Get the unofficial patch!

[Salamander]

I actually liked this game a lot back in the day in spite of the bad press. I get it though, the game was bugged and not working right, even with official patches which never fixed it completely. HOWEVER the community did an *awesome* job of fixing it and making it very playable and very fun, what it was meant to be. Please make it a priority to download the unofficial vanilla patch at least, or you will encounter bugs.

[Wraith_Magus]

The problem with MoO3 wasn't the bugs, it was design failures. "The way it was meant to be" was a terible game involving pointless micromanagement of things like the production tripod. The dominance of the "Gas Gods" was not a bug, it was 100% deliberate work by people who had zero concept of game balance.

I really dislke how every time there's a game wth bilndingly awful game direction and flagrantly awful design choices, it's treated like the only problems were the bugs,as though the only distinction between a great game and an awful one is whether all the exceptions have good handlers.

[Ataximander]

The patch messed up my executable, when I tried to fix it it has issues with DirectX

[MightyPaladin]

don't use the exe that comes with vanilla/straberry/tropical/whatever. Use the steam exe.

Make sure to use the Moo3patcher on the steam exe and enable all the mods except the last one - 16 bit windowed mode no work with 64 bit OS

also, the directx unavalible thing is a generic crash. For some reason that's the splash screen the devs chose to use O_o

[Ataximander]

Originally posted by MightyPaladin:

don't use the exe that comes with vanilla/straberry/tropical/whatever. Use the steam exe.

Make sure to use the Moo3patcher on the steam exe and enable all the mods except the last one - 16 bit windowed mode no work with 64 bit OS

also, the directx unavalible thing is a generic crash. For some reason that's the splash screen the devs chose to use O_o

.
Generic crash?

Also, any chance the old cheat mod works with these?

[MightyPaladin]

think of it as that annoying windows popup that says your program has suddenly stopped working. The crash dosen't necessarily have anything to do with directx

[FiretronP75]

Where's the best place to find and use the latest unofficial patch?

[Ataximander]

Originally posted by MightyPaladin:

think of it as that annoying windows popup that says your program has suddenly stopped working. The crash dosen't necessarily have anything to do with directx

Well, it's rendered the game pretty much unplayable. It never gets beyond the first turn before it crashes.

Guess I'll just go for the finance and stuck tech fixes. They're my biggest problems anyway.

[Siddha]

Originally posted by Wraith_Magus:

The problem with MoO3 wasn't the bugs, it was design failures. "The way it was meant to be" was a terible game involving pointless micromanagement of things like the production tripod. The dominance of the "Gas Gods" was not a bug, it was 100% deliberate work by people who had zero concept of game balance.

I really dislke how every time there's a game wth bilndingly awful game direction and flagrantly awful design choices, it's treated like the only problems were the bugs,as though the only distinction between a great game and an awful one is whether all the exceptions have good handlers.

it annoys you that some people liked the game back in the day
and still like it

For some people the Moo3 design and gameplay is excellent
They enjoy it

if you don't that's fine
But you do not get to judge for others
you should understand that

What you wrote is your opinion
which is fine

[burtod]

Originally posted by Siddha:

it annoys you that some people liked the game back in the day
and still like it

For some people the Moo3 design and gameplay is excellent
They enjoy it

Yeah, I enjoyed it because of the scale. And you don't HAVE to micro it. The whole Empire-screen developmental plans will get the computer to best guess planetary development, and military queue gets jammed with ground troops mostly, but will churn out ships and ships and ships once you get a strong industrial base. It is a very different design strategy, but flopped due to a lot of bugs (Just google the vanilla moo3 patcher to see what needed fixing).

I actually prefer the tropical mod that introduces game changes, and totally love the expanded encyclopedia and the default ground troopx10 construction.

Another good mod is "Long Live Leaders" which keeps the special characters around until you dismiss them. They are supposed to be special, and I hate it when the AI wipes them out, killing one after another with a spy in 4 turns. Then there's 200 turns of no recruitment lol.

[stp602]

Where can I find the Vanilla patch?

[burtod]

Originally posted by stp602:

Where can I find the Vanilla patch?

www.moo3.at/mods/ is the current mod depository. Current being relative, of course. I am currently playing Tropical 1.3.11, which you can find through your favorite search engine. There are a lot to choose from. It is medium difficulty to get everything installed properly, but I have been playing 300+ turn games with the tropical patch, no issues.

Just don't look for the ancient Atari/Quicksilver MOO3 forum, their plug got pulled awhile ago. The Encyclopedia Mod actually contains a lot of the strategy articles that were written about the game on that forum.

Good luck

[stp602]

Thank you much.

MOO 3 was my introduction to the 4X genre. In spite of the dated graphics, this is still the greatest 4X game ever made, in my humble opinion.

I installed the tropical mod and used the plugin system to patch the game, with no problems. I am thrilled.

[Zanteogo]

Originally posted by Wraith_Magus:

The problem with MoO3 wasn't the bugs, it was design failures. "The way it was meant to be" was a terible game involving pointless micromanagement of things like the production tripod. The dominance of the "Gas Gods" was not a bug, it was 100% deliberate work by people who had zero concept of game balance.

I really dislke how every time there's a game wth bilndingly awful game direction and flagrantly awful design choices, it's treated like the only problems were the bugs,as though the only distinction between a great game and an awful one is whether all the exceptions have good handlers.

Yup, mind you it does have it's fair share of bugs. Much more than most games.

For the record, I actually do like some of the things MoO3 did. It's just that everything wasn't "glued together" well.


Perhaps someday I will give it another go with one of the player mod.

[RobertS]

For me, MOO3 tried to re-invent the series, it tried to change almost everything from MOO1 n MOO2.
Some of it was well thought out while other areas like diplomacy was left in infant stages. I still play it now and then because I do love the "scale" of it and your planet screens with all the data has never been equaled. To each their own... :)

[Hate Bear]

The interface is too clunky. That's really the worst thing. If someone modded that, it would be top tier...mostly to get to planets a bit easier. As it is, that's really the biggest issue.