1996, Game of the Year

[Jumpin]

Bofferbrauer2 said:

Again going with Other

Master of Orion 2: Battle at Antares (or MO2BA for short) is a masterpiece. Still know all my standard picks for race creation: Dic/Cre/Sub/Ric/Lar/Spy-/GrC-/ShD-.
Being Creative more than makes up for all the malus easily by the midgame, especially since subterrean already cancels out the ground combat malus at home. Subterrean also doubles the population limit, which means by the endgame my planets can out outproduce even UniTol races by al large amount.

Master of Orion 2 was a fantastic game as well. Stellaris is heavily inspired by this game, for those unfamiliar with the MoO series. MoO2 is to space-based 4X as Civ2 is to earth based 4X games.

My opinion: Master of Orion 2 in 1996 was superior to Stellaris. I find Stellaris (especially today) is bogged down with too many modifiers and mechanics, and the excess of information gives a lack of clarity on how all these modifiers impact or manifest in relation to the core game experience. Paradox Games works a lot better as a grand strategy developer than a 4X game developer. With grand strategy, it’s almost more about the story that players make for themselves in the sandbox (mostly) and modifiers (while important) are less important than in 4X games - they’re almost like a part of the flavour. I don’t think they’re translating that grand strategy development experience as well to the 4X experience as Master of Orion 2 did back in the 1990s - 4X needs simplicity and clarity around all modifiers so that it’s always obvious what strategies you’re developing. I’m not saying that Master of Orion 2 would necessarily be a good fit for 2023, just that it felt like a better game in 1996 to 2002 (about the frame I played it) than Stellaris has been. Stellaris is still probably the second best game in this branch of 4X - but even the bad Paradox grand strategies are still only topped by other Paradox Games grand strategies - they still top all Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Total War games - they didn’t bring that dominance to 4X, IMO.