# Master of Orion 2 starting tips? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [August 20, 2011, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413 "2011-08-20T06:59:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/1 "2011-08-20T06:59:02Z")
I’ve just gotten MOO2 off [GOG.com](http://GOG.com), and after spending some time reading the manual and starting a few games, I am kind of stumped. I’m playing a medium tech game, using the human race, and have no idea how to get more food. Should I really sink 9 turns to research the farm, and then spend another 10 turns building it? If I find a colony now, I wouldn’t have enough food to sustain it. The homeworld has just enough workers producing food for the entire population. Is there something I am missing PS. Yeah, way late to the party I am. ---
**Author:** ![Carnacki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5e925/32.png) [@Carnacki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnacki)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/2 "2011-08-20T15:07:29Z")
I used to play that game to death, but unfortunately I can hardly remember anything about it… One option would be to customize your race, make essentially humans but give them some kind of food bonus…or play the race that doesn’t need food… 🙂 But one thing I do remember, is that at the beginning of the game, having to wait 19 turns for something is not unusual. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_the_turtle/32/2926_2.png) [@Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_the_Turtle)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/3 "2011-08-20T15:31:04Z")
I’m having a hard time remembering specifics also. I know I struggled with almost every race - except the Sakkra (or a custom race that used the Sakkra’s Pop growth and limits). I do remember focusing in the early game on anything food related. Pop growth was the key for me (or my style) and keeping everyone fed was a must. My military tech would lag early on - so I would have to avoid early war at all cost. But by the time I was ready to fight my tech would have caught up. Try to let any world with a specialty use it to the max. If that means creating a couple “breadbasket” planets and creating a bunch of transports (or whatever they were called) to distribute the food - do that. But I always researched the Hydroponic farms and build those on every world to ease the food burden. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/4 "2011-08-20T17:09:05Z")
Get a transport fleet. Your homeworld should be able to keep a small colony going long enough to get farms. And to be honest, if you can’t find a planet that can grow its own food within short range of your homeworld, start again. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/5 "2011-08-20T17:16:57Z")
yes on the farms, you will probably be planting farms/hydroponics on every single planet you colonize. 19 turns at the start of the game is nothing, its from a older time when people couldnt get adhd because it didnt exist yet. (you can always use the skip/end turn button to zoom through turns when you know you have nothing going on) ---
**Author:** ![Carnacki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5e925/32.png) [@Carnacki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carnacki)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/6 "2011-08-20T17:51:59Z")
In fact, I think there’s an option to make it so that if you press the end turn button, it’ll skip ahead until something happens – and you can define what that “something” is in the options. It’s been a while though, so don’t quote me on that. Not a food related issue, but: after playing about 582 games, I realized you can change the tax rate. Don’t underestimate the power of this, if you want to have some cash on hand; but watch out for unhappy citizens. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/7 "2011-08-20T20:28:18Z")
You can also reassign your colonists to different roles. At the top of your colony screen, there’s three bars showing what roles your colonists are currently filling - farmer, worker, or scientist. You can drag and drop colonists from one bar to another to change the balance of production for that planet. ---
**Author:** ![Postariti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Postariti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Postariti)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/8 "2011-08-20T21:40:53Z")
First, prepare to lose your whole weekend. Prepare to wonder what that bright light is, and realize, you played all night and the sun is coming up. Second, don’t play as human until you’re really experienced. I think the only “bonus” they get is some silly thing like diplomacy. Play the race that gets a population bonus, or a tech bonus (my favorite). Third, what everyone else said. Your first 50 turns are going to be dull. Do them quickly. There’s a good chance you’ll lose your first couple of games, so don’t worry about being perfect. Use that time to learn how to play. (Edited to add - Once you get good, watch out for the elections. If you get elected ruler, the game ends INSTANTLY. Watch how everyone else votes, and cast your vote in whatever way keeps you from winning.) ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/9 "2011-08-20T21:45:18Z")
I always found the humans to be one of the easier races to win. Invest heavily in research, and trade your tech freely with other races. With your diplomacy bonuses, you can usually get a pretty good deal, and you can generally fill out most of the tech tree doing this, instead of having to settle for one tech from each advance. By the end of the game, most of the other races will like you so much, they’ll be falling over each other to name you Emperor. Oddly, if you turn down the honor, every one in the galaxy declares war on you. Touchy bunch. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/10 "2011-08-20T23:11:43Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Oddly, if you turn down the honor, every one in the galaxy declares war on you. Touchy bunch. That is why I like having a fleet of Doom Stars with Stellar Converters… ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/11 "2011-08-20T23:19:49Z")
Oh, yeah, 90% of my games ended with me taking on the entire galaxy with my fleet of Death Stars - because whats the point of a game like this if you’re not going to build a fleet of Death Stars? And the Solar Converter is easily my favorite terraforming tech out there. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_the_turtle/32/2926_2.png) [@Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_the_Turtle)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/12 "2011-08-20T23:29:24Z")
In a lot of the games it seemed I would win the vote too early - I wanted to keep playing. But trying to finish off everyone became tedious. I wish there was a way to delay the vote until you were clearly going to win. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/13 "2011-08-21T00:04:17Z")
Oh, goddamn you all! Now I want to find my old copy and try to load it to play a game or three again ( wonder if Win7 can handle it? ). Stupid, addictive MOO2! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/14 "2011-08-21T00:21:05Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Oh, goddamn you all! Now I want to find my old copy and try to load it to play a game or three again ( wonder if Win7 can handle it? ). Stupid, addictive MOO2! > > 🙂 If you can’t find your copy, or if it won’t run, check out [Good Old Games](http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/). You can buy Master of Orion 1 and 2 for less than five bucks, and they come wrapped up in a DOSBox package that will let them run on contemporary systems. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/15 "2011-08-21T00:24:59Z")
Cool, I haven’t played MoO I in ages. At some point I lost the floppys. Of course I some point I also lost the floppy drive from my systems. MoO II has been on all of my computers since it was released. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/16 "2011-08-21T00:27:30Z")
Sigh. I had the Mac version. Not only was it buggy, but it was two architectures and an operating system ago. Can’t imagine there’s any chance of getting it to run. I eagerly awaited MOO3. Then the reviews were so bad that I didn’t bother buying it. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Svinlesha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@Mr.Svinlesha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Svinlesha)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/17 "2011-08-21T09:13:56Z")
**Crowbar** : > [@](#): > > \*I’ve just gotten MOO2 off [GOG.com](http://GOG.com), and after spending some time reading the manual and starting a few games, I am kind of stumped. > > I’m playing a medium tech game, using the human race, and have no idea how to get more food. Should I really sink 9 turns to research the farm, and then spend another 10 turns building it? > > If I find a colony now, I wouldn’t have enough food to sustain it. The homeworld has just enough workers producing food for the entire population. Is there something I am missing.\* You aren’t missing anything. However, you would be better off taking biospheres rather than hydroponic farms. Then you need to focus on getting to Soil Enrichment as soon as possible. In the early going, especially if you’re playing a race that has no bonuses to food production, you will find that a large percentage of your population will be forced to do nothing other than farm. This will put a serious damper on both your research and production speed. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/18 "2011-08-21T14:52:38Z")
Tips on producing food: 1. Make sure you move pops to the Agriculture slider. Yup, this works fine and should let your home planet produce ample harvests for the early game, including for a colony or two. 2. You usually get more benefit from the colony spheres or whatever which increase your max pop by two on any planet it’s built on. You can do anything you wish with that, including more food and whatnot. Then just build a merchant fleet and you can ship food however you like. In the late game, you can terraform planets into lovely, habitable worlds regardless of what they started out as. 1. There’s no need to restart if you don’t get a decent agri world within sniffing distance of your game start. That’s not that common depending on the game setup. However, keep and eye out for yellow and green stars - those are the most likely to have delicious easily-habitable planets. Good worlds can pop up anywhere, though. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_the_turtle/32/2926_2.png) [@Fear\_the\_Turtle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_the_Turtle)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/19 "2011-08-21T16:43:44Z")
My issue with the Biospheres is that it only increases your max pop. Early on it will be very hard to maximize the population on any of your planets as you have to shift colonists around to maximize your growth rate. Growing your pop early is a must, and keeping people fed helps them multiply. For those reasons I always go for the Hydro Farms early instead of the biospheres. Plus that is a few colonists not needed for producing food so you can shift them to research or production. By the time you are starting to max out your pops, hopefully you have researched something else that can help your max pop or you can always trade for it. Then again, I normally play on some version of Sakkra which has pop max benefits - so maybe it is easier to max out pop with other races ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413/20 "2011-08-22T06:16:57Z")
Do Psilons first, Creative is the best race bonus there is I always create a custom race. I think it goes something like: -Negative Spying -Negative Ground attack -Low Gravity Planet -Subterranean Homeworld -Creative And some others. I save enough trait points so that when I get the Evolution upgrade, I can use the few more points to get Industry +2 Get transport ships, colony ships, and freighters first. Then build up your industry. Research Construction get Auto Factory and a few more things like Holo Emitters that boost morale or industry. Research up to some basic weapons and armor like Fusion Beams or Graviton Beams, and Class 3 Shields and Radiation Shields Then I put a ton of research into whatever the name of that field that has the Biospheres. Get that up to Terraforming so you can get some decent planets. Next I start researching that first field, the one that has the Battle Pods. That has a lot of good stuff like Recyclotron, Robotics Factory, etc. You want your industry maxed as much as you can. Pay off or bribe anybody who tries to attack you early. Once you get some decent tech, I’m thinking up to some range 5-7 parsec engines, the first 2 types of missiles, Graviton Beams, the shields after Class 3 Shields, Pleasure Domes, and a little past Terraforming, you can start attacking people. PIck off the weak ones first, build up some Battlestations to protect your planets, and expand in quick bursts of overwhelming firepower. Once you can beat the Orion Guardian, you’ll pretty much be the highest tech person. I usually research everything I can before I take Orion, so I get the rare Antaran techs. For leaders, get ones that have labor and morale. Get research too if you can in the early parts of the game, but ultimately you want to keep the labor and morale boosts. That’s how I play. By the way, this strategy only works for the specific races like Psilons or a custom race with Creative. I basically don’t play any other way, I cannot stand having to choose between upgrades, I want them all. So I never play without creative, like ever. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/master-of-orion-2-starting-tips/593413.md?page=2)