The eighth installment in the Master of Orion 3 Developer Diaries on GameSpy.Com is now online. This edition, again penned by designer Alan Emrich of Quicksilver Software, is titled "before combat," where he chooses to "to take you just to the point of real-time combat in Master of Orion 3 and then abandon you," in discussing the preparation that will be essential to success at the turn-based combat in their upcoming 4X game. The article also offers some thoughts on the hierarchy of strategy, pointing out that "Whereas Grand Strategy narrows to Strategy, so too does Strategy narrow in focus to Operational Planning."