MOO2 General tips and pointers, specific play advice

[Whoha]

Another thing you can do is go demo/lith/LHW and wait until evolutionary mutation to give you either sub or +2 res or +2 prod or whatever.

[Croesus]

Yeah, I was about to suggest the unitol race, but it looks like you found it. I prefer warlord as the other 4 points, mainly because I prefer to have large fleets in the early and late game, which is more difficult without the +2 Command Points per colony. Also, with unitol I don't recommend population growth penalties. I tried it, and maybe its just the way I play. I found myself building housing too much.

Another tip I have is kill one or two of the lesser races, then attack the strongest AI, before attacking the rest. My reasoning is they will get too big, and usually the AI's keep each other in check by attacking each other. If you eliminate the strongest race's enemy, then you will have to trim down their massive fleet. They usually are weaker at the begining.

[logic_error]

Re: MOO2 General tips and pointers, specific play advice

Originally posted by AvA_Majestic While I can beat the AI on impossible sometimes when the chips fall my way, usually I find I'm coming second in every game I play. I'll be taking on other races fine, until the superpower race decides to end my fun with 50 titans or so, be it Sakkra, Psilon, or most frequently, Silicoid.

It's really simple: play creative race, research everything and then build the Ultimate Doomstar (tm).

Put the following systems on it:
- battle pods
- reinforced hull
- damper field
- high energy focus
- achilles targeting system
- structural analyzer
- time warp facilitators
- inertial nullifier

Then fill the rest of the space with Af dispruptors, make some of them Hv too (warning: do not select shield piercing ability, it's waste of space.) Also remember to select a good leader for the ship.

This Doomstar can easily knock out 50 AI-designed Titans, methinks. You can select "auto" in combat mode, because the AI should manage this ship well enough.

[Whoha]

The problem is getting to that point though, you have to fight with what you have if the AI forces the issue.

[logic_error]

Originally posted by Whoha
The problem is getting to that point though, you have to fight with what you have if the AI forces the issue.

Yep... but the human-designed ships are much more effective than the AI could ever manage to create.

If you have less tech, maybe you should stick to building titans (or maybe battleships), for example. Some very good systems for smaller ships are:

- reinforced hull (always this)
- battle pods
- damper field (capture Antaran ships to get this, also remember xentromium armor)

These may not come so early in the game, but they are good too (select whatever is available):
- high energy focus
- achilles targeting system
- structural analyzer

Then fill the rest of the space with Af (and Hv) phasors.

[vmxa1]

Doomstars? I rarely even built a titan, battleships are plenty. If I do build a doomstar (only as a creative), it will be to mount a stellar to destroy planets.

I bust planets to avoid the AI recolonizing them and my having to come back to dust them again.

As a non creative, I won't have Doom or Titan tech.

[AvA_Majestic]

yeah help with building doomstars not so much what i'm after.

Some of the other posts in this thread have been very useful, i've won a few times with production races now, but i'm still trying to do it with tech.

I do enjoy playing creative, can someone give me a good setup for a creative race, maybe one thats expansionist and one thats nonexpansionist?

[Whoha]

uni/aqua/creative is good
lith/creative is also good.


tack feudal onto lith/creative if you are having trouble building ships, but you do take quite a research hit for that.

[vmxa1]

The demo game going now is this race:

Settings: Rep -GC -SD Dict +R +P Creative Aqua AHW Huge PreWarp Aver Age 8 players Impossible

So you can look at that game to get some ideas.

Fast tech without creative :
Rep -GC -SD Lith Dem LHW RHW Huge PreWarp

[vmxa1]

Want a fairly fast one:

Settings: LowG -GC -Spy Creative Sub LHW RHW +P Huge Adv Tech Organic Rich 4 players Hard Anties ON Tactic Combat.

T0 R-Tele Training (defense for spy and leads to Terraform
Hire Urro send to Tucana because it will not be building ships and is AW with 2 plants
HIre Cyr redesign ships to get rid of Bombs/anti rockets/mercs/security station all that junk.
You have start and T0 to see the changes.
T6 Visited all planets in range. Found Sparky. Three good systems so let BB on them.
Some planets building RL, some AF others PP. Depends on the amount of pollution.
Production then comps as we will get plenty of research soon. Want to get the ships refitted.
T9 R-scanner could not use terraforming right now.
T11 Hire Altos
T14 make spy
T16 start comp
T17 R-Terra spy 5% Agent 15%, srt Cloners on some.
T20 Psilons steal tech, I demand they stop.
T22 Soil
T23 R-cyber link
T24 Have 4 spies now refit crusier and refitting start for BB
Some getting missile base and fighter garrison, some terraform
T31 R-sub farms
T35 R-classIII
T38 CB on Nazin
T39 R-renewers
T44 R-racks
T47 R-Ion drives
T50 R-Grav Gen
T51 R-stock exchange sent out an OP (out post) will use to get a marine barrcks on planets I want Look at the difference the Generator made.
T57 Ground Batt
T58 Hire Emo (leaders are all low level ones, but two scientist
T60 R-stealth suit
T R-inter (sorry I forget what this was but it should be obvious)
T66 anties attack Poc (funny huh
T68 R-autolab
T69 stopped trying to shuffle workers for food control
T72 R-Recycle
T75 sub comm
T78 R-astro
T81 R-zort armor
T83 R-drive
T87 R-robotic fac
T90 R-hi intel
T92 R-phasor
T94 R-deep mines
T98 R-class V
T101 R-food kill antie some planet
T103 R-Imperium
T106 R-megaflux
T108 R-adv city planning
T111 some steals against me, my bad I got lazy
T112 will build a bunch of spies
T113 R-plasma (do another redesign and refit
T116 R-bio (demanded a system form Psilons and Saks (I think it was them))
T119 Killed guardian R-evolution
T125 R-drive used three picks to reduce -spy to 0
T127 R-Hard
T129 R-class VII
T131 R-disrupters
T133 R-andriods Anties to dragon Demanded a system from both again
T13x R-Virt Net
T137 R-Hyper space
T139 R-star gate
T143 R-zeon capture Suji
T144 captured Junga
T145 R-M.comp Demand sysyem
T147 R-galactic exchange
T151 R-teleport
T153 R-class X
T154 capture Chort
T155 R-drive
T157 R-adv techs
T158 Eliminated Bul or Saks which ever one I was warring with
demanded Remus
T184 demand Tai
sent fleet to Tai so it could take out their large fleet.
I had 27 BB and 4 DS, they had 2 DD, 3 DE, 5 CA, 33 BB, 34 Titans, 18 DS.
sent some to destroy nearest planet and waited to put Marine barracks/AMC/Armor Barrackson Tai
Then sent fleet to Anties to end the game.
No one had much in the way of ships anyway.

[vmxa1]

This game was one I play for someone on another board that was having problems with this setting. I did not realize it was only 4 players on hard. I remember now that he was using 3 players and I played a game at 3, 4 and on up to 8 to show him how it went.

[Aabraxan]

What not to do. . .

I only recently discovered these boards, and was pleased to find that I'm not the last person on earth still playing MOO2.

First, thanks to all of you who have posted such helpful tips here. While my strategies have been moderately successful, it seems that there are still many aspects to this game that I have yet to explore in any depth. (I'm sure that my wife, who refers to MOO2 as my "electronic crack," is delighted. )

Second, for those out there who are still new to the game, I thought it might be helpful to explain not only what some good strategies are, but also to explain what are some really bad ideas. To kick this off, here's my tale of woe:

Back when I first got MOO2, in 1998 or 1999, I played several games where the Klackons handed me my butt on a platter. As I recall, in one of those games, they got doom star construction and equipped the afore-mentioned doom stars with 68 grav-beams. So, I took to playing a custom race, using the Klackon picture, which, of course, took them out of the game.

Eventually, I discovered the joys of unification government. In addition to the bonuses that go along with unification, checking the morale of a planet causes my game to crash about 95% of the time. One less worry.

While clicking along happily one day, I had gotten to, as I recall, a point where I controlled about one-third of the galaxy (on huge), the Psilons controlled a similarly-sized part, and the rest was a patchwork of other species. The Psilons were ahead of me in tech, and I had just discovered Galactic Unification. Oh, joy! But I'm not a patient man, and I didn't read the description of Galactic Unification all that carefully. So when the Psilons approached me and offered me some nifty piece of tech which I didn't have, in return for Galactic Unification, I thought, "Cool! I'm going to get this nice, shiny tech, and they get something they can't use!" This turned out to be a colossal blunder. Just because they could not research Galactic Unification on their own most certainly did not mean they could not use it. Next thing I knew, I had a fleet of Psilon death stars pummeling my colonies.

Moral of the story: If you're the only Unification government in the game, no matter how great the trade looks, do not trade the Galactic Unification government, unless you're prepared to clobber the race to whom you trade it right now! (Before they can make any use of it or trade it to anybody else.)

[vmxa1]

BTW you can monitor the morale status by the icon. I reflects the level.

The real morale of the story is to not trade at all, but instead to steal. (evil grin goes here)

[Aabraxan]

Originally posted by vmxa1
BTW you can monitor the morale status by the icon. I reflects the level.

The real morale of the story is to not trade at all, but instead to steal. (evil grin goes here)

I know that I can monitor the morale by the icons, and I know that I can measure its impact in production by clicking on the production section of the colony screen. It just doesn't seem as cool to say, "Well, I'd better build a holo-dome on Nib II. They've got two frowny faces."

[vmxa1]

Sorry it was just and FYI, in case you were not aware.