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The new Master of Orion is now on Linux

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We have some great news for 4X fans, the latest game in the Master of Orion series has made its way to Linux in the new Early Access update.

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As you might be aware, Master of Orion is a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) strategy game which tasks you with creating a powerful galactic empire while competing with rival galactic races. You can wage war against your neighbors or forge great alliances to rise to power via diplomatic means.

While for us penguin gamers the Linux version is the most important part of the update, it also brings many new additions like the Darloks, a rather paranoid race of spies which was part of the previous games, and independent planets which act like normal races but they do not have spacefaring technology and thus will not expand their empire. Think city states from Civilization V. Espionage has also been introduced, so stealing other races' technologies is now a thing.

I enjoyed MOO 1 and MOO 2 quite a bit so I naturally had to buy this new game and it seems to be working quite fine indeed. The start screen before the main menu seems to have an invisible UI element problem on RadeonSI and possibly other open source GPU drivers but the rest of the game appears to render correctly and at a solid framerate of 60 FPS with just occasional drops to the 50s. Do keep in mind before purchasing that the game is still in Early Access and thus there might be bugs and things may change drastically over time. I have played the game for about 2 hours and I haven't noticed any bugs and there haven't been any crashes either, so it seems to be in a rather good state.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Steam, Strategy
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About the author -
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I'm a Linux gamer from Finland. I like reading, long walks on the beach, dying repeatedly in roguelikes and ripping and tearing in FPS games. I also sometimes write code and sometimes that includes hobbyist game development.
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9 comments

Boldos Apr 23, 2016
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Although it is great to have this game within Linux portfolio too, it is hard to imagine it might - success-wise - stand a chance in front of Star Ruler 2, Stardrive 2 and, mainly, Stellaris...
fizzgig Apr 23, 2016
For me it is not working on my laptop machine. I am on Linux Mint 17.3 x64 Cinnamon with an Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM and a GeForce GTX 960M with 4GB. The Game loads normal and I am able to start a match. Just before the "press any button to start"-message should appear nothing happens.

On my Steam Machine with SteamOS I am able to play the Game just fine.
emphy Apr 23, 2016
For about half the price you can also get star ruler 2 + the newly released expansion!
tuubi Apr 23, 2016
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Quoting: BoldosAlthough it is great to have this game within Linux portfolio too, it is hard to imagine it might - success-wise - stand a chance in front of Star Ruler 2, Stardrive 2 and, mainly, Stellaris...
That doesn't mean it'll be a failure. There's enough room on the market for all of these IMHO, and many fans of the genre will most likely buy more than one of them. Personally I'm happy to wait for final releases and reviews instead of deciding on hyperbole.
whatever Apr 23, 2016
Quoting: emphyFor about half the price you can also get star ruler 2 + the newly released expansion!

Mark Hamill's dubbing is expensive!
SuperTux Apr 23, 2016
Quoting: emphyFor about half the price you can also get star ruler 2 + the newly released expansion!

Dubbing from famous actors is probably one reason as barotto points out, however also we're only currently able to purchase the collectors edition (this includes MOO and MOO 2 as well other bits n bobs along with a bonus race).

No idea how much the standard edition will cost on release, so might be worth checking then if you're not that excited about the current early access title, and/or collectors edition.
Keyrock Apr 23, 2016
Cool. I'll check it out when it's fully released.
Maquis196 Apr 23, 2016
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Beyond the races we all know and love, I get the feeling that this will be like playing Total War when Stellaris is like CK2/EU4.

Hopefully they fix a lot of the issues I've read about in the steam reviews. Will buy of course, af því að... Linux!
SuperTux Apr 23, 2016
Quoting: GuestIs this turn-based or realtime?

Turn based with pausable real time battles, which can be auto-resolved.


Last edited by SuperTux on 23 April 2016 at 8:54 pm UTC
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