[Freeciv-Dev] Re: What we can learn from MOO3

[Raimar Falke <rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 06:02:46PM -0400, Alan Schmitt wrote:
> Another game that might be worth to look at (in the same domain) is
> Galactic Civilizations. They made quite a few mistakes as concerns the
> interface (not enough help during the game, mostly), but playing this
> game is just great, and replayability is amazing.

I spend 12h yesterday to play one (1) game on a small map. It would be
less if I recognized earlier that I can move my death^W^W^W^W^W
terror-stars.

My summary: nice. It is more like Civilization (well the name says so)
than like MoO. You have a grid-map. You have places which yield random
results if you visit them (huts) (they have an auto mode for
this). You have problems with happiness/moral. You have to research
governments and change to them. You later also have a senate which
votes if you are allowed to declare war. You have a predefined set
(about 20) of ships. And the fight is also like in Civilization mostly
unit against unit without a special fight screen. They also took the
culture from civ3. The ships and techs descriptions are funny. There
are references to 42, 286 and Britney Spears in them ;)

What I didn't like is that you can't control the agenda on the council
meetings. In moo3 you are allowed to bring in minor actions. The
elections aren't important anymore at midgame since the penalties
don't have such an impact.

Although also not all elements got tooltips you aren't lost like in
MoO3. I didn't found an in-game help system. The RMB is used to mark
the destination of a goto/enemy to attack. 

A good thing about the interface is the graphs interface which is
almost all the time visible
(http://www.galciv.com/images/screenshots/8162002122540AM.jpg at the
middle of the right side). Also nice was the split into the left side
(80%) and the right side (20%). What is displayed can be changed
independently.

Also nice was that you good visual feedback at the diplomacy screen:
yellow for they-won't-accept-this and green for they-will-agree. This
however allow some kind of light cheating: if you have a deal
tech-vs-tech for example which is green you add money of the other
side till it turn yellow. If this behavior of the players was so
expected they it would be nice if the game had a add-money-till-yellow
button.

Alan can you answer me some questions about the game? Starting from
the middle I had money problems. At 3/4 of the game it was something
like this: I collected 700 with taxes, 100 with traderoutes (they have
limited the number at the start. I had no idea how to increase it even
when I hold 60% of the global might). However I could have spend
4000. So I can only spend 20%. This rate occasionaly also got down to
15%. What did I wrong? In my home sector I had 4 planets (lucky) and I
build 2 full star bases. Not enough or too many star bases. So what I
made it selling my techs to the AI. I got deals like 750 for 30 turns
which was quite nice for 2-3 high techs. The last enemy had only one
planet left. He wanted peace. I requested all his money and he
accepted. So I got 15k. This was only enough to drive my economy at
100% for 3 turns.

Also when I used the worklists they rebuild trade goods and wonders
which are already built. I think this is a bug. Related: it doesn't
look like you get the production money back if you build "nothing" on
your planet.

        Raimar

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