First of it's important to background Quicksilver, as unlike some of the big development houses this team consist of 5 people and to a large extent this explains the delays in the game and how over time the previously advertised content has changed. Being a small company they have been able to respond to feedback from beta testers and at times make fundamental changes to the game that perhaps some of the bigger developers would have been unable to do.

For those of you who have been restricted to Terra and never had the privilege of playing the MOO series the game is based on the principle of space exploration, empire and economy building while undertaking a technology race to get better toys than the other races in the game. It is turned based and is a true strategic game where you make grand decisions that can effect your entire empire. There is combat where you defend your gains and fend off alien intrusion but ultimately this is secondary to the challenge of conquering your part of the galaxy.

So what's new in MOO3? Well just about everything, but ultimately it is much the same. There is a whole new economic model, a new technological development system, an upswept diplomacy system, new combat system and a more in depth storyline.

One key change is that there is far less micro-management, and for the those who get off on this it is a big disappointment. As you progress in the game and gain more planets and technology, your interest turns to improving the infrastructure of your planet. Instead of setting your own build queues this is largely done for you by the AI based on available build items and how you have set the build priorities for your empire. You can determine that your inner planets concentrate on farming and mining while your frontier planets concentrate on military and defensive structures. In our view the loss of micro-management is not a big deal and makes gameplay a lot quicker.

This higher level of play has also been applied to the technology development side of the game. Once again you set how much effort a planet will apply to technology research and under what fields and largely that's it. What is a neat touch is how the game engine decides through research and a degree of randomness what new research opportunities become available. You will find that some technologies will not be available to you at all. Additional technologies and the ability to open the door to additional ones can be obtained through diplomacy with other races or through discovery on new planets. You would have to be an exceptional player to research all the technologies.

Like previous games in the series the choice of starting race determines how well you fight, farm and research. This time around however there are more races and more variables to each of them. It is more important than ever that you chose carefully and play to a particular race's strengths. This is also evident at diplomacy level as well with some races have a deep rooted distrust of others and on first meeting are generally quite aggressive.

It is these background reasons for events that are not always evident during the game. Sometimes in the game you are left wondering why something has happened or in fact how. Why does a particular race immediately declare war on you when you first meet or how come there is suddenly unrest on a particular planet?. IF we had one concern about the game it would be this issue. It would be good if there were more explanations given as to why certain events happen. Often you are left feeling you missed something. The more you play however the more you begin to understand some of the more subtle linkages in the game.