Comment by guard-of-terra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guard-of-terra | Hacker News Reader

I think that Alpha Centaury is one of the best games and it also beats Civ with all due respect (Disclaimer: never played recent Civ games, has dislike for history and fan of Science Fiction).

It is very atmospheric. From all kinds of blurbs and cinematic linked to scientific breakthroughts, buildings, projects and factions you assemble puzzle in your mind which makes towards an awesome SF plot of dystopian future on hostile planet with distinct characters, ups and downs, secrets and revelations.

And the gameplay is awesome too, spent many months on it. Many things in this game are configurable via text configs. Graphics are available for tinkering too.

UPD: Having said all that, Master of Magic, non-Sid Meyer game, is still more potent than everything he made. A true jewel, perhaps underappreciated. It has turned 20 and I play it every few years and it never gets old. And I know nothing about people who made it.

Master of Magic was about the best and I think they used the Civ engine as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Magic

Many attempts to remake the game failed.

It is like the Bard's Tale series, hard to remake. The Bard's Tale remake was not as good as the original series for MS-DOS, Amiga, Apple //gs, Atari ST etc.

And if anyone was a fan of the Master of Orion series (as they should be), it's getting a new game: http://www.gog.com/game/master_of_orion

I'm wary of it, but looking forward to it at the same time. I'm hoping for something like the XCom revival, but...

On the other hand, I recently started playing MOO2 again and it's just as fantastic as ever. Brilliantly balanced, quick to play, lots of different strategies, etc. I haven't found a 4X game since that really quite got all of the things right.

Try MoO1, a much better game. MoO2 is way too bloated for its own good.

(Get a recent fan patch for MoO1, if you play it.)

Even though I've spent more hours in MOO2, I also agree MOO1 is better. The mechanics make it a funner game.

Have you checked out http://www.moo2mod.com/ ? It's a great community keeping the MOO2 spirit alive :)

I love Master of Magic as well! It's a shame the game has so many bugs. Fans have done a marvelous job fixing a ton of the bugs using fan made patches, though! [0]

[0] http://masterofmagic.wikia.com/wiki/Mod

FYI, Alpha Centauri (with an _i_) was designed by Brian Reynolds, not Sid. Even so, it came from the same pedigree and I totally agree -- amazing game!

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