3
Year		Q2 2003
Company		Quicksilver, Bill Fisher and Alan Emrich
Type		Space 4x (Turn based strategy)
Price		40, or free with rebate
Hardware	P3 300Mhz, 128Mb RAM, Any Graphics Card, 800Mb HD
Hardware Actual	Athlon 2500, 512Mb RAM, Geforce 2, 120Gb HD

Overview	Compete with up to 16 opponents to build a space empire,
		achieving victory through War, Politics, or Research.
Storyline	Hundreds of years after Moo2, The evil Antarans have survived
		and reclaimed the galaxy. You, a fledgling race, nothing more than
		a cog in their greater plan for genetic perfection,
		have to rebuild and destroy the master race.
Player Role	Lord and Master of a spacefaring empire.
Installation	Insert Install CD, install, insert Play CD, play.
Interface	Immense, complicated, unintuitive, very little help to guide you.
Gameplay	Initially very promising, it becomes tedious and an effort
		in frustration after you realize you are only there
		to hit NEXT TURN for the AI building your empire.
Scoring		A complex formula that takes in almost all aspects
		of your races achievements at the current time, military, social,
		technological, political, and returns a score.
Artwork		circa 1999, but now Dated. Aliens are unique and believable.
		Ships are too small and all look the same.
Sound/Music	The sound is passable, the music is very good.
		Each race has their own diplomatic theme.
SpecialFeatures	Create your own race, community has the ability to modify 
the game experience by creating mods.
Manual		A great story but out of date, not helpful at all.
Bugs		Too numerous to count, they range from minor (a weapon does not 
function as stated) to major (Multiplayer Bombard Crashing). There were 119 
at last count on a website specifically dedicated to tracking Moo3 bugs.

	The creators were obsessed with detail and realism. Master of Orion 3 is a 
very deep game. It thrusts you into a believable universe filled with 
believable races. The universe, stars, and planets are accurate down to 
their mass, colors, energy output, and the effect they have on planetary 
life.
	The concept of AI running the minor aspects of your galactic empire, while 
you tend to important (or interesting) aspects. In theory if you don't like 
some part of the game, like colonization, or space combat, just activate the 
AI and you'll never have to worry about it again.
	The different paths to victory. Military, Political, Technological. You can 
conquer the universe in bloody genocide, accepting only death from other 
races. You can manuveur your way into a position of power in the Orion 
Senate, find enough support from your allies to be voted Supreme Ruler, and 
win that way. Finally if you discover all 5 Antaran X's (Super secrets of 
the Antarans) by exploring the galaxy or sending expeditions, you can claim 
your right to rule.
	For each well intentioned aspect of the game, there is some glaring flaw 
that obliterates it. The level of realism and detail is impressive, awe 
inspiring, in a word, overwhelming. The first 10 hours you play this game, 
expect to not understand quite a bit of what is going on. Don't expect to 
see anything you do have any lasting effect on your empire. Do not expect to 
research efficiently, as there is almost no information on what each advance 
does. Don't expect to build good spaceships, as you have no specs on your 
equipment. Many planets have natural 'specials' such as earthquakes, or 
carnivorous animals. Don't expect to have any clue what these do or how they 
affect you, as far as the manual is concerned they don't exist. In fact the 
manual covers only a tiny fraction of what the actually is, and it covers 
absolutely nothing on the topic of strategy. Do expect to spend 15 hours or 
so to get the hang of the game.
	The AI is incompentent. The AI is intrusive. If it was only one of those 
things, it would be acceptable. However not only does it run things you tell 
it not to, but it goes on to run them badly. It's quite possible however 
that the AI is so complex that it sees sitautions in your empire that you do 
not, and reacts to them in ways you do not understand. I doubt it though. 
Diplomatically the AI is just as confounding. The best example is when a 
race declares war on you one turn, peace the next, then back to war the 
third turn. Even down to their last planet, facing a fleet of thousands, 
racial extinction, the AI will refuse to surrender. On the opposite end of 
the spectrum you can leave the most powerful race at war with your backdoor 
while you assimilate and gain power from the other 10 races, and it will 
never attack.
	If the previous problems are not enough. If not only can you not understand 
the game or understand your actions. If the AI both on your side and as the 
enemy is not enough to throw your hands up in despair. Finally you must deal 
with the interface. An interface that at one point had 119 screens, now down 
to 26. It is so unintuitive that the learning curve for the interface alone 
is measured in hours. There are screens that LOOK like they should do 
something but only provide information. There are places where a single 
button out of 7 contains 90% of the things you need to do. It takes 8 clicks 
to change what a single planet is building. In my current game (at 26 hours 
into play) I have 280 planets. I have long since given up getting the 
planets to build the right things.
	After playing Moo3, many people who had been waiting (for 3 release dates 
that never came) felt empty and discouraged by the end result. One game 
people moved to is called Galactic Civilizations. After playing this briefly 
I can say this game is back to the realm of decent computer games. However 
after applying myself to Moo3, GalCiv is just too simple. Admittedly, if you 
just simplified Moo3 all it's problems would go away, but thats not what we 
as gamers want. GalCiv is a good game for players new to the genre of space 
strategy.
	The game has incredible depths. If you want to take the time, you can build 
a unit of Sauron marines, with Blaster rifles, wearing Duranium Armor, with 
personal deflector shields, make them part of an army that has psychics and 
hackers as support troops, invade Dogas III orbiting the sun Dogas, in the 
orion sector, win the battle and this unit of marines may gain enough 
experience to become veterans, which you can then use in another army, on 
another planet, to conquer several regions before they are ultimately killed 
by Trilarian Battleoids. And thats not even discussing the planetary and 
political implications. The game has the sort of depth that at 4am, despite 
all of its glaring problems and flaws, a select few hardcore gamers will 
feel compelled to press NEXT TURN.
	The majority of gamers however, will not press next turn. They will press 
EXIT. Most likely right after they find there is no tutorial ingame or in 
the manual, and that they have a planet, some ships, but beyond that they 
have no idea what is going on. If you are not to some degree a sadist or a 
madman, there is nothing here for you. This game will in fact INCREASE your 
stress levels, and test your patience to the limit.
	Is the game worth purchasing? There is a short story here. The presale of 
Moo3 was very very high, so companies like amazon.com bought copies of it by 
the boatload, expecting it to be a smash hit. After gamer's initial shock, 
the sellers recieved an equal shock of not being able to sell hardly any of 
the second run copies they bought. For three months amazon ran a deal- buy 
the game for 20$, get a 20$ rebate. That's not a typo, they were giving the 
game away. if you bought 3 copies of the game, for a total of 60$, you were 
even above the minimum for free shipping. If you can find such a deal, feel 
free. If not, borrow it from a friend, get it on ebay, or better yet just 
put a 1000 piece puzzle together with the lights off, you will generally 
recieve the same enjoyment and satisfaction. And you'll gain better tactile 
skills.
	In conclusion this game could be improved in so many ways on so many 
levels. It would be simpler to just remake the game from scratch (which is 
in fact what a group is doing on sourceforge.com). But if you want a basic 
answer, just fix the bugs that exist, fix data in the spreadsheets to be 
accurate, make the interface more intuitive, make the AI actually WORK. In 
short, if the game just did what everyone wanted it to do, it would be a 
smash hit. Unfortunately as it stands this game may signal the end of the 
previously fantastic Master of Orion series, and go down as one of the worst 
gaming dissapointments of all time.