I have played MoO2 for years, tested MoO3 only once and found it aweful. However assuming that MoO2 does not differ that much from MoO2 I would say the following:

1. Sins is RTS and MoO3 is turn based. That leads to the following aspects:
- You do not have endless time for each decision therefore Sins has less depth in Diplomacy, Intelligence and Research. Time consuming aspects such as Ship Design do not even exist.
- Sins is much more suitable for Multiplayer Games because it can take hours to wait for the turns of your team mates in a turn-based game like MoO3 whereas in Sins time just flows.
2. Macro vs. Micro. In turn based 4X Games you have to macro and micro manage each and everything by hand. Which is okay because you have all the time you need. In Sins the focus lies on macro management which is good because extensive micro management of tens of planets and thousands of units would drive you mad.
3. Graphics and Control. Sins is easy to control and has great 3D graphics which can be zoomed seamlessly from "i can see the back lights of my fighter" to "the whole universe at a glance".

Conclusion: In my opinion Sins is more short-term fun especially in Multiplayer than MoO3 at the price of depth in 4X aspects such as Diplomacy, Research and so on.

I never hated moo3. I just was of the opinion that it would have been better received as a new game with a new title, rather than a 3rd moo. The problem was it was soooo different from moo2, so many things were made difficult to understand what was going on.

That being said, this ain't no moo. No ship design. No researching a specific weapon to put on your new hull. Tactically it's RTS similar to moo3, but strategically I'd compare it more to moo1 in that the resources aren't abstracted, but the building up of planets is simplified beyond moo2. I've found the tactical combat to be more enjoyable than moo3 just because of the "prettiness", although I find it very difficult to control individual ships in large scale fleet battles(group your ships and call it a formation and it's very moo3).

The pace is not too frantic, there is some waiting to build stuff because of resource harvesting, but just think of it as auto turning for a while. I like the game most because it is extremely moddable, only difference being you have to download the correct files to mod, it's still in notepad. I give it a personal 8 out of 10, moo3 a 7 out of 10, moo2 a 9.8 out of 10 and civ4 a 10 out of 10(just so you know where I'm coming from with my ratings;))

Throwing in my two cents:

I think Extremor does a good job of comparing and contrasting here. If you are used to turn based strategies...you will find yourself trying to micromanage every battle with frantic "play...pause and assess....pause...play and assess....etc". I'll also emphasize that if you are looking for depth and replayability MOO series is better.



Wow...I'm right with ya there xxpsyrixx. I think my rankings would be very similar like:

SINS: 7.5-8.5/10 (still playing and haven't gotten feel)
MOO3: 8 of 10
MOO2: 8.7 of 10
CIV: 9.8 of 10 (that is an "at the time" ranking...)
CIV2: 9.1 of 10
CIV3: 9.6 of 10
CIV4: 9.9 of 10 (it's pretty much flawless..but hey gotta give the 0.1 room for improvement)
Call to Power: 6 of 10
Alpha Centari: 6.5 of 10 (I know lots of ppl loved this one..it never ran well and was quite buggy for me)
X-COM Series: Between 8.1 and 9.9 (interceptor is like a 7.3 still ok game but WAY different)
"New X-com"s the UFO series: 4.0 - 8.3 (Different developers = different styles..the best one was aftemath by far)
Stars: 8.5 of 10

Ok...I've got more but this is already too obnoxious...I didn't include all of the "crap" games I've played in the list

@Gabal computers and fish? hmm. more like apples and oranges. they're both in space. they're both strategic. they've both got "phase lines". They both require a degree of micro and macromanaging. one is tbs and one is rts.

I'd compare it with sword of the stars closer than with moo3.

@Joe don't wail on my Alpha now buddy... give the alien crossfire an 8 at least

@Astax I like playing with fertilizer sometimes, when I do I don't want any gold to muck it up

From the thread's OP :




1. I won't bash MOO 3, because like you, I'm perplexed why people hate MOO 3.

2. Well...not totally perplexed, since its RTS component, when fleets meet for RTS battle, is « feces » compared to SINS.

3. I love MOO 3 for only one (major) reason : I enjoy SP/TBS micromanaging, and on that metastrategic component, MOO 3 is awesome...much better, according to my taste, to GalCiv 2 (and its frustrating morale & cash declines).

4. But I can understand why gamers who prefer RTS fleet combat in Space find MOO 3 very fecal : SINS is light-years beyond MOO 3 in that respect.

I'm currently playing MOO 3 and LostEmpiresImmortals (version 1.0.4) because I prefer 4X/TBS to pseudo-4X/RTS : but that's just my personal taste, not an impartial evaluation.

In my opinion, SINS is a pseudo-4X game. Its RTS component is far better than its superficial Space-Empire management component.

We won't agree on that point : the MP powergamers want that SINS becomes a better MP/RTS, and SP micromanagers such as I wish that SINS would evolve into « SimCity in Space ».

Actually its all about common sense and reasonable expectations.

When I first heard about Sins being an RT4X, I instantly knew that real-time would cost the 4X aspect a lot of depth since it is simply not reasonable to have a research tree huge like a redwood or planet surface structure management or ship building in a real-time scenario because thats either not handable or would lead to never-ending real-time games because of a very slow pace. Therefore I think Stardock and Ironclad did a pretty good job merging at least some 4X aspects into an RTS game. Of course there are things that could be more 4X (diplomacy and intelligence) but generally I like it the way it is.

So if you have played TBS4X and loved it, don't expect Sins to fit into that genre because from that point of view I have to agree with the others, it is simply not comparable.