MoO2 was a step in the wrong direction: more stuff, but clunkier. You’re right: ships didn’t stack (so no point in making 32000 fighters) and colony-handling was tiresome. The slider system of MoO 1 was awesome (even if it could have been better automated, or ‘governated’).

Ascendancy was cool until you came across the AI. Even patched up, I came across my first AI opponent, got into war and, to my great surprise, won! Difficulty was set high, as I’ve played similar games and wanted a challenge. Then I kept warring and expanding, until I reached the other end of the galaxy (only one connection existed between the two halves), where a single AI had been left all alone and should have been incredibly powerful by all logic. After all, they could have colonized unimpeded a volume the same size that I had shared with two other races. But instead the AI had got nowhere at all, having just a couple of colonies and sending ships back and forth, seemingly randomly. This confirmed what I had started to notice here and there before: the AI was useless. I stopped playing there and never tried the game again. There’s no challenge with a totally broken AI.

MoO3 had the same problem (bad AI) and I never really got into it.

People are saying good things about Galactic Civilizations (1 and 2). I haven’t checked them out, but maybe you would like to?

Why are you coding at those hours!?!

Good to have an update

Hehe, I told you the VIP tickets would come in handy

But you know what? It was easily the best single player FPS I’ve played in a long time.

The point is that linear doesn’t kill a game, if you make the roller coaster ride very interesting. HL2 did that pretty well (though the no talking was a big grating by the second one) and the first episode was a complete blast.

I too prefer when I can have meaningful choices in games, but I don’t mind when I’m on rails if I’m too busy catching my breath to notice. (the sniper level in particular was amazing in CoD4).