Alan Emrich interview (cont.)
Will all the familiar races
be present in the game? What about The Guardian and the Antarrans?
Yes, the Antarans will be present.
At least what’s left of them. (Go to www.moo3.com/backstory.htm
for the details.) Not only will Orion sport a new Guardian,
but also its own (well, the Orion Senate’s) fleet.
As for "all the familiar
races," no. Some are toast and some new ones have been
added. Again, that backstory link will tell the whole story.
Explain the concept of "Imperial
Focus."
Imperial Focus is the Leader’s
ability to get things done during a single one-to-two year
Game Turn. During a turn a Leader can only focus on so many
issues. To simulate this, each player has only so much Imperial
Focus each turn. With it, he or she reviews the current standing
orders throughout the Empire and spends Imperial Focus Points
(IFPs) only when he or she wants to change the status quo.
With Imperial Focus, the player can choose to do anything
but cannot do everything.
So, with a small Empire of a
single world, the player (through its Leader; Leaders are
just pawns used by players) can rightly focus on matters appropriate
to that scale of activity. In other words, micro-manage and
try to optimize the heck out of that single planet. For those
managing an Empire of 30+ stars, however, it is much more
efficient to issue Imperial Edicts and have them ripple throughout
the realm than to try to fiddle with every individual slider
bar and pop open every single build queue and make each change
separately. Macro-management tools have been built into MOO3
allowing a player to shotgun their Imperial Focus energy
for maximum efficiency. An entire Civil Service exists to
implement policy.
Imperial Focus offers several
design advantages. In addition to keeping players properly
focused on their role, it will also help keep turns moving
along. This will be a great asset to those who enjoy multi-player
play and even solitaire players who want to spend hours rather
than days to see the end of the game. Imperial Focus is also
a malleable number. Certain races, Events, Leaders, etc. can
increase or decrease a player’s available Imperial Focus Points.
It adds play balance, too, as the best overall manager has
the edge each turn, not just the most time-taking, horrendously
optimizing micro-manager. Everything is important,
but you can’t do everything, so the best players are those
who can deduce which things are the most important
in their current circumstances. I believe it takes far more
skill to do that than to do rote micro-management in an effort
to achieve a tiny bit of optimization.
Thanks to Imperial Focus, each
race, government, religion, etc. becomes truly unique and
fleshed out as the tendencies they engender are reflected
upon the types of Leaders that emerge within a civilization
and the status quo for it that they engender. (A status
quo that the players use as their departure point for
asserting their own leadership). In other words, you’ve got
to play the hand you’re dealt. Positions are no long as generic
as they were in previous Master of Orion games. When
you can get into the mindset of, say, a Klackon Oligarchy,
you’ll be better able to lead it. Yes, you must become "one"
with your people, but then you must lead them to their
greater destiny.
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