MOO1 strategy

[Urban Ranger]

Sometimes they can be dangerous.

[vmxa1]

Ravagon, it is extremely rare, but I have encounter two games where I didn not have a planet in range. To me it is not enough to have a planet in 3 parsecs, I need one good one close by and another not far bother on hard or impossible. You can win with worse, but it is no fun.

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

Also if I can't find a single colonisable planet within 3 parsecs of my home planet I'd start over. It's too much of a hassle to wait for longer range fuel cells.

I was reading a strat guide that suggests you can play if there's no stars close to you. scarp your colony ship and build up your planet. your CS costs 10 BC in maintenance and you might come from behind still. he admits it is a challnege, though.

[Urban Ranger]

FB,

I read the same thing too. It'd be very tough on the harder levels. I think I may be able to pull that on average with just the right mix of opponents, i.e., nobody that expands like the plague.


ravagon,

IIRC, in one game I had 3 systems in range. One was Orion , the other had no usable planets and the last one had a hostile environment. No fun

[vmxa1]

Yes, I should have mentioned, if Orion is one of the very close ones, I will likely not play. I would say at hard if no planet in 3 parsecs, you are toast. At impossible you will definetly lose (assuming no cheating). If the close planets are not habitable, it is nearly the same. I say nearely as maybe Barren could be ok (not really as it has such a low population and production. CertainlyToxic or Radiation is worthless as a starting neighbor. Note that on Hard and small, if you get high ratio of bad (toxic/barren, etc) and had Silicoids, you are in big trouble as they will grow so fast, you are in danger of being voted out. Also on small, if they Humans are able to expand, it can be tricky as most species are willing to vote for them. Often the three or four vote can be fatal, if you can not get enough planets to stop the vote. It can get down to buying one vote to abstain.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
ravagon,

IIRC, in one game I had 3 systems in range. One was Orion , the other had no usable planets and the last one had a hostile environment. No fun

Orion was in range and you didn't attack immediately with your colony ship/scout armada???!!!

I've never had a situation where there hasn't been a system in range able to be colonized immediately, henceforth I guess I assumed the game to seed planets that way - Never considered that Orion might actually count.

As a matter of interest has anybody playing the silicoids ever been in a start location without access to any normal (ie: No controlled env. techs reqd) planets - in spite of the fact that they don't actually need them?

[Urban Ranger]

I suck at playing the Silicoids. I have no idea how they can expand so fast as they seem to have very little production.

[DaveV]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I suck at playing the Silicoids. I have no idea how they can expand so fast as they seem to have very little production.

I always thought the Silicoids were great in the early game. Not having to spend any money on ecology gives them almost double the production of the other races. Their biggest problem is slow population growth, which you can deal with by transporting population points around. I try to keep each planet around 50% of max population while I'm expanding, since that's where growth is the fastest. Once I'm out of room to expand, I clean up the waste and fill up the planets by buying population. Terraforming is a very important tech for the Silicoids, since a lot of their planets will have miserably low max populations.

[Zealot]

Originally posted by DaveV
I try to keep each planet around 50% of max population while I'm expanding, since that's where growth is the fastest.

Looks like I'm not the only one who knows it!
This strategy can also be applied in MOO 2.
Just wanted to emphasize this strategy.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Zealot
Looks like I'm not the only one who knows it!
This strategy can also be applied in MOO 2.
Just wanted to emphasize this strategy.

Yeah well, everybody else hates the Silicoids in MoO 2

[vmxa1]

I can not even remember the other species and how to play them as I have only used Klacs for the last 4 years. I had played the others but not for a long time. I use the same color all the time in Moo and Moo2 (yellow) and the same species to keep it simple. In Moo2 I used a custom species of course with the face of the Psilons. I seemed to remember the Silicoids were the hardest to play and one of the hardest to play against. They are my least favorite to have in a small map as that seems to convey more planets with unhospitable atmosphere. They can then expand every where. Them and the Humans are my biggest concern for the council vote. Them because they have lots of planets and Human because most will be willing to vote for them. If they are in the game and have a bad placement then you are golden. Bad placement being that they are hemmed in by others or in the case of the humans the near planets are tundra or worse.

[Father Beast]

Using the cheat programs, mapedit and oreo, it isn't so bad on higher difficulties.

I realized just how important initial placement is when I played a game on impossible with 4 other races on a medium map, and edited the map so all the other races were clumped together in a corner, with only a couple ultra poor and radiated (non rich) worlds within reach of anything less than around 8 parsecs. I played the silicoids and surrounded my home planet with rich and ultra rich worlds. colonized like mad and found myself electing myself high master without ever meeting another race.

probably not the way it was meant to be played.

I've also givem myself a leg up on hard and impossible games by using the oreo program to reduce all the other worlds to 5 pop, no factories, and get rid of their colony ship. But on hard as the klackons, the sakkra and the silicoids were as big as I was. eek.

still a challenge, but not quite so bad.

[vmxa1]

I do not know what Oero is and do not want to as cheating is just not rewarding. I played for years on hard and impossible and did not kow you could cheat. I only found out a few months ago you could edit save games. It is not challenging to have an unloseable game.

[Father Beast]

Well, I don't play it as unlosable. Once I find that a certain cheat makes it unlosable for me, I don't feel like using it again,like the map clustering.

giving myself a head start is kind of like the head start scenario we had on the civ2 strat forum where all the AI civs start with 5 cities and monarchy. just reversed to give myself the head start. says something awful about my abilities, I'm sure.

Of course, you can always edit it to give yourself the handicap.

[ravagon]

While I don't get any enjoyment out of cheating (and hence don't do it) I have occasionally altered the max populations (upwards) of all of the homeworlds of the in-game races. I feel that this gives a better chance for those that start in a really bad position to get more out of it. I think its also more realistic to have homeworlds with much higher potential populations than colonies - even those terraformed to gaia status. In Moo1 I tend to try to keep all of the races alive (albeit under my terms
) on the off-chance that one of them will acquire a certain tech I want but cannot research.