orcishgamer: This and maybe GalCiv2, it's shocking but it seems like it must be hard as fuck to do a fun space 4X and whether MoO2 stumbled onto one of the few successful formulas by pure accident, or the recipe is simply not well understood by those trying to make them, there just hasn't been that much...
I do think most of them go wrong when they sacrifice fun for "realism".
LordCinnamon: My opinion is that they often fail at making research have effects other than just increasing numbers. In MoO2, a lot of the research didn't just make you better at something, it gave you something new and unique.
I can't remember much like that in, for example, GalCiv2. Almost everything you could research there just gave you +X on Y, or a building/weapon that gave you +X on Y. The only exception I can think of right now is the War Profiteering ability some races could unlock with research, which gave you income based on others' war spending. Now, that's interesting, you don't just earn more money, but you earn more money by a mechanism not available to others, which will make you behave differently from when you wouldn't have had that ability.
This. Like totally this. Although MoO2 tree is a bit ridiculos in fact you can only research one of 3 technologies for no apparent reason, it is much more interesting than GalCiv2 one, because you feel much more, that it does something. In GalCiv, tech has some fancy name and you could imagine how it change your empire, but it actually just gives you some little percentage bonus to something. MoO2 techs on the other hand are often empire changers and you can nicely see how they shape your emipre.
How does games mentioned here handle research? (Imperium Galactica, Ddistant Worlds, Endless Space or others) I haven't played most of them, so I would like to know, which ones I should check out.
JMich: While I have played Fantasy Wars in the past, I don't recall it having the research part that Fantasy General had, and the Long Term Strategy of FW seems to me to be worse than in FG. Has been quite some time sine I played FW, and even more since I played FG, but I'm not sure I would say FW is better than FG. To each his own though :)
Fantasy Wars doesn't have research part. Only unit promotions. Peasants--> Militia --> Swordsmen--> Foot Knights and similar. And I don't really think there was some long term strategy there.
