Master of Orion 3

love this game at first it was hard but once I researched all of my ship sizes and armour and crack elite soldiers it was fun and you can bomb any planet which is a plus most of all unlike most games now and even then you take your time and not rush through it and you can win and will win in the game oh just remember you can turn off the galactic president part so you play game and not worry about being voted out or your empire being destroyed quickly.

I fully accept that this is the worst game in the series. Unfortunately, this was my introduction to both 4X games, and sci-fi video games. As a result, I like it.

Tiny little computer controlled dots fighting other tiny little computer controlled dots

A sci-fi 4X. Has one of the most mystifying interfaces I've ever seen. I couldn't even figure out how to quit (clicking "Quit Game" does nothing.) An in-game tutorial offers some guidance but not nearly enough.

this is the worst continuation of the one the best 4x games of its time. the fact that a 28yr old game that can run in DOS is better than this by leaps and bonds is dumbfounding. I am truly disappointed. how can anyone that was making this think it will sell. on the upside its so bad that it helps you forgive some of the other trash thats made these days..

One of those games where the previous iteration of the game is significantly better. lots of things seem to have gotten worse since 2...

Disclaimer: Old game, used the minimal amount of patching to get it working i.e. Vanilla patch from Bhruic. I had originally planned to play it "pure" once for the authentic experience and then play a few more times with the Strawberry and Tropical mods for the fan-polished refined experience but... now that I'm on the other side of the first ordeal I don't think it's worth it anymore. I ain't gonna do it.

I grew up with MOO2 so I paid attention when MOO3 was announced. Then I remember at launch how middling-to-mixed the reviews and player responses were. I didn't buy a copy then. 50 years later I finally get around to playing it myself. Even with the temperance of time and allowances made for "it's an old game" this thing is a piece of crap. Not even saying that in comparison to the classic masterpiece of MOO2. This game came out in 2003, same year as Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. It has no excuse for looking this bad. Hell, its cinematics look worse than MOO2 which came out 7 years earlier. That's an eternity in video game development time. To be fair, sometimes the space combat looks alright but still not good. The rest of the UI looks flat, blocky, and ugly.

But enough about the book's cover. The gameplay? Boring. Unforgivably boring. This game purports to be on a much larger scale than previous installments; you're supposed to think of yourself as a big emperor who doesn't personally micromanage every little thing. You're supposed to delegate running the empire to viceroys and such. This is implemented in-game through the extensive use of AI. You aren't supposed to manage the build queues of individual planets, you just let the AI develop new colonies for you. You aren't supposed to control ships in combat, you let the AI do that for you, just sit back and enjoy the pixelated jaggy line light show. You don't choose what tech you want to research, let the AI do that for you. The AI designs your ships, your army compositions, builds your fleets for you, etc. Your job is just to set the overarching "policies" and then let the machine run. The problem is the AI is retarded, especially in combat. Focus fire? Optimal range? Never heard of it. The interface is so clunky to operate manually you just know the devs prayed you never wanted to look behind the curtain.

This game is like instead of driving the taxi and dropping off passengers YOU are the passenger and your role is to tell the driver where you want to go and then wait for him to get you there. Where's the fun? They managed to suck out all the fun, it's really quite remarkable. Even invading and conquering is reduced to a soulless chore or shuffling through screen after screen. Outfitting my ships with higher tech weapons just means a blue pixel beam rather than an orange one. No more enjoying the nuances of a plasma cannon vs a graviton beam. No compensating for crappy targeting computers with boarding party strategies. All of that self-made fun, gone.

I gave it a real honest shot, 191 hours for a full campaign. At first I won with an Antaran X win condition, then I reloaded and went for a classic Sole Survivor win. It was a total chore. The only people I'd recommend this game to are the kind of people who'd rather look at a spreadsheet of baseball stats rather than watch the game itself.

utterly ludicrous interface.. its just all over the place.. my dog could have come up with something better. honestly one of the worst interfaces I've seen. usability is close to ZERO. the 'hour' I spent trying this game out, will never be recovered!

MOO3 is really a fun game, it just needs a good instruction manual! It is complicated, but once you figure it out ... awesome, to conquer gigantic systems, all planets terraformed to Paradise, because you are the Master...

I played this through many years ago and just decided to try again. The nostalgia was not strong enough to outweigh how poor this game is when compared with more modern options. The AI is horrendous and the interface is extremely clunky. Many hours of clicking and micromanagement is required in order to build some semblance of a coherent empire. The scoring system is even worse. I just randomly lost a 287 turn game where I was first in military, population, tech level...everything except planet count. The NPC who hid behind me and took all the worthless planets he could ended up voted head of the counsel because he was randomly given a spot on the counsel and I was not at the beginning of the game. If you ever decide to play this game, definitely turn off the counsel leadership win condition...or at least make sure you are on the counsel...or you may play for 70 hours and then just randomly lose.

This game is not for casual gamers but for hardcore 4x players. I got this game when it was first released in 2003 after i had already received and read the Strategy Guide (which was released before). The game was broken (version 1.0) and it took many months before they released patches. So yes, the development of the game was bad and the release was even worse.

The 1.2.5 version is much better but has still different bugs. One of them is that enemy AIs will disband their troop transports if it takes more than one turn to reach another system, thus making it very hard for the AIs to invade enemy planets. Most of the Bugs have been corrected by Bhruic, so his patches have to be installed to make the game run as it should (you'll find the link in the forums).

Once you patch the game, you'll find one of the most complex and complete space 4x experience. It's still not as complex as they wanted to create it (it was simplified during the last year of development as they would not have managed to finish the game). It's a great game if you take the time to learn it.

I am a huge fan of the MOO series, but this game is a sack of turds... It honestly is the worst version of a management/idle game. The AI seems to be really arbitrary what it selects, no matter your funding or technology level, frequent RNG that sets you back 6-12 turns at a time, the graphics are worst than 2, and just... lacks a lot of love.

I appreciate the AI attempt to reduce the times spent on micro-management, but... it is a seriously failed attempt.

So, I used to totally enjoy playing this game. I liked playing the Psilons and I could out tech any other race to win. Seems like this new version is rigged. Even on easy, no matter how hard I try, either everyone else is right behind me, or ahead of me, even if I have tons more planets, and tons more research going in. On top of that, I check like ship numbers, and I've seen races with like overall military strength of say 10 ships go to hundreds in one turn. Seems like the game is cheating to me. No fun anymore. Not a fan anymore.

Absolutely awful. I put everything on auto and won by clicking next. About as much fun as playing an Excel spreadsheet.

Master of Orion 3 is the follow up of a series of games that were among the first of the 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) style of science fiction empire building games. If you are not familiar with 4X games, you start from a single planet exploring and expanding out to form new colonies.

Typically you research new technologies, build up planetary and system economies and starfleets, and exploit resources to further advance your empire into the surrounding space. You meet other empires doing the same and you can trade resources, have diplomatic relations, and even have war with these other empires who are all advancing their own causes as you are.

I bought all three Master of Orion games from the 1990's on up and have many more hours than listed above (there is a fourth iteration of the game as well.)

I remember waiting with bated breath for MoO 3; it promised a deeper (than the other MoO games) complexity and immersion into the interstellar commerce, politics, scientific research, and warfare among various star faring races and was supposed to be the epitome of the genre.

Sadly, there were flaws including not so great AI, dull bland colors, and a general feel of not being quite complete.

However, I still enjoyed the game with the AI and, more satisfyingly, online and it never locked up. It was the first game I ever played online. The ship design is intuitive and straight forward. Though you cannot upgrade existing ships, you can update the design of older vessels that have proven their worth.

I no longer own the version that I bought originally but I have the version that came in a package of games (along with the grand refurbishment, or redux, of Master of Orion that came out a few years ago) and it plays much better than the original MoO 3.

The game gives you a feeling of deep, unexpIored, beckoning, space not unlike Stellaris. I own and still play all 4 versions.

I do not know what you look for in a 4X game but if you like them you should give Master of Orion 3, and its sister games, a try.

Master of Orion 3 proves two things to me. One, that the 4X genre has evolved quite significantly over the past 16 years. Two, that my tastes have evolved quite significantly over the past 16 years.

I used to play the game quite a lot when I was 13. I remember being really passionate about it, busy building my empire even when I had a really bad tooth abscess (which I shamelessly used to get away from school for 2 weeks and just stay at home). Being my first space 4X game, I wasn't really bothered by the fact that there wasn't much to manage both empire-wise and planet-wise.

Unfortunately I am not 13 anymore, and I have played loads of other games since then.

So what do we have here? Really neat lore, building upon the legacy of the previous titles. Slightly over-complicated interface, but that's something you can get used to. (hell, I got used used to HUD in X2: The Threat, and MoO3 interface is a whole class better than that of X2)

The real problems begin when you try to manage your empire. There isn't that much to do on the empire-wide scale. You just set the sliders at the beginning of the game and there's no need to change them after that point. You also don't need to manage planets - the AI does a relatively OK job, and you really don't want to get entangled in that amount of micro-management, since you probably won't do a much better job anyways.

Not that these sliders matter much - it's never really explained how they exactly affect the numbers, and it almost always feels the same.

You also don't need to manage research - despite having several separate tech trees, you can't chose what gets researched next. You simply reach a level in a tech tree (say, physics or chemistry) and then the technologies on that level get unlocked. Then you proceed to research the next level. All you can do is set the sliders how much money you spend on each discipline, but as mentioned above, you just need to set them up at the beginning of the game and then forget they ever existed.

The computer opponents are half brain-dead, and even being 13 and not having much experience in 4x I didn't have much trouble defeating them. To make matters worse, wars feel sluggish and grindy, with you just bombarding one planet after another, moving down the lanes. No diversity in space or ground combat makes it even worse.

So what is MoO3 like overall? Grindy, sluggish, with not much to do really. Relict of an era long gone, that didn't age too well. The fact that it wasn't that great even when it came out doesn't make it any easier either. Treat it as a historical curiosity to be visited rather than played at any great length.

Ok, short version is that if you like true, grand, turn based strategy then I'd recommend Moo3 to you. You'll like it if you're a little on the OCD side of things but if not then you might struggle to appreciate ;)

Not so short version:
It wasn't completed when it first came out and it has both a few bugs and parts of the game that were left unfinished. But topped off with a few mods, and this for me is easily one of the most expansive, immersive and deep 4x space strats there is. It can be a little spread sheety, but honestly I like that. There is no other game that comes close to achieving what this game tried and arguable succeeded in achieving.

Has a top notch combat screen. A few bugs, obviously, but easily forgivable in my opinion. Compared to GCIII's current combat viewer, that of Moo3's is pretty consistent. I love how the grand strategy puts the player in control of just about everything. You can choose to auto-manage most things if you want. I think the beauty is in the finer controls. You can tweak just about everything. You can put troops on your planets and even choose precisely what troops go where, which is pretty unique.
You can design your ships on an interior level and the exteriors look great and are unique for each race category (there are categories for races, like Silicoid or humanoid) which has multiple factions. They look amazing for the time period the game was made in. I personally don't have a craving for ships more visually appealing.
Each race looks and feels at least a little different to the others. Which is way unlike the largely copy and paste jobs we get today. That goes right down to the way diplomacy works between the races. They have varied battle music, no unique techs persay and as I said diplomatically speaking every race feels characteristically different.
The grand campaign (honestly more of a free for all sandbox) feels administrative rather than a slog and every option you choose alters the way things play out. You can even build your ships and then deploy them to defend planets individually. It truly allows you to organise your empire in a personalized and unique way.

I also love how the realm of grand strategy and the realm of combat are totally alienated from each other in that even though they are both very much part of the same game, they are completely separate entities in look, feel and atmosphere. Grand strat is relaxing and go at your own pace(Unless you set a timer for yourself). Space combat is a little more in your face and demanding of attention. But visually it's pleasing and all of your military research pays off right there and then. Or you see how truly outclassed you are.

What they tried to do with research was brilliant. You have about 6 different categories of research and you can adjust how quickly they individually progress at the expense or benefit of other categories. You can also lock them in so they don't jerk around on you too much. Though it often takes about three turns of adjusting to make it set until you wanna adjust it again. All of them progress at the same time though and EVERY game is different. You can start games missing vital technologies and other games you can be quite well set to kick some ass. It's pretty cool because it can dramatically affect advantage or disadvantage at different stages of the game.
I've never seen another game with both such an extensive and intrusive research development element to it. It's one of my favourite things about this game because never has any other game (that I'm aware of) tried to do it. Which I feel is a shame. Actually not entirely true, space empires V had quite the extensive tech tree to it as well but did lack Moo3 tech tree's invasive nature. But that games maps always felt very confining to me.

Which brings me to my next point: The one big thing that truly makes this game shine for me is that no matter how many races I put in to the galaxies (max is 12-16 unmodded) I never ever feel confined or limited on options. GCIII does this pretty well too.

Diplomacy is a little over complicated for people to learn easily. It works better than say Rome: Total War. You can get stuff done, alliances work so long as it's mutually beneficial and like I said every race has a unique feel to it. And you can royally piss an entire species off just by picking the wrong responses over time.

It's complex as heck and hard to grasp and no matter what you do, at some point or another the other races will hate you, but it's a war game, and there ain't no Diplomatic victory condition. It's rather fleshed out and it really feels like each race has it's own unique... thing to it.
AI itself is... I wouldn't say stupid but more... flawed. I've rarely seen it deploy troops at it's planets and I don't think it knows how to use transport ships. honestly, if AI knew both how to use transpots AND how to get about without the starlanes, it would be pretty damned dangerous in this game.
But as is, at lower levels it's not much of a serious threat. However, if you let go on certain elements of the game tooo much it'll give you a good kicking and remind you it's still breathing. They'll happily sit there for a while and bomb the s.h.i.t out of your planets cuz it was probably designed by a cat simper :)

So, I fully recommend this game to anyone that likes Turn based grand strategy. I would recommend checking out some mods and installing them because they'll alleviate some of the bugs, even a lot of the major bugs and they add a lot of extra too.

And ignore anyone that says it didn't live up to the legacy of Moo 1 and 2. I've tried playing those and they're just... you feel like a giant fish in a tiny jar. I'm sure they were passable for their time but even back in it's day the Space Empires franchise was still going strong and with good reason. Seriously, the world has moved on. Moo3 would have been the pinacle of 4x space grand strat if it had been allowed to finish. As it stands it's still fairly good. An easy 6 out of 10 if I'm trying to be unbiased. (this score is based purely on vanilla without any mods). It's enjoyable but honestly does need polishing.

WITH mods, at least all of the vitals, I'd give it a 8.5/10 It only loses points because base game was never finished and the mods can only make up for so much, honestly.

The biggest detractor for me is that if they were gunna put it up on steam, it would have been nice for the original poster to also add a little finish to the game, or at least include the mods with game as well. A workshop would even have been nice. Also worth pointing out that this gvame is probably one of the most highly moddable games there is. BUT, if you want mods and to modify the game yourself, I'd recommend getting it on GoG. Works way better there.

Edit: Corrected a few keyboard fuck ups and elaborated on the scoring I gave the game a little more for a clearer picture.

My favorite strategy game of all time.

Turn based system control with real time combat.
Real time large scale combat, with customizable ships.
MASSIVE tech tree... never finished it ever in any game.

Some hate the "micro management" aspect. But the depth of game play is... amazing.

Especially with mods, like MegaMod or MoO3 Unofficial Patch Mod *Vanilla* v1.5.

http://www.moo3.at/mods/index.php

I have had this game installed on my computers for years. I still have the orginal CDs.
No other space strategy game has ever bested it, IMO. Especially the massive battles with mods.

Okay, I don't care what anyone else thinks: I LOVE THIS GAME

I have a really extensive background in 4x games. I played MOO2 a ton, unbelievable amounts of Civ and Alpha Centauri, Space Empires 3-5, Stellaris, Sword of the Stars, etc etc etc. Common to all is the concept of building an empire, but few ask "How do we simulate building an empire?" On the one hand, you have games where the concept is abstracted behind mechanisms that make the games fun to play. On the other, you have 4x games that simulate, and strive to be closer to reality. Of those latter, usually the game makes you feel more like a General who really has his hooks tight in the rest of society, because battles are easy to simulate and exciting to play.

MOO3 is different. It's the only game where I actually FEEL like I'm running an empire. The idea is, you set goals and targets, and your governors try to accomplish them. A micromanager will have a hard time letting go in MOO 3 because the entire UI is set up to discourage it. Rather than slotting in each component yourself, auto-generate and tweak the result. Rather than building each building yourself, set up building plans that work for you, and let your governors work out the details. If you really need something built, take that extra long turn and go to all your planets, ordering each one to build the ships you want. For the rest of the time, sit back and let the troop ships pile up. You'll end up needing them anyway.

I'm skipping over the cons of this game, granted, but there's plenty of that in the other reviews. Most of the gripes people have with MOO3 can be solved simply by reading the manual or clicking through the UI. The game does not hide its depth (something I really appreciate in games, by the way), so if you don't like to study up on a game's systems and learn by failing, this game is just not for you. One reviewer complained that engines are required on orbital platforms. He must not have seen that you can edit the max speed of the drives. By downgrading them to the T0 versions and setting the speed to 1 (not zero!), they don't take up any room at all and impart no movement, and if you keep editing your current designs you don't have to set it over and over again. MOO3 The game comes with a PDF copy of the manual, it's at the top level of the game's folder. Read it!!!! The story, by the way, is fantastic.
The old Strategy Guide (remember those?) is also a great resource, with some very helpful drill-down tables (PM me for a link).

I got this game when it first came out and I've never been quite able to shake it. My favorite experience in the game is ground combat. The planet's surface is presented in a cyllindrical projection and you can see the progress as your troops battle their way across. You get voiced-over updates on the progress as well, and can select from many tactics for your troops to use if you so desire. These are the kind of nice touches that I'm really puzzled to hear reviewers call "unneccessary" or "extraneous".

I also really enjoy the research system. Most people seem really put off by the lack of control over which specific techs you get. This means you really need to keep an eye on the notifications you get in the SitRep at the beginning of the turn. Research won't stop and wait for you, like it does in Stellaris. Imagine yourself as a ruler of a huge nation, and begin each turn by listening to the updates from your advisors. Contradictory information, unexpected results, unplanned occurrences, and deviations from the plan are as much part of life for a ruler as architecting a grand strategic vision. This game is the only one I've ever seen actually try to reflect that.

No, MOO3 isn't the greatest game ever. It's an extremely unique game, but that doesn't make it great. I love the game, had a blast replaying it, and hope my thoughts can help someone on the fence try it out or give it a second look.

By the way, there are fan-made patches out there that some say make the game a lot better. I plan to try them out eventually.

In simple words:
'Master of Orion 3' is the 'Mass effect 3' of my childhood.

I can't recommend this game enough!! Even dated as it is it,The feautures it Introduced are just starting to be implemented regularly nearly two decades later. That's how far ahead of it's time it was.

Those who claim the game was full of pointless information are wrong, As each race having an Alien background (...and well being aliens) respond to things diffrently...Even if you customize your demands and requests to each race,they have a chance to realize it. The amount of detail and love is felt in it's tired old bones. ~Also lore is fun,not pointless
Pros:
-Complex
-Expansive
-Custimizable (The galaxys are awesome in scale and Relic hunting is the funnest I've ever seen it it turned based game)
-More playable races than the reboot...Few games have more to this day.
-More Tech than the reboot...A very expansive tree,With tech specific to race even.
-More Advanced Diplomancy...To this day I haven't encountered Ai refusing to attack another target because it suspected the current three wars were of my making and ment to drag there allies into it thus taking pressure of a front, I dearly needed releived.(The amount of script that requires is mind blowing)

Cons:
-3/4 of the fanbase. (they are so toxic that they are still trying to kill this game. Despite it being three steps up in combat and mechanics comparativily to "ALL" other MOO series games...even the newest one.)
-Doesn't work in windows 10 without tinkering.
-Could look better...But still looks good enough to be fun to this day.

Personal prefrence:
-Steep Learning curve.
-Takes a long time to learn
-Difficult

Other notes:
The memorys from this game may have outlived the computer I played it on XD

~In space no One hears you Moo ; )

Do not be fooled by what all the negative people say. The game is in my opinion moo at it's best. It got a lot of negative publicity when it first came out because it was incomplete. As far as I can tell all the bugs have been fixed and it is a very deep and challenging game to play. Instead of commanding like five ships like in moo 2 you can command up to 150 apread across 10 task forces. The only problem I have is that the ships in tactical combat are really small and almost hard to see. The AI is a challenge and their are more races to choose from. Even the new remake of master of orion which I also own seems small and hallow like moo II. The colony management requires a brain yes and your AI will build crap ships if you let it. These can be taken care of by simply removing the crap ships you dont want built. You get way cooler techs in my opinion as well like fighter shields and armor. If you want just follow the brief tutorial and volia all is explained. Its called the masters notes. Don't take my word for it though I encourage you to try it for yourself and if you dont like it hell get a refund. You get a refund by going to "help" steam support and choosing the game you want refunded. If you have played less than 2 hours and owned the game less than 2 weeks it will give you your money back. The game IS time consuming. playing on a huge galaxy will take up to a month to win. The only other game that rivals in its epic scale is Distant Worlds Universe which I own the Disc Copy for and sadly has the flaw that the game becomes too ridiculous because it is all in RT and you will have to eventually automate a lot of features. I also remind you DWU costs 59.99$ where this does not. The combination of turn based/RT is perfect imo. The races migrate by simply hitting "migrate" on a planet instead of having to build stupid freighters and manually maoving the citizens. I was reading over some more of the negative reviews and will counter them. The Game is DEEP I mean really deep. even in early game if you want to play right you will can spend hours before you hit that turn button. One review claimed it was difficult to get out of the different and many window options there are. Here is how you get out of a winow. You hit the "ESC" key a problem Yyrkroon apparently had. An Aspect that no one addressed is the creation of ground forces. They do not auto generate. You build them from scratch., You can have an army of marines with psy ops and special forces attachments just like a real army. Also I bought and played the game when hero modders out there made the game as epic a babylon 5 sadly I dont think the mods will work. I call upon modders. something I have no idea to do to make the game great again. With mods you could have 1500 ships and 32 enemy races across 500 stars. That is the MOO III I remember. I correct myself you CAN get these mods the method of applying them though was beyond my limited expertise. The only game I ever modded was warhammer total war and there you just clicked on a mod and it worked.

I first experienced this game after I returned from a failed trip to leave the nest back in 2003. It was supposed to release in November 2002 in time for the holidays, when my father actually pre-ordered two copies, but instead was severely pushed back to FINALLY release at the beginning of February 2003.

To put it mildly, the game was a disappointment to the franchise. Years later it remains 'the game that should not exist' for all who really loved the genre. Infogrames had ambitions to make a Master Of Magic reboot after this project was finished. Unfortunately for them, and perhaps FORTUNATELY for so many of us, the company went bankrupt a couple months after Orion 3 released.

They had wanted so very much to remove all of the micromanagement from the game and let the player focus on other aspects. They dumbed down the planetary screen to the extent that you had to be a master tactitian if you wanted to set up your colonies how /you/ wanted them as everything about the civilian infrastructure was constructed inside 'DEA's and you could only have two per planetary region. These regions consisted of the main planet plus however many moons the planet had, which could be larger than the main planet itself.

Ship designing was dumbed down to the extreme as well. Yes, you could design the perfect ship to fly around in, but unless it was part of a massive pack of 180 ships (10 task forces of 18 ships each) it wouldn't last very long whatsoever. You had to either design a metric crapton of ships to fit your needs, because if you wanted a Carrier Fleet, an Indirect Fire fleet, or even a Short-Range or Long-Range beam weapon fleet, you had to sit there and /KNOW/ what the heck design went into the CORE, what went into the ESCORT, and what went into the PERIMETER of the fleet to even get anywhere. In the end I simply cheated by making /ALL/ of my ship designs the RECONNAISANCE type so I wouldn't have to worry about the nonsense and have all 18 ships in the same fleet be the same thing.

Space combat...what the flying fruitcake was this supposed to even be? They went from having a rather informative combat system that Microprose had in Orion 2 and came up with a 2d map that LOOKED AND SOUNDED like one would expect from the DEFENDER ARCADE GAME! Oooooh, I am so excited to hear 'bloop, boop, beep, pew-pew-pew!' for my weapon firing...NOT! Don't even get me started about the fact that you had to resort to community patches (which I never did) to actually get the sensor detection arrays and cloaking technology to work as they should have!

Research. What the hell? They went from being able to actually CHOOSE what you were wanting to take in a field and returned to the implementation Microprose went with in Orion 1! There was absolutely nothing you could do to manipulate what you got, either, for it was ALL RANDOMIZED the instant you started the game!

Planetary assault was a complete disaster. Sure you had your planetary bombardment phase but even THAT was dumbed down to be complete overkill. I want to drop only a few bombs? Nope. You drop a full THIRD of your arsenel or nothing at all and just HOPE you didn't...oh, you wanted those planetary buildings intact? Well, too bad!

Ground assault is even MORE horrid. All you have is a few check boxes and a drop-down menu displaying your choices of how to attack the enemy, regardless of whether you are attacking or defending. The 'radio chatter' is restricted to merely four sets of lines spoken by the supposed head military unit leading this invasion, or a sudden female voice if you go into a stalemate for the turn. Yes, the invasions can go on for MANY TURNS and is won or lost when one or the other has colored in a 2d graph representing the globe regardless of whether there are any units left on the losing side.

The way they had the code set up for the BC count was beyond abysmal. I had an instance where I had either 2 billion or 2 trillion BC in the treasury...and after clicking the turn button suddenly went from a positive number to a NEGATIVE number of the same value. Suddenly I've gone from being the richest empire to a sudden game over screen because my empire ran out of money. Years later I find out the reason being they did not put the money into numerical terms but hexadecimal format. Way to go, geniuses!

You want to refit your ships to outfit them with the latest upgrades that you've obtained on the newer designs? NOPE! Once your ships are in the air, you're stuck with what you have until you scrap the entire fleet or the entire fleet gets destroyed! Have first generation scouts scouting the galaxy looking for new systems to explore? Well, they just got passed by with your fleet having generation six engines! Why are they still in service to begin with?

The developers had a very, very interesting and nasty way of getting rid of the races that just about everyone liked in the previous games. Alkari, MrrShan, Bulrathi, Darlok, and so many others... They were reduced to the status of minor civiliations through the supposed actions of the Antarans who were ruling the Orion system now. The real reason? Oh, that reason can be discovered by the little gems hidden in the in-game encyclopedia if you search hard enough for all the ''deleted by Rantz'' stuff. Turns out they got rid of them all for the simple fact they had a very distinct hatred toward anything Anthropomorphic, and would have even made the Sakkra extinct if the community hadn't stopped them. So they just made the Sakkra into nagas.

Also, who the hell came up with the idea of having innate racial hatred for other races? The three Saurian species do not get along with the three Icthy-type (aquatic) species to the point that it will /always/ come down to: First turn - Contact. Second turn - Sanctions. Third turn - War. It's the same way with the Ithkul toward EVERYONE.

The game can just play itself if you simply let it. However, do not even try to tell the game to ''start on turn 5,000'' unless you are willing to just sit at your computer for many, many hours while you /WAIT/ for turn 5,000 to come by. The game WILL play out EVERY...SINGLE....TURN until the game is either lost, won, or that specified turn has been reached. Also, the number of opponents that you choose to have going against you is over and above however many physical players are going to be in the game. You can have up to 16 AI players in your game...plus however many human players you can somehow manage to scrounge up to play this utter failure.

I guess I will just stop there with listing all of this game's utter failures. If you want to go ahead with this game anyway, feel free. Just don't expect to find any enjoyment out of this very, very sad title.

While Masters of Orion 3 (MoO3) is not a perfect game in terms of its mechanics, it has a certain charm and humor to it that is lacking from many games. The efforts made to make the combat system work, the ability to customize ships, the cute and sometimes interesting tech descriptions, the variety of races, the hidden 3D galaxy map (It actually is 3D, you have to hit a certain key combo for it, I think it's page down?) give the game a charm. Are parts of it not polished to an ideal shine? Yeeeaahhh, but compared to a lot of newer games out there that are broken from day 1 and don't even approach being fixed when they're abandoned, MoO3 has a lot to offer.

And yes, I know, I have barely an hours, I actually owned a CD copy for like the past fifteen years and it's one of the few games I return to every half-year when other games I might play a match or two and then never pick it up again.

i dont really understant all the hate with this game

once you get past the ui that is clunky at times there is a deep immersive experience as you slowly plot your way to galactic domination

tech tree is extensive and very rewarding as you watch your ship sizes grow from specs on the screen to fielding 100+ ships approx 4x the size of earth

in order to complete the tech tree you need to steal or trade other peoples techs (every race gets unique techs)


if you can hadle a few hours of learning a very enjoyable experience

Horribly flawed and failed successor to two of the greatest turn-based strategy games of 1990's. The developers' ambitions and designs far exceeded their abilities and funding.

The user interface is busy and cumbersome with no clear calls to action and a good deal of information with no purpose. The interface fights the user at every step. It is far from obvious as to how one should navigate or even return to previously visited screens. Despite the numerous switches, toggles, and other interface elements, feedback is abysmal. For example, when designing a new ship, the game might tell the player the design is invalid, but it doesn't indicate why, or how to correct the flaw.

Behind the horrific UI are abysmal systems that attempt to remove the player from actually playing the game - by design!

The AI is beyond horrible. It is not uncommon for AI players to play with such a degree of passivity that it feels like there are no AI players at all, and the game turns into some strange space-solitaire.

While it promised a trade off of losing some features from the previous two games in exchange for existing new features and systems, it only made good on half the bargain: removing beloved features, but not introducing anything of significance to replace them.

I bought this game on its original release day, and again with the Master of Orion reboot.

Save your time for play something worth your time, instead.