I liked moo 1 more than Moo 2 - which was too much micromanagement and too easy with creative races who get all 3 techs at once.

Gal Civ 2 would have to be my most favorite, with MOO2 being a close second. Birth of a Federation would be third. I have also played SotS, DW, MOO1, and ES. ES is a pretty good game, but it needs a lot of work to reach my top 3.

I voted for Gal Civ 2 and MOO2. Those are my clear favorites, and they are the standards I use to compare to other games. I've liked other games on that list as well.



I like what I've seen in Endless Space so far, but I think it has a long way to go to match the masters of the genre. I hope the developers deliver, but from my experience with other games, the incentive to develop dries up pretty fast after the initial splurge of sales. Hopefully, they go with a mini-expansion model like Sins. I'm not adverse to paying for more content. I'd rather do that than have none at all.

Endless Space bc its the only1 i played!

One of my 'oldie' favorites was "Reach for the Stars".... Anyone remember that gem?

Stargem wrote:
Would it be possible for the Supernova team to use Kickstarter to make the game? I would very much like to see Stars! to make a return.



There have been an number of projects like Dead State, Xenonauts, Grim Dawn, Republique, Banner Saga, Wasteland 2, and many more that have obtained at least $100,000 dollars from donations and pre-orders through Kickstarters. You might want to look into Paradox Interactive for publishing, as they historically allowed extensive patching and expansion of games after they are released. (They specialize in strategy games, too.)

Thanks for the suggestion.. but I was just another developer. I think Jeff has moved on to other things. Plus I don't own the rights to the code, Empire interactive does.



Oh well, ES fills in nicely for me. I am thinking about getting into modding ES... who knows. I would love to have a map based on actual known stars in our galaxy or from Stars! (like some of the goofy names)



- Jason

Mick wrote:
I voted for Gal Civ 2 and MOO2. Those are my clear favorites, and they are the standards I use to compare to other games.

It should be remembered that when it was first released GalCiv 2 was only a pale shadow of what it later became after 2 expansions. (Frankly, many of it's game mechanics back then, such as the economic system, we're ridiculously flawed in design, far worse than what's currently off kilter in ES.) So comparing ES as it is now to a game which has been polished over a period of years does not provide much insight into relative quality.

nats wrote:
I still think ES has the potential to be up there with the great MOO2 - dont forget a lot of the MOO2 votes are nostalgic only and some of those people probably wouldn't choose to play MOO2 today even if the graphics were updated. We tend to forget the limitations of old games and only remember the great bits. I didnt play MOO2 myself but I cannot believe it was quite as good as some people say it was. There are several games I loved from that era as well but I wouldn't play them today. Even my favourite 4x game, Stars!, which was a great game in its time looks terrible compared to the present games.



Games in those days had more gameplay but less time spent on their graphics. Games these days have to have more time spent on their graphics to compete. It puts a limit on the amount of gameplay the devs can add. In many ways we are the sowers of our own doom, expect high graphics and we get less game for our money.



Personally I wonder what a game would be like of it had MOO2's gameplay and ES's graphics! Wouldnt that be a game to behold!!

I played MOO2 recently, with the copy I got from Good Old Games. Even now, it's better than most other space 4x games (and I've played a lot of them -- check my blog post in my profile for the list). And yet, I only played one game of it before I set it aside and moved on. It didn't have whatever it is that makes me want to fire up another game right away. Which was proof to me that my memories of it were indeed colored by nostalgia. And yet, I still liked it better than anything else currently on the market in the genre. And then I found ES.



ES, even though it still continues to need polishing, gave me back the feeling I used to have with MOO1 or MOO2 of not only wanting o play "one more turn" but also of wanting to fire up another game when I finish the one I'm currently playing.

Theodotus wrote:
It should be remembered that when it was first released GalCiv 2 was only a pale shadow of what it later became after 2 expansions. (Frankly, many of it's game mechanics back then, such as the economic system, we're ridiculously flawed in design, far worse than what's currently off kilter in ES.) So comparing ES as it is now to a game which has been polished over a period of years does not provide much insight into relative quality.

I hear this argument a lot when it comes to mmorpgs. Why shouldn't someone compare a recently released game with one that has a lot of time dedicated to polishing it? Especially when it comes to answering the question of which game is better. Any person's opinion on what games they liked is welcome when answering this question. However, trying to undermine others' opinions of a particular game by stating that they should compare the launches of games. That is underhanded and wrong.



This poll is about people's opinion of which game they think was their favorite. It is not the place to try and undermine others' opinion of games that you personally don't agree with.

Best SI-fi Games? Hmm

Well tru historo i play loots of games si-fi but one of my best are bean Sins of Solar Empire, Birth of Federation, Haegemonia Legions of Iron with expansion Solon Heretige, Nexus Jupiter incident, Still didint play ES bicouse i still cant pass the loading screen of the ships

Endless Space has potential, but like other 4X games in the past, they always use 3 different weapon types and 3 different defense types and require you to use all 3 to be fully protected, this is what makes a 4X game fail for me, this is why Master of Orion 2 is by far the best 4X game and no game, not even Endless Space will beat it.



There is still hope the developers of this game will make the right choice and combine all 3 of those defenses into shields and armor and make all 3 weapon types go through them to get to the hull to destroy the ship, instead of gambling that they have the right defenses for the fight.

nats wrote:


...dont forget a lot of the MOO2 votes are nostalgic only and some of those people probably wouldn't choose to play MOO2 today even if the graphics were updated. We tend to forget the limitations of old games and only remember the great bits. I didnt play MOO2 myself but I cannot believe it was quite as good as some people say it was. There are several games I loved from that era as well but I wouldn't play them today.

I cant agree with you MOO 2 IS really quite good, in fact there is almost nothing to make better (except fast research maybe), and there are no limitations from being "old"game. Spying/counterspying, big diplomacy, perfect combat system, balanced races, as somebody wrote above - really interesting tech tree with original techs (nothing repeat), there are also modifications of weapon and ships themself, planet limitations (heavyG, radiant etc), you can destroy planet (bombard/stellar), damage it to slow enemy (bombardement to killing population, defence and buildings) or you can conquer it (then you can loose that planet if not guarding it as conquered citizens are not happy being conquered). There are also "heroes" ("military or civilian"), giving bonuses. You can not only destroy ship in combat (using missiles, beams, ignoring shields, armor, hitting engines..) but you can board and claim ship, which you can use or reverse for receive tech you didnt discovered yet. If you play smaller universe, every single ship, every single planet counts. I know i forgot a lot of stuff, just what I remember now... In MOO2 there are so, so many things in one game, which I never seen again in any other x4 game, everytime it had something, but something else missed.



Yes, there are many very nice x4 games during "history", but IMO Master of Orion 2 remains its king, no matter of age. If you can, get DOS (for dosbox) or WIN version, patch it and give that game some hours. You will see yourself, that this game and every bit serious strategy player deserves it

MOO2. It was my first real experience with the genre and my first experience with a game that found me looking up from the screen in total shock to see the sun rising. This has only happened a few times since. Diablo 1, Borderlands, and last night with ES. I still like the combat better (so far) in MOO2, but ES is the first 4x since then that I think has come close. Gal Civ was OK though. MOO3 blew bad.

My favs are: ES, Stars!, Other - Ascendency.



Never interested in playing MOO

GC/GC2 didn't play much was dull & boring to me

1) GalCivII and all expansions

2) ES - 4x multiplayer worth playing? HOLY MACKEREL

3) Colonization (thanks to my 486, I was playing this when you were playing M00 :/)

4) Distant Worlds for sheer cheese? petril! threethousandsuns?!?!?!!?

Starflight



never seen its equal in adventure play (put a crew together, upgrade a ship, explore the universe)



otherwise, MOO2 is probably my favorite 4x... and yes I still like it more than ES

Hmmm, it was not too hard for me to choose MoO, but that is because I have probably played more hours of it than any game or series. Heh, then again, I have put in way too many hours of space 4X games over the years.



MoO 1 had a simplicity to it that made it really easy to play for long hours. The sheer power of creative races though was pretty imbalanced.

MoO 2 had its own charm in its scope. My only complaint was how god awful the micromanagement got when you had 100+ systems. That said, I am shocked at how SLOW turns are on all games we play now even though our computers are so much faster.

MoO 3, I have to defend this game a bit. The developer was told to ship it before it was done. Which is unfortunate, as someone who modded it quite a bit, I can vouch that there was a lot of depth and potential to the game. RIP Master of Orion.



SotS is one I had a lot of fun with. The combat was pretty spot on. It was nice to have so much to do with it. I honestly wished you could have modded it more though. The tech tree was so god awful SMALL that I just wanted to add in a bunch more tiers, but their "code only tech" made it basically impossible to add onto.

SotS 2, see MoO 3, only with less potential. There is something about the UI and how terribly slow turns are that drove me away. I know they have patched it a lot, but I just have not been able to bring myself to give it another shot. I didnt cancel my game account at all, I want to give them a chance to make it right.



SoaSE was a nice change of pace. It just borrowed too much from RTS games to really make me feel like I was in charge of an empire though.



Star Ruler was another nice unique concept. There were just two glaring flaws. Ships bigger than the solar system they were made in and a lack of real techs. Once you got the economy down, it just got silly too fast.



AI War.... I dont know what to say about it. It was fun, but once you got good at it, it just lost any fun for me for some reason.

You know what I find frustrating is that my favourite two 4x games are almost bottom of this poll. Just goes to show how differnet people can be!! You never can tell what people will like. But they were both very niche games. You had to send away to the developer to get Space Empires 4 I seem to remember. And Stars! - I only ever seen in one small gaming shop well after it had been released and bought it on impulse. The other games all had bigger budgets mass coverage. I have to say though I dont think this poll reflects how good the game is rather than which ones people played the most. But I suppose thats polls for you.

Endless space is actually my first 4X game....heck, my first strategy game. While I can't really vote, I can say that Endless Space has given me a very smooth and enjoyable introduction into space 4X games. It's starting to become one of my favorite games in general, and based on how involved the community and devs are, it will probably stay on my "Favorite Games" list for quite some time. I will more than likely preorder the next game by Amplitude Studios when they start it up.

Sins of a Solar empire is RTS S-F , not 4X.

Well its a 4X RTS - and not a bad one