It's been nearly a decade since MicroProse released Master of Orion and set the standard for space empire games. Master of Orion came out shortly after Civilization, and it's possible to see some parallels between the two games, which both reached a broad audience despite the long play sessions they required--perhaps in part because of abstract, simplified mechanics that gave you the sense that you were always in the middle of important events, galactic or historical. The two franchises have found a new home at Infogrames but have grown in somewhat different directions over the years. Now that we've had ample time to play a near-finished build of Master of Orion III, it's evident that the designers of the upcoming game spent a lot of effort in modeling how galactic empires might work. The game packs in a lot of complexity for hard-core fans of space empire games, and those who generally like grand strategy may be consoled by the fact that there's a lot of automation of low-level tasks to minimize micromanagement and keep the turns moving quickly.

Master of Orion helped define the genre of "4X" space empire games with a design that encompassed empire management, custom spaceship design, diplomacy, spying, tactical ship combat, and automated ground combat. The second game in the series added another layer of sophistication by modeling colony management in more detail and by having multiple planets per star system. The upcoming third game seems to follow in Master of Orion II's footsteps and maintains the vast scale implied in having galaxies that can have from 50 to 200 stars, where each star has between one and a half-dozen or so orbiting planets. Before starting a game, there are seven different galactic configurations to choose from, including four sizes of amorphous cluster galaxies and three sizes of spiral galaxies, which have two or three widely separate arms of stars spiraling out to create chokepoints for potentially easier territorial control.

This zoomed-in view of the galaxy allows strategic ship movements between neighboring stars.

Part of what has made the new Master of Orion game such an ambitious project is that it includes all the gameplay elements of the games that have come before it and has added extra layers of realism to nearly every part of the formula. Given the sheer number of planets that you're likely to control on a medium-sized map, some might theoretically expect that it's difficult to keep track of what's going on. However, after getting past the initial learning curve with the help of an in-game tutorial for each of the game's many screens, it's not hard to use a light hand to keep an empire running smoothly while the turns fly by.

One interface element that helps is the SitRep, or situation report, screen that opens at the start of every turn. Events that occurred during the turn are classified as being of red, yellow, or green importance, and if you want more detail on an event or want to act on it, there's usually a hyperlink embedded right there that takes you directly to the screen you need. Many turns won't require much player intervention at all, as the game often seems paced to make each turn like a baby step and keep you clicking through turns in rapid succession. What makes this possible is the automation that helps run your empire at many levels of the game, including planetary management, research, and combat. However, such important tasks as diplomacy, spying, designing ships, and creating new groups of starships are left completely up to you.

Build powerful ships based on your empire's latest research advances.

The initial exploration of star systems and subsequent buildup of colonies is characteristic of space strategy games, and it's no different here, although the larger maps are so huge that it may literally take a couple hundred turns to explore the majority of star systems in your part of the galaxy, depending on the number of enemy opponents. The game models planets in some detail, breaking them up into regions. Each region can support up to two of the major types of infrastructure buildings. The advantage of this system is that there's usually some diversity to the region types, so even barren planets usually have one fairly fertile region suitable for effective farming, and mineral-poor planets can support some mining. There's a ton of detail on the planet screen, probably more than in any other part of the game, including pop-up screens with a bunch of financial sliders and specific information on infrastructure, population, environmental terraforming, and ground troops.

Fortunately, the planet AI seems pretty good at developing a planet's infrastructure according to its natural resources and to high-level goals set in the empire screen. Much of the time, you may just tweak your major planets' build queues and leave the rest to the automation. Only big crises--such as a local uprising that needs to be mollified with lower taxes or outright suppressed, a military threat, or a planetary blockade that blocks food imports--really require you to pay close attention to minor planets. In those cases, a planet's AI can be turned off so it won't mess with your new priorities.