I started playing Moon in Universe 1 from the beginning. Checking out Universe 0 for a bit, I knew I was going to like the game, and I did.
For those who don't know, Moon is a fork of a old version of OGame (or rather of a fork of that).
I didn't play OGame in the past, although it's a 20+ years old game with active players to this day, but I did play a similar game (besides St**m Nova), in different roles and play styles. It's funny that I don't remember the name of that game (which was closed down from my recollection), but I think it was more difficult than OGame, because an attacker could put a town to the ground completely, while in OGame, planets with their buildings and research are safe from attackers.
I knew what I was going into. I understood it was a time/energy consumer, especially if played right.
We had some idea there will be some rewards along the way and at the end, but no one to my knowledge knew what they were going to be or for what (at least for a while).
So... when I decided to play, I did it for the fun of it.
I chose my playstyle early knowing that I don't want to commit the time to be a raider. In the end I committed quite a lot of time even if I wasn't a raider, lol.
I joined an alliance early for the same reason, to not have to dodge too many attacks. In the end, it turned out we needed a higher purpose so we merged (whoever was still active) with another top alliance. It turned out to be the right thing to do, because despite many in the alliance playing the game for the first time and making lots of newbie mistakes (I made plenty myself which I don't plan to repeat in the next universe), we managed to raise to the top at the end. Wouldn't have done it without our leader, of course. Maxing out officers was a requirement to be able to go for the win condition in Universe 1, and we had one of the 2 people who have done it. And he was focused on the win condition.
Probably in Universe 2 officers won't be as OP as in Universe 1 or their bonuses won't be permanent. It would be in the interest of the game.
Maybe this is a test in that direction:
To be honest, there were enough moments where things could have turned south for us. An inflection point was when our rival(s) for the end game colonized a planet next to our end-game planet. For a short while, one could feel the disappointment among the ranks of our people when they realized the implications. They certainly had the higher military power and now they were very close to the planet to stop us from building the solar satellites needed for the Graviton 1, which was the end game condition.
After we recovered from what was a pretty devious blow from our rival(s), we started planning what to do next.
Initially, the plan was to go for another level of Nanites, but that was out of question now. At least that's what we thought at the time.
We decided to defend the planet with what was saved up for the next level of nanites (we already had saved up the costs of solar satellites - our leader had everything planned ahead!). The question was what should we do? Build fleet, which is mobile and can be saved, or ground defenses which offered better protection, but they could have been cleared, had a group wanted to swallow the losses (and plan to get the debris, to at least get back some of the losses).
Then a time was set when solar satellites would start to be built. Before then, we decided who will be in the ACS defense. Since many of us haven't been focused on the military side and not everyone participated, that was a rather thin defense.
On rather average attacks from what was possible, our simulations showed we could have lost half of our solar satellites before the attack was destroyed. We were prepared for the eventuality to rebuild some of them.
With some coordination against our end game plan, it could have been stopped, or at least delayed seriously to give someone else the chance to build for the end game.
But... the attacks never came. Or they did, but anywhere else except where they should have. I understand... everyone had a position/rank/record to secure. But that made it frustratingly easy for the last hours before the end game. We later found out why, perhaps, people had other plans... But one thing on top of others, everyone followed their targets.
It was an interesting strategic game where different people and groups had different agendas, and followed their own interests, some completely ignoring the end game, some making moves that were completely counter-intuitive, like preferring to lose resources on attacks but still continuing to raid.
I received a sizeable prize, as part of the winning team. I only became aware that the prize could actually be significant very late, so I wasn't playing the way I did for the prize. Not this game anyway, not this time.
I staked most of my reward PIZZA. I kept all my individual prize and some of my team's prize share liquid, mostly to see how much I will be reinvesting in Universe 2.
I am also thinking to sell a little bit, out of principle. I am thinking a little over 2% of the total prize is... fine. 😀 I won't do it right away, I'd rather wait until the price recovers.
Anything left I will likely stake. If I change my mind, I will throw it into a PIZZA pool.
Looking forward to Universe 2!
P.S. By the way, I may still experiment a few things in Universe 1, but I'm not actively playing. Mines are also turned off.