Master of Orion

Unplayable. after a few turns the game enters an andless loop of "processing turn" that cannot be circumventrd in any way.

This my carpal tunnel friendly 4X strategy game. No sound required, tv in the background friendly. Play single player against AI whenever other games in the rotation don't sound appealing at the moment. Kinda like playing chess, it takes some time to finish a game, but not paradox deep micromanagement. Space 4X - Galaxy eXploration fun, Planet eXpansion fun, enemy eXploitation okay, eXtermination (war) fun. Colony development, Fleet/ship design and Logistics all fun. Much better than Civ to me, I've played all the Civs and this since MoO2, this is a good version. After experience with vanilla, these mods take the game to the next level: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=800155077 It's not the latest and greatest FPS, RPG, RTS, Open World Hack n Slash.. but it is classic strategy fun and it won't aggravate your wrist. Use mirv missiles early-mid game and don't have the weakest military.

I play tons of 4x. There isn't a major 4x I haven't played. TBH; I think most of them aren't very good but I always try to love them... (because the good ones are great). This game got panned on release. I assume that's because MoO 2 was so beloved. The reality is, this is a great 4x. It's a little simple compared to Stellaris, but it's far nicer to play. It's kind of a shame they never made a sequel because you could have gone somewhere with this.

pretty good. highly recommend the 5X - The Ultimate Balance Mod, and if you have performance issues, make sure to use the Unofficial Code Patch Steam Workshop (if you use both, make sure to use the 5x compatibility patch as well)

It's clean, it's stable. It's not as complicated as some of the 4x space civs. Finaly a 4x that'll just let you relax and enjoy terraforming, turning the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ corner of your galaxy into a beautiful garden. And then blow up your enemies homeworld for the slightest altercation. The turn the rubble of their homeworld into a barren world, colonise it, and terraform it into a beautiful garden. It's a peaceful life.

Raw and a lot of bugs. Some mechanics doesnt work at all. Feeling nostalgic? Better play the original one

TLDR: WIth 5X + UCP + tactical mods, one of most enjoyable 4X space strategy around, even though bit casual experience. I am often careful of reboots of old games I liked (MoO2 in this case) as they are usually far below the original. In case of MoO:CotS I must applaud the result. Imho they managed very well and game is well playable and enjoyable. I am often not into Eyecandies but whole gameplay is kinda less serious sci-fi "cinematic" experience. I actually like each race models and voiceacting, same as the cinematic mode for battles. Strategic and tactical formulas are bit simple - eventually leading to universal preferred strategies (eg. early there is no point use other than missile weapons and so on) but overall all research, economy, diplomatic and spy options + ship designs and tactical combat are more than servicable. The base game has visible unbalance in races and few things, same as few annoying bugs - this all is addressed by great UCP and 5X Mods. Add Tactical over it that rebalance weapons and AI utilization of those and you have in hand very good game. All things considered I have same if not better fun with MoO than Stellaris - sure it lacks Stellaris complexity in almost everything and one thing I miss are end game crisis (in MoO you simply snowball and know you won at some point, there is really nothing that shape the galaxy later on - in this Stellaris is way better) But what does, it does quite good. I like building my empire in the light tone and repetitive GNN jokes. Combat if played tactically is quite decent, reward mostly good ship design vs enemy but position ships around or hide small torpedo frigates behind shielding titan to attack at right moments (or kite around with your long range missile launchers:p works well and is fun - but in particular on easier difficulties you can just turn on cinematic mode and let AI make space debrish show for you. With unique models and animations per race it is quite impressive. All in all MoO quickly became member of my top 4X Space games - the other two are Sins of the solar Empire and Stellaris. Comparing pure fun, I would even say MoO is winner (and also do not need 200+ USD DLCs to had its intended content:p until Sins 2 will be out (and hopefuly it will be total blast forming genre for next decade) and with named mods I highly suggest give MoO chance if you are fan of originals or not, you should not be disapointed.

This is basically a graphically enhanced reboot of the classic MOO 1 and 2 games of the 1990s. The current version of the game has proven stable with no crashes in nearly 300 hours of gameplay. You have a choice of ten races to play in the base game, each with their own traits, strengths and weaknesses. I have discovered through play that the races are not too well balanced - Meklar and Klackon are probably the strongest, with Mrsshan being the weakest - although knowing this can help to make games more interesting by using it as a handicapping system... Multiplayer also works fairly well, and was stable for the two games I played. Space battles always use the auto-resolve option in multiplayer, presumably to save time since they can be lengthy endeavours. I found myself using auto-resolve in single player games for the battles most of the time anyway, so this wasn't an issue for me. Ship designs can be modified using the blueprint editor, or even scrapped entirely. Colony management is very similar to the 90s games, with colonists being assigned to either research, farming food or production projects. You can set a per colonist tax rate for your empire, and use the game currency to rush builds in order to complete them in 1 turn. Terraforming projects are the exception, as these cannot be purchased in order to rush complete them. There are 5 possible paths to victory in each game. The first 4 are Conquest, Technological, Economic, and Diplomatic. The fifth is simply to have the highest score after a set number of turns (default is 500). Diplomacy with other races is fairly basic but serves it's purpose. You can set up embassies, trade treaties, research treaties, non aggression pacts, alliances and so forth. You can also build a spy centre and then train spies either to sabotage or steal from other players, or for use in counter-espionage to protect yourself from enemy spy activity. The game also has workshop support. I haven't tried any of the mods yet, but some of them do come highly recommended. Overall this is definitely a worthwhile purchase for anyone who enjoys 4x space strategy games. 9/10