Master of Orion II

Last updated fall, 1998

Master of Orion II, as its name suggests, is a revision to a very popular game that was released in 1994. Almost as soon as Master of Orion was released there were many comments and complaints about the game, it was a very good game but it could have been better (what game couldn't?). Well, after about three years the prevalence of a new graphics standard - Super VGA - was enough of an excuse to update the game. After playing it for a couple of weeks I have the following comments.

Generally, it is a very good game, better than the original. If you liked Master of Orion (or the other space exploration and conquest games such as Ascendancy) I'm sure you will like Master of Orion II. There are plenty of reviews of this game so I won't go into great details. You can check out the reviews on line at Online Gaming Review, GamesDomain, or GameSpot. Suffice it to say, Master of Orion II has much better graphics, very nice customization, a superior user interface, an improved economic model, better handling of ships and fleets, and a new, tougher enemy. On the down side it still suffers from a weak computer AI, a less than ideal technology tree and some weapons that they should have pulled from the game (mainly the Black Hole generator).

In the following areas of this page I make some observations about the game from the perspective of playing the game. As per usual, I talk about playing the game against computer. Obviously all bets are off when playing against human opponents. Also, my comments are based on the 1.3 version of this game, Like all previous SimTex games, they believe in holding very public beta tests for their games, one in which rapid gamers pay them full retail price for beta quality software. Unlike my fellow gamers, I never buy a SimTex game when it is first released. I wait till at least the second bug fix patch.

Starting the Game

Since the game gives you the option of customizing your own race why not take advantage of this and make your own? All our old friends from the first version of the game are back (Psilons, Silicoids, Darlocks, etc.) plus two new races. However each race's strengths and weaknesses now have a numeric scale which allows you to trade off various strengths and limitations when building your own perfect race. Here is my take on the various racial abilities.

Tolerant: This is the big one. This ability means 1) every planet holds more of your people than normal and 2) you never suffer production losses due to pollution. The result is that you can put a lot of people on mineral rich worlds and have them producing ships flat out without ever having to build any of the pollution control devices. Prior to playing the game you might not think this was such a big deal but pollution is a major limitation on production. The designers weren't stupid and this ability costs the most, but it is worth it.

Unification Government: This is a real steal because at a cost of six picks you get happy citizens who produce %50 more food and industry than normal. The fact that they are happy means that you never have to build marine barracks when you first land on a new world. All the lesser governments require this planetary system, even when the world is never going to be invaded. The other expensive government is Democracy but this system gives you better science and more money, makes it easy for other people to spy on you and is slightly more expensive than unification to boot. Now, there is no question that technological advancement through science is the key to winning the game but I prefer to get my science by owning lots of world which means having big fleets which requires production. See my comments about worlds and production later.

Omnicence: This pick serves a three useful functions: 1) You can easily tell at the start of a game if you want to play in the randomly created galaxy. Sometimes you can be placed in a really bad location (surrounded by suns with no planets for example). It saves time to know this at the start of the game as opposed to some 10 minutes into the game. 2) You always know where to send your colony ships since you know the locations of the good planets (how to get to the good planets is where strategic colony building comes in). 3) You always know what the other players are doing and how they are moving their ships. Sometimes you can plan ahead based on what you see them doing. Considering how cheap this pick is (only three points), I think it is worth it.

Note: As of fall, 1998, I think Warlord is superior to Omnicence.

Warlord: Warlord gives you several critical advantages: 1) Your ships fight better than all the enemy ships (if you buy space academy then your ships generally start out twice as good as enemy ships of the same class). 2) You are much more likely to attract valuable leaders to your cause. Some of the leaders are really useful to you (increasing the productivity of your planets, allowing your fleets to move faster, making your ground combat troops better). These two benefits outweight the benefits of Omnicence.

Lithovore: A very expensive pick for a gain that isn't worth the cost. With this ability you never need to use your people for farming. While this might seem worthwhile (considering that about 1/3 of your people need to farm on good worlds) in fact you can easily make some worlds farm worlds and with enough freighters, the drain is not noticeable. Also, you end up having to feed people anyway as you capture colonies from other races.

Faster population growth: This is very useful, fast population growth is great so that you can fill up all your worlds and transfer people to new worlds as they are colonized or taken over. Poor population growth is very harmful and a much bigger negative than the designers give it.

Creative: In versions before 1.3 this was a good pick at a cost of only 6. Now it costs 8 and I don't think it is worth it. Sure having all the tech advances in each field makes life easy but there are only a few times when it is really, really nice to have (the choices in chemistry are tough, deuterium fuel or tritanium armor? Merculite missile or pollution processor?).

Ground combat: I like taking over enemy colonies. It is much easier in this game than in the original. While I don't purchase ground combat bonuses, I don't pick the negatives either. Note: As of fall, 1998, I do pick ground combat -10. I just make sure I build more ground troops than the enemy. Also, I don't care about destroying some bases. My people are better than almost all the aliens I conquer anyways. Taking on the Bulrathies with this negitive pick is somewhat hard, but I manage.

Good negative picks: None of the bad picks are good but some are more than worth their cost. The best one to choose is Repulsive. So what if everyone hates you? They are going to hate you no matter what you do as you start to conquer the galaxy. OK, they won't trade technology with you, this is the major downside but not a huge problem. And the benefit: +6 picks! Pays for unification government on its own! Another good one is Spying -10%. I have yet to get any positive benefits out of spying. Some races have stolen technology from me but it didn't help them very much. Note that I haven't played the Darlock strategy in this game. I did in the 1994 game and was successful but this game handles spying differently.

So, my favorite race which I call the Vorlons has the following attributes: Unification government, Tolerant, Omniscient, Repulsive, and Spying -10%.

As of Fall, 1998 I have a new favorite: I call them the Narn. They are like the Vorlons but they have the Warlord attribute (+4), in place of Omnisicent (+3). This means I need one more negitive pick and so I choose the Poor Home World (-1) setting. The truth is, I use my home world to produce food, so I don't care if it is poor in minerals.

Worlds and Production

In this game, there are some worlds that are good for some things but not others. Here is how I figure out what to do with my worlds.

Ultra-Rich and Rich worlds: I use these world for producing (and refitting) the ships of my fleet. The best worlds are obviously huge and ultra-rich but these are always guarded by tough monsters. The normal ultra-rich worlds only hold 6 to 10 people (when you have a tolerant race with biospheres). Still, these worlds can pump out a great deal of production (anything over 115 production per turn is good, I once had a large ultra-rich world that produced more than 700 in a turn, Orion's world can produce even more when fully developed). Best of all is when you have a star system with a number of rich worlds. Such a star system should form the hub of your fleet operations, since you can refit all the ships in your fleet rapidly.

Gaia, Terran, Ocean, or Swamp worlds: Unless these worlds are rich, use them as farm colonies. With some useful technology (like soil enrichment) you can do all your farming on these worlds and just ship the food to all your other planets. Even better, capture some Sakra worlds and ship the Sakra workers to your farm worlds. The only problem with this strategy is you must build huge fleets of freighters (I once had over 450 freighters in operation).

All other worlds (normal or poor minerals, no farming or tundra and desert): Research colonies. Build the minimum structures (the auto-factory, biosphere, and research lab) and leave them alone. Actually, that's not quite true, with normal worlds it is nice to build star bases so that you can have a large fleet without draining your treasury. If you capture any Psilons, ship them to your low-gravity research colonies (if any). Send the Bulrathi to any of your high-gravity worlds and get your people off of them.

Technology

Without doubt the game is won on the back of superior technology. And some technology is much more useful than others. Here is my take on the technology in the game.

Essential Technology

Fighters Bays: fighters are almost unstoppable and they upgrade without you having to spend any money. Fighters use the following beam weapons (if you have the technology): Lasers (damage 1-2), Fusion beam (dam: 1-3), Phasors (dam 2-10), and Particle beams (dam 5-15). Note that this is the only reason to acquire fusion beam technology. Fighters give you your only chance against the Antarean raiders, the raiding ships can be destroyed by masses of fighters with fusion beams. The only downside: they are slow and they can't do much against the Orion guardian.

Biospheres: You always want your planets to hold more people. Biospheres are the way to go and hydroponic farms are too expensive for the limited food they produce.

Advanced fuel cells: Deuterium is your best bet, but if you don't care about pollution, you can wait and get Iridium. However you need one because otherwise you will have to build extended fuel tanks into all your combat ships. Note that your colony ships are already built with extended fuel tanks. Don't be fooled by the range of your colony ships (like I was).

Battle Pods: I like battle pods a lot. They allow you to build ships with real power and the cost is reasonable. When I start building war ships, I build battleships. Later when I have some ultra-rich planets really cranking, I'll build battleships with battle pods. These ships can carry enough weapons to beat the Orion guardian and even the Antarean home fleet without being too expensive. My basic rule of thumb is: If I can build the ship in less than 10 turns, it is worth building. Note: I always upgrade my ships when a nice new technology appears. But don't try to upgrade a battleship without battle pods to a design that uses battle pods, the cost is so large it just isn't worth it.

Other planetary systems: Automated factory, Research lab, Alien management center (especially if you choose unification government), Robo-mining and Deep core mine. The choice between soil-enrichment vs. Cloning center is easy: if you want to use silicoids, you need the cloning center to grow them at a reasonable speed, otherwise take the soil-enrichment.

Other ship systems: Fusion drive, Zortium armor (every armor is good, it keeps your ships alive longer, and it improves your ground combat strength), Positronic computer (some sort of computer), Fusion beam (for your fighters), Shields (at least early on, later they are useless because the Orion guardian and the Antareans have weapons that ignore shields).

Ships Weapons: At first, all you need is nuclear missiles (with all the enhancements but most importantly: MIRV). Fill up your battleships with the two shot missile mount plus one or two fighters, and you will be able to destroy any enemy ship (but not all the space monsters). The beam weapons are all basically useless until you get to the Phasor. Once you get this weapon, refit all your ships, getting rid of the missiles and putting in nothing but phasors (heavy mount, and shield piercing when available). 25 battleships with phasors can destroy the Orion guardian (shield piercing is useful against the guardian). Once you get the Orion technology (always the Death Ray, sometimes the Black Hole generator) you need to refit your ships for the Antarean home fleet. This means dump the phasors in favor of the death ray (or the black hole generator if you want the easy win). Finally, the best weapon in the game (ignoring the black hole generator) is the Stellar Converter. It never misses from any range and always does 400 points of damage (more if the target has shields).

Point defense weapons are basically a waste of time as are any bombs more complex than the nuclear bomb. Some of the ship mods are OK but most are waste of space. The structural analyzer is worth while, the range master is iffy. All missiles and torpedoes are no use against the Orion guardian or the Antareans, so the higher tech missiles and torpedoes are not really worth while. Since they don't fire missiles at you, the advanced missile defense systems aren't worth while either.

The Monsters

I describe some of the monsters here:

The Space Eel: The normal space eel is just a 300 point monster, resistant to most missiles but not very dangerous. The invading space eel is a 1000 point fellow and is quite dangerous. Use the whole fleet against this guy.

The Crystal: 500 points strong but with a very weak attack. No missile defense. The weakest monster.

The Space Hydra: 500 points strong, decent attack, can be killed by just a couple of fairly primative battleships.

The Ameba: 500 normal, 750 when invading. It will destroy one of your ships each turn (after the first) with its caustic slime attack. Probably best handled by a large fleet of small ships.

The Antareans: Very, very tough. They use shield piercing weapons and their own defence is the Damper Field, which reduces all damage by 75%. Attacking their home world is only feasible once you have defeated the Orion guardian and obtained some of the nice technology from Lokner (or if you have the time to research the Stellar Converter). As I mentioned earlier, fighters do give you a chance against their smallest, weakest, raider ships.

Well, that wraps up my comments on Master of Orion II. There are other good pages on Master of Orion II on the web here and here .

Go on to the next page about Star Control 3.