I've been watching this on Steam for quite a while now, hoping it would show up here. I'm a fan of TBS games and have heard a lot of good things about MoO2, but was put off buying it because of the VERY dated graphics. Love the art style of this one, and the price is very decent too. Will probably pick it up while the sale is on.

Thanks. For me, less micro-management is a good thing. That's one of my primary gripes with MoO2. I'll take a closer look.

Was interested in this. Just like every Sci-Fi TBS game. But all it really made me do was play MoO again. Still waiting for a 4X to blow me away. Closest was SotS.

Getting the game running properly with the older ATI cards can be a bit of a hassle. I believe it should work without issues on almost all Radeon HD 4000, 5000, and 6000 models, assuming you install the latest available drivers as per that link. But, there's a strange issue that we've seen come up for one user, that appears to be tied to his Radeon HD 7800. As best as we can tell, that exact model is stuck in a sort of awkward limbo between the older Catalyst Legacy Drivers and the newer Crimson drivers. Alamar was eventually able to work around the issue, but it was a messy fix. If anyone else has a Radeon HD 7800, and has success, or trouble, running the game, please let me know.

Have you tried Birth of the Empires?

I've already bought it on Steam, so here's hoping a for a GOG Connect deal in the future :-)
It's more or less a one-person 4X game, so have realistic expectations.

I did write a "review" for it on GOG, rating it 3/5, in the Games Finished thread.

In a nutshell. The negatives: balancing issues in terms the AI and resource gathering, there's not much you can do with your supposed trading partners. It was pure military numbers that decided the game.

The positives: the game is very easy to learn and get into, the menues were well-organized and the interface was clear of clutter, there's some humor in the game, a nice variety of unique factions, the visual style is very appealing, great soundtrack.

You can automate what you build on each colonized planet, where the game decides what the best thing to build is, given your current level or status. There's also an autocombat option. So the game does have functions that make the management stuff less tedious.

Looks great. But why no multiplayer? I loved playing Moo2 in multiplayer :/

OpenGL, but no Linux binary. It looks like an interesting game, but unless I get confirmation that it at least works on Wine with Mesa GL drivers, I'll pass (and even then I'm kind of wary). I've already got enough broken games in my gog account that I'll never be able to play without pumping more effort and/or money into than it's worth.

Nice to see this game here. Will definitely pick this up at some point.

This game is superb. Seriously. Instabuy.

Nuff said.

How good is the AI? Does it cheat? Does it hold itself? Does it seem like real player? Are there easy exploits? Difficulty levels?

Does it work in Wine?

Our intention with the AIs is that they should behave more like NPC's than an artificial standin for a human player. AI's can be manipulated using the influence resource, and players can use that resource strategically to overcome difficult situations. On the harder difficulties, the AI's will have both advanced starts (higher base techs), and increased raw production capacities.

No. At least, not the last time I checked. We'd like to put out a proper linux build eventually (ditto for OS X), but that will be a fairly big project, and right now our focus is on continuing to improve the base game.

Been waiting for this game to come to GOG.com.

Instabuy.