ZedF... I'm talking MoO1. You know, the game by SimTex? Are you thinking of MoO2, by any chance? The balance of attack versus defense was different in it versus MoO1.

Certain techs in MoO1 are weighted to show up in most games played. Especially the important ones, such as Ion Weapons. With Ion weapons, you can conquer Orion. (That would yield Death Rays. Your ship arsenal is now complete. ;))

SMALL bombers? Zed, MoO1 is a production based game. Bombers are useful from the start... I would start using bombers right after the first serious colony push. That was before I could even build Large hull designs (well, reasonably)! Why? Because every bomber that dropped a bomb reduced my neighbors production, meaning I got ahead. And small bombers with nothing but bombs in them were cheaper to build then the BASIC missile base. By getting there fast enough, you could keep them from building missile bases, making them easier to invade.

DEFENSIVE ships? No... offensive. You'd just route/rally them to the attack point when the Klackons decided to attack one of your worlds. If you had been using your small worlds to build bombers, breed marines, and research, then your neighbors would be behind you in production. So you'd have a bigger fleet to swat the invaders, then off you go to take over more of his worlds. Rinse and repeat. For fast games, slash and burn everything in reach, except for your new advanced forward base (that you invade and take over). Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

The game's a foregone conclusion after you see the first couple of screens worth of stars around your start. With a few worlds in reasonable reach, you can research range to allow you to jump any large gap/rift seperating your empire from the rest of the galaxy and still be able to win the game.

Go get DosBox (Open Source utility, available from Source Forge), and grab MoO1 from some abandonware site, and give it some play time. Or break out your original floppy version, or your micro-floppy version, or even the last retailed CD-Rom version.

From the beginning, you can wage war. Why wait until you've got ion beams or better? I've used medium range hulls with extended fuel tanks and bombs to slow down opponents until I could get my serious heavy industry worlds churning out fleet killers plenty of times... slow down the AI so that they are behind you in production. That means victory.

You won't know in a game of MoO1 if you will get mega-blasters or phasers or disrupters. But you know you'll get ion beams. And you always start with nuclear bombs. Nuke bombs are all you need, if you don't have any more worlds to colonize. Or you want to beat down that nearby homeworld and invade it in the first 20 to 40 turns.

MoO1 favors the attacker. Just the computer is so dumb about it, that you didn't have to do much to protect yourself from the AI. However, the AI could not defend itself from you adequately. If it did what humans did, you'd attack it first because you wouldn't be willing to try and defend against it. The best defense is a good offense.

It's easier to play and win MoO1 using just a mobile, quick response fleet to defend your worlds then to defend your worlds with just missile bases. Why? Because your ships can be ship killers easier then the missile bases. In MoO2, that balance changes so that missile bases can truly defend worlds in the early and middle stages of the game. But not in MoO1. Whatever production you've put into missile bases would serve you better as ships... whether in fleet killers or bombers. Because you'd be able to move them where you need them. Missile bases are only useful to keep the AI's small bombing raiders away while your fleet is busy engaging a big threat (like a different enemy fleet).
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No, I'm talking about MOO1, from SimTex. I don't need DosBox, it plays fine on XP (without sound, which I don't want.)

You obviously play a very different strategy in MOO1 than I do. I never build attacking ships that early as they are so slow, and if an opponent does get missile bases up they are so much dead meat. Since I usually play on Impossible, they often get missile bases up quite quickly. I usually don't build attackers until I have sublight drives or better, though occasionally I am forced to make do with nuclear engines. I would think that construction and maintenance costs on a early bomber fleet would slow your own development down too much to be worthwhile. I may give your proposed strategy a try, but I'm skeptical.

I also don't see how you can defeat the Guardian with just Ion cannons without sending ludicrous numbers of ships. Ions do 3-8, and IIRC the Guardian has Class V shields. At that rate you are averaging about a point of damage per attacker. Even heavy Ion cannons are not that much better; you need bigger ships, and the Guardian's weapons are better suited to taking out bigger ships than they are to taking out small ships.

What size maps do you usually play? I suppose that it might be a bit easier to build a large fleet of bombers early on the largest maps. I always play on small maps. However, I know Sirian prefers larger maps, and his experiences seem a lot more similar to mine than to yours, and I know he plays on Impossible as well.

I prefer the largest map sizes. Gives you a longer game with longer possible peace snaps. If no AI is near you in startup, you can be up to significant tech.

You can go all out from the start... or go Psilon. Whatever you have fun at, go for it.

And I like sound, occasionally.

Yes, it did. But there was no picking involved. Only the category. And you had to be very careful, however, there were a few cross category prereq's. You could really get yourself in trouble if you did too much of the one category thing.

SMAC was probably conceptually the best of the civ type games. It was just so complex and complicated it outstripped the ability of its own ai to play it.



SMAC did not randomize tech's for the ai when you picked that option. Just the human player. I am given to understand that some of Galciv's ai's don't have their tree scripted. Others do. But they all tend to have the same things due to tech trades, Unfortunately.

Exactly. They indeed changed some of the alien's tech tree's at one point. I just changed mine to take advantage of that within 3 games.



If the puter beats you to final frontier it should count right then and there as a loss. Not just tech win not possible. NO WIN POSSIBLE. But alas. I've been totally outvoted over that one.

One of the biggest failings of the ai. It reacts to ships in its sectors, but if it's out of the sector, no reaction, and no reaction to 5 constructors just sitting there right next to its planet (and you know what 5 constructors make) Another weakness is even with 12 excalibers in orbet, no defense for a terror star. Boom, the ships and planets are gone. The ability of the human to Alphastrike with virtually no defense, coupled with the puters total inability to use the same is a big glaring weakness of the game. Also a completely nonexistant assortment of defensive ships late coupled with the computer's inability to use them hurts the game militarily. Really the only way you can lose this game is have the OOOPS you didn't spend on diplomacy and you insulted the Torians into declaring war. And even then, most of the meta crankers reload around that.

Moo had this aspect better. But in all fairness, Moo didn't allow travel except only between planets. It is much easier to make a better defensive military ai when all it has to know is attack anything that moves unless you have a non-aggression pact or alliance, warp out if you're totally outmatched, And everthing has to warp right to the planet (There was no way for you to hang out in space really close to EVERY ALIEN PLANET ALL AT ONCE and initiate an alpha strike. But that wasn't because its ai was better, It's just a feature of the way the game is.

You must be thinking of a different MOO. In MOO1, the techs in your research list were pre-determined when you started the game. No amount of research could change that.

That's why you have to use espionage to steal key techs from other races.