ARMADA 2526 (PC DVD)

I am a fan of sci-fi strategy games since the first Master of Orion and I think I have played them all so when I saw this I decided to try it. My first impression was to go back in time to early '90 when I saw the graphics and the UI, but you know, sometimes you may get a good challenge and some good time from strategy games even if they are not that graphically appealing. So I decided to go on and play it. These were three hours of my life I'll never get back...
this is what very soon I realized:
-the economy in your empire is quite trivial, you get taxes from people (only three levels, not much to fine tune) and money from your mines where they can be built. No trade within your empire, no building or technology to get extra money, nothing. The only thing can be if an alien race has the permission to build a trade station on one of your planets, you may get some custom duties from their commerce, but that takes valuable space from you planet.
- people happiness: if you send colonist on a barren or dead planet in the middle of the galaxy you can't expect them to be happy and that's all right. You start building your factory and your mine in order to get some resources, pay for your colony and build improvements but this makes people even more unhappy since these buildings generate pollution and colonists don't like it! Note that in all the tech tree there is nothing to reduce pollution level of your building, so if you want to improve you pollute more and that's it. You want to build morale and happiness improvement buildings but you can't since the number of buildings depends on the population level so you need to transfer more colonies to you unhappy planet to build more but there is only one improvement available for happiness (and a very expensive one) and technology will not improve it, ever. Thus most of your colonies have unhappy or rioting citizens and don't add any value to the empire because of the low taxes you have to set and the high maintenance cost of your improvements.
- Terraforming: this is a cheat! If you develop the technology you may build some terraforming or environment improving building. Again they take space that probably is not available on a dead, icy or barren planet so you need to force in more colonists. Once you have the space you can build them but they don't really change anything in your planet, they simply slightly improve people happiness but the planet doesn't change at all. So your infrastructuere cost increases even more but no real benefit at the end.
- Technology: very simple and basic tech tree. Lots of ships to research but they are basically five or six and then you have their upgrades (AND YOU CAN'T RETROFIT THOSE ALREADY BUILT!). Some research in construction area, higher productivity mines or factories, although more polluting, but not much more. Technology in other areas is minimal and mainly useless in the game (like psichic abilities or plague development). Very disappointing.
- Space combat: finally your hardly built fleet engages in battle! A glorious 2-D map with simple 3-D models deploys in front of you (I couldn't find a way to change the view). Your options aren't many. Wait at least a minute and retreat, while your enemy stares at you, or move ahead and engage in a way more similar to napoleonic warfare than a space fight. Ship grouping and selection is difficult outside the pre-determined one, basically same model ship form a group, despite their number. Enemy doesn't react, it just wait until you are at range and then shoot, so your tactic and strategy is simple, just outgun them.

I have already uninstalled the game and, as you may have already guessed from my long review, I warmly recommend not to even try it.

I wasn't put off by all the negative reviews below and purchased this game as it was discounted. After installing the latest patch which apparently improves it a lot, according to forums, I have been playing this game solidly and love it. I wasn't expecting MOO3 here and approached it as a new game,although I have played and loved MOO2 to death for well over a decade. Although I can see the similarities with MOO2, GC2 and other similar games I appreciated the fresh streamlined approach of Armada. Initially I too would have liked to have seen custom ship designs but differences in ship type comes from the research tree you decide to specialise in within this game (I like researching defence which gives me missile cruisers for long range attacks beyond the range of planetary defences and better planetary missile bases for my defence). Yes there is less micromanagement but on the plus side I can finish a large game in an evening. Crucially I still get the same finger chewing tension playing this game as I got with MOO2 and GC2, which is enough to keep me coming back for more. The different victory conditions for each race adds a lot to the re-playability and plenty of them makes up for no race customisation. The different victory conditions for each race also requires different play styles to win (e.g. as the pirates I want to rob my way to victory not conquer and destroy my income source or enter into large fleet battles when I can hide my base ships in deep space and plunder undefended colonies with impunity). With the expansion just around the corner bringing lots of new features and most importantly multi-player by lan and e-mail the streamlined play of this game will come into its own. I feel this game is maturing into a classic I will be playing for many years with my friends.

Having played Masters of Orion 2 for years I listened to the online review that this game is what MOO3 should have been.
Unfortunately nothing is more far that the truth and hete is why:

1. Vast maps - Indeed this game allows vast maps- however you tend to colonize with one unit a solar system regardless of how many planets every system has.

2. Technology tree - The offered technology tree is very limited

3. Ship customization: - Simply does not exist. You cannot decide the weaponry and characteristics of a ship type. Instead you research technologies that allow you to built specific ships

4. Battles. No Minimap to help you with the space battles. You have to gues where the enemy and you units are.
You cannot retreat once you started a battles you must wait for a certain amount of time before the command becomes available.
The surface planet battle is mediocre. You land your ground units and they fly half the planet within seconds. The ground units do not attack units you designate properly.

4. Economy - Not many buildings to allow you to create and sustain a healthy economy. Instead you have to expand continuously to maintain your empire's economy

5. No customization. No shipsets, no custom race.

Summary
I have returned playing Masters of Orion 2, Space Empires V, and Imperium Galactica 2. Unfortunately this buy was not satisfactory.