I loved this game and also used to play it constantly. I strongly agree with creating a custom race and taking negatives in things that don’t matter so much but absolutely make sure you get creative because it just rocks. Make sure you plan for your eventual 4 extra points (I think, could be more or less) from genetic mutation. Ultimately, if you do it right you can get -10 in pointless negatives (like small homeworld or low gravity or whatever) and then get a total of +24 in bonuses. To the same end, I also would always start with low tech because I could guarantee I would pick up everything. Low tech will also give you a large technological advantage later in the game.
As for food, make sure to do as much of your farming as possible on the planets with the best ecosystems and build enough fleet ships to keep the rest of your colonies fed. Use the other planets to boost your research and industry. Similarly, focus your food and ecosystem builds on your farming planets, the industry ones on those planets, and research on those planets and you can fill in later.
My general strategy was to get to colony ships as fast as possible and spread out as quickly as possible. It’s risky, but if you plan your research correctly in a low-tech game, you can get there really quickly. Using this, you not only get a lot more planets to work with a lot more quickly, but you meet the races early and can then focus on diplomacy with them to push off going to war as long as possible. You can make technology trades with them too, but since you’re creative, try to only make trades if you can get an entire tier, otherwise you’ll still have to research it and you made trades to help your enemies that are ultimately no benefit to you at all.
Once you get spread out and can get a decent amoung of industry and research going, that’s when you just start spamming the research into weapons. Obviously, you’ll want enough prior to that point to keep your “allies” honest, mostly defensive, but the longer you can safely put it off, the better off you’ll be.
Creative is fun, and it’s a really good idea until you get experienced. it’s not a must-have, though. In fact, real pros at the game usually don’t take it, because… well, the only techs that matter at the oens you NEED. Creative is a blast, though, if you like to win at everything - the best planets, the largest fleets, etc.
Or vote for someone and refuse to accept the elected ruler. That way, every race teams up against you. The good thing about this is that you can fight a much stronger united race, but the bad thing is that all of the fun little things you can do through diplomacy will become unavailable
Like World War II, Master of Orion II can be dominated by industrial production. I eventually wound up ignoring Creative unless I just felt like a change of pace. But taking industrial bonuses makes a huge difference, especially at the start.
Getting colony ships out there early beats getting them out there a lot later.
Almost everything your scientists discover has to be built. Cranking out Titan-class ships in 10-20 turns is much more useful than taking 75 turns to launch them and finding one’s research has advanced to the point that the ships are already obsolescent on the turn of launch. Lower-production, high-science races run the risk of having a lengthy list of neat improvements they could put on their worlds, but they’re bottlenecked waiting for something to finish building.
High-production races can hurl fleets at their foes, take punishing losses, and make up the difference before the enemy.
Obviously, production-boosting buildings should be built first, as they will make what follows come out faster.
My favorite choices were +2 industrial production and the Unification government type; the rest was less important.
Hint: it can be good to clear space monsters and seize the valuable worlds they guard. Masses of missiles are the best way to do this early – and you won’t live long enough for many shots, so use the “larger salvo, fewer reloads” options.
Hell yes, and it also works on multiplayer. When I played this in college, I used to have a ship type I referred to as “Hailstorm”–it was my second largest or largest hull with no armor, shields or evasion, and crammed chock full of two-round missile launchers with the Fast Missile Racks option. And every other option, too (armored, MIRV, fast, etc) because it’s so much cheaper to use two-shot launchers than the default five-shot (and, of course, to strip your defenses).
Just add one flagship with every hitpoint-boosting and evasion-boosting add-on possible so that you have ONE surviving ship that lasts 2-3 turns, and watch your enemies flee before your hundreds of first-turn missile strikes.
For bonus fun, your missile boats can have a retreat ordered as their first-round move action.
I always underused weapon options. It’s a good idea to put ECM jammers on your ships to block missiles. So it becomes a good idea to put the ECCM option onto your missiles. Plus MIRV quadruples the damage; enveloping beam weapons hit all four shield sides; triple fire (forget the name) gives you three beam shots for the price of one.
And arc of fire options too. One trick I wanted to try was a light ship, built for speed, with beam weapons in the front&side arc (normal arcs are front or rear only, for an extra cost a weapon can also cover side arcs). Have them zip around the target, forcing the target to turn to face one group leaving its aft open to the other group.
Never thought about lots of two-shot missile launchers. That’s a good idea.
ETA @ Zeriel again: How did you handle planetary defenses and orbital bombardment? Seems to me you’d want a fair amount of heavy-defense ships (point defense weapons, ECM, shields) loaded up with bombs to take down the ground batteries.
I agree about playing as a creative race. It’s fun getting every technology eventually. Subterranean is also very powerful; you can fit quite a few more people on each planet, regardless of its focus. Dictatorship is actually a pretty good choice for government. It’s free, and once upgraded to imperium it has higher production than even galactic unification (with all morale buildings). It also has the second-best science. Feudal/confederation will let you build ships faster, but imperium will let you maintain a larger fleet.
I generally like to go for penalties to ship attack and defense (by the time beam weapons are better than missiles, the to-hit penalty will be minor), ground combat, and growth (make sure to build cloning centers). For bonuses I like creative, subterranean, and +2 production (or telepathic); for evolutionary mutation, I pick warlord.
Outpost ships are your friend early on. They’re cheap to build, and in addition to claiming a planet, they extend the range of your ships; this allows you to explore more systems and choose from a wider range of planets for your first colonies. They also give a free marine barracks on the planet when you found a colony on it; this is useful if your government is dictatorship or feudal. When selecting planets for colonies/outposts, bear in mind that toxic planets are the only ones that cannot eventually be terraformed. A huge ultra-rich planet, even if radiated, can eventually be a top-notch shipyard. Big planets with poor or ultra-poor minerals can be earmarked as breadbasket worlds, even if you need to terraform them first.
If you find yourself with a dedicated high-production world with nothing important to build, don’t set it to farming or research until you have something to build. Instead, set it to repeat build cheap stuff that you kinda need (freighter fleets, spies, outpost ships). The excess production is “banked” to the next project, and will accumulate over many turns. You can then spend it on a new big ship loaded with just-researched weaponry.
By mid-game, remember to build spies to prevent your rivals from stealing techs from you. Send spies into rival territory to put them on the defensive (but set them to “hide” if you don’t want to provoke a war).
Also, for the first ‘half’ of the game, at least, only keep three of the four planetary leaders and fleet leaders. If a better one comes along, you won’t be able to hire them. Generally look for leaders with a technological breakthrough to hire and then most likely dump. For planetary leaders, those with a moral bonus are the best unless you have a Unification government. Moral will affect food, science and production.
Not Zeriel, but I’ll take a stab at this one. Once you have teleporters (and assuming your enemy doesn’t have jammers), small teleporting bombers are insanely good. Put a teleporter and any bomb that can penetrate the shields on the smallest ship that will fit them, and crank those babies out fast and cheap.
Early in the game, I typically rely on missiles to break base defenses. Your engines are so slow it’s hard to get a bomber close without taking a beating, and the enemy typically doesn’t have good shields.
My mid-game bomber strategy is dynamic. If enemies are building shields, I crank out lots of small bombers with high evade. If the shields are weak, missiles and guns will work.
It speaks very highly of the game that there are so many viable strategies.
Sadly, it doesn’t work as well as you’d think. By the time you have ships fast enough to make maneuver REALLY viable, the enemy likely has inertial stabilizers.
The real trick is combining it with the “fire twice, then spend twice as long reloading” option for instant firepower.
Basically? Same ships–when you’re loosing several dozen missiles in a single turn it doesn’t matter how inefficient they are compared to bombs. Either that or gratuitous massed transports (to soak the inevitable losses).
Speaking of, bonus population growth is ALSO a good genetic choice.
I’ve played that game a billion times (seriously, choose or customize a race with Creative, or it’s an exercise in frustration) but I only ever played tactical ship combat once. The strategic stuff interested me more.
Well, that plus the animation of the planet-destroying weapon. Stellar Converter, I think it was called.
Even with good shields, if your alpha damage is high enough, missiles are effective.
My sole disappointment with the game balance is that smaller ship types are not very viable towards the end–their evasion bonuses don’t nearly make up for their fragility or cost.
Also, I want one of these games to eventually make starfighter carriers more than just a niche choice that’s not particularly effective–no matter what the tech level, fighters/bombers/heavies are only effective (in my experience) if the enemy has really really bad beam weapons.
Downside: they work on your ground combat bonus. I know a lot of people take penalties to that and just use absolute assloads of transports to invade, but that doesn’t fly with shuttle boarding parties.
Upside: Once you figure out how they work, free enemy ships!
I used assault shuttles extensively when trying to capture antaran ships. Sometimes I’d be late game and have all non-antaran techs, and wanted to get damper field or xentronium armor or somesuch. I’d build one or two doom stars I called Dog Catchers. Troops pods, teleporter, a few other durability wares, and as many assault shuttles that would fit. Gotta make sure to spread them out among four or six slots so you can board multiple targets. Each unit of assault shuttles is something like 16 marines, so it really adds up.
I’ve been thinking of trying a strategy I haven’t in the past: a semi-Darlock race with beefy spy bonuses, going around stealing tech from others. Huge map, 8 players of fun… However, I think I will drop the “stealthy ships” bonus., it’s way overprived and isn’t particularly great. I generally don’t give a rat’s dead diseased corpse whether or not they know where my ships are. I’m pretty sure the AI doesn’t pay much attention.
