scientiae: I hate games that cheat, too. It always seems to be a lazy option, especially from the developers —— who should know how to school novice and experienced players, alike.

scientiae: Now I recommend you play the first or second game, just to remind yourself why you bothered with the third game at all.

DarzaR: Why do you recommend him to play some games that you do hate? You hate that poor guy too, not only games?

scientiae: I have both the first two games and I like them. It is only the third game that sucks. :)

scientiae: I hate games that cheat, too. It always seems to be a lazy option, especially from the developers —— who should know how to school novice and experienced players, alike.

JMayer70: One of the things like made it unplayable was the fact the AI simply did nothing. AI factions never actually "gave you a game", they'd all gang up and declare war on the player, but then never send a even a single ship at you - but their crass turtling did make it difficult to take their planets - so there was some kind of challenge in that.

JMayer70: The espionage parts are still a complete disgrace too. AI spies constantly wreak havoc through my empire, now matter how many spies I have on "interal security". ALL spies I send to their empires, dead, very next turn, without fail.
Same as it was 20 years ago. Back then I found a way to make it take 1000 turns to train spies. Effectively putting an end to espionage aspect of the game...... though the AI still kept trying to make them.

JMayer70: "Easy" on MoO3 is now even more HUUURRDURRRR than "Impossible" on "MoO 1 and 2"

JMayer70: I was one of the gullible fools who bought MoO3 back when it first released, and was at it's most expernsive.
What a waste of good money.

One of the things like made it unplayable was the fact the AI simply did nothing. AI factions never actually "gave you a game", they'd all gang up and declare war on the player, but then never send a even a single ship at you - but their crass turtling did make it difficult to take their planets - so there was some kind of challenge in that.

I ended up buying it for mere beer money here on GOG a while back. Kind of just "for completeness" when I got MoO 1 and MoO 2. I used to have the original disks for all of them ages ago - but they've all disappeared to places unknown since!

Finally tried it yesterday, and was pleased at first, now the AI was showing "some balls" - it was beligerent and did attack!

Trouble is as I "progressed" (if you can call it that) I soon realised that MoO3 has only gone from one extreme to the other. Now it is a gang bang of EVERYONE vs you, and they all cheat. PROFANELY. By turn 80 I was constantly being attacked by fleets twice the size and double the tech level of mine - but the very OP missile bases etc did hold 'em off.
By turn 120 they were sending fleets TEN times the size of anything I could muster even over dozens of turns - and they were all insanely more tech advanced too. Eg, just one corvette sized AI ship could wipe out ten of my cruiser sized ships without even a dent. I was seeing my ships do things like "1","1","1","2" to them. They were doing things like "50", "100", "500" to my ships. And of course, my OP missiles bases - well, not so OP anymore.

Was I on "impossible" difficulty level?

No.

This was on "EASY"!

"Easy" on MoO3 is now even more HUUURRDURRRR than "Impossible" on "MoO 1 and 2"!
I absolutely HATE this kind of unfair approach.

"Easy" should be EASY! And if you want it to be a pisstakingly impossible experience, that's what "Impossible" is for!

The espionage parts are still a complete disgrace too. AI spies constantly wreak havoc through my empire, now matter how many spies I have on "interal security". ALL spies I send to their empires, dead, very next turn, without fail.
Same as it was 20 years ago. Back then I found a way to make it take 1000 turns to train spies. Effectively putting an end to espionage aspect of the game...... though the AI still kept trying to make them.

So MoO3 is STILL unplayable garbage it seems even after two decades.

Unless of course, I was "doing it wrong"...... well, you can suggest what I might have been doing wrong if you like, but I don't think I should waste any more time polishing this turd.

JMayer70: Hi Giskarrd

I was playing as the Humans, my neighbours were the Ithkul. Despite their immediate declaration of war they weren't the problem. It was the other neighbours the Trilarians and Silicoids, despite no declaration of war (good relations with the Trilarians actually) they kept on sending fleets of 100+ ships to attack my outlying systems. I could barely cobble together fleets of 20 ships even at maximum shipbuilding effort. Their techs were a good "10 - 20 levels" ahead of mine too. They didn't seem to have many more planets than me neither. Certainly seemed they were getting a big AI cheat boost to industry and research. I would not mind if I was on "hard" or "impossible" difficulty. The AI cheats is what makes them that. But this was "easy", they should actually have AI handicaps on that IMO, not cheaty boosts.

Back in 2003 MoO3 never did this kind of ultra-aggressive behaviour - but that also was one of the reasons MoO3 was a turd back then. The opposition never did anything at all!

Themken: MoO 1&2 cheat?! No reeeally? (Yes they cheat.) Like the free colony ships the AI receives […]

DarzaR: [1] Status of them being or not in your possession is irrelevant for it. Knowledge of suckiness of a game you have never played by your very own words is on a borderline of being doubtful. But actual deal is that both MOO1 and MOO2 perfectly fit into your own category of:

DarzaR: , they essentially a games that cheat, and created by lazy, but self-aware developers (for example they even used words "AI cheats" in their inner documentation); ergo you hate those 2 games. Yet now you do a quite contradictory claim that you like them. It seems you developed some odd hate-like relationships with those 2 games, so it results in ambiguity of advice.

scientiae: I like these two games and they are cheaters, but the cheating is manageable. (The game is fun to play and I can beat the game.) For another example, if I were to compete against a child by calculating arithmetic, I would not mind if they used a pencil and paper, say, whilst I was restricted solely to mental activity.scientiae: да, you're right I don't have personal confirmation that the third game sucks, but I believe those (many posters) who have said same and I feel no compunction to confirm this for myself. Word-of-mouth is a robust and reliable form of warning, lest why would anyone post / read product reviews and testimonials? (With the obvious counter argument against the fallibility of witness accounts because of bias and imperfect recollection, both of which can be controlled for in most calculations.)

scientiae: That's a faulty syllogism.
You are inferring that I hate ALL games that cheat. (In fact, to be perfectly correct, I should have worded my displeasure as a hatred of the fact that the game/s cheat, rather than hating the games, per se.) Civilization 2 was also renown for cheating, but I played that game obsessively, back in the day. (The AI was so poor that it had to cheat because there was insufficient algorithmic savvy to create an opponent worthy of the competition.)