16-04-2005 20:53									#1
	Early expansion in MOO2... Inflate your Upload Space

How do you guys expand early in the game? I often find that it takes a very long time to get anywhere at all...

I try to get "fuel cells" and "drive" techs early to get some reach, but it takes forever to build colony ships early on (50 - 90 turns, which in Civ would be a disaster).

Is this not like Civ, where you should crank out settlers early on? Should I first build some "city improvements" and then colony ships?

What are your priorities between colony ships and colony bases?

What's the use of outpost ships? I've used them a couple of times, but there doesn't seem to be a lot to gain from them. They claim star systems for you, is that it? Does the AI keep out of these systems?

Carolus

	16-04-2005 23:11									#2
	Re: Early expansion in MOO2... Put an end to popups!

Originally posted by Carolus Rex
"How do you guys expand early in the game? I often find that it takes a very long time to get anywhere at all...

I try to get "fuel cells" and "drive" techs early to get some reach, but it takes forever to build colony ships early on (50 - 90 turns, which in Civ would be a disaster)."

This depends on what your traits are and your goal. If you have a race that has little production boost, you will have a longer build time. Is your planet Rich or Large?

In some cases, I may not expand outside of my system for a long time. Playing a research race, I can just turtle and come out blasting later.

A unitol with +P on a large HW. I looked at an old log and I see that on turn 35 I was 7 on food, 11 on industry and started a CS.
It was done on turn 43. This was on impossible level. No Leader.

"Is this not like Civ, where you should crank out settlers early on? Should I first build some "city improvements" and then colony ships?"

In most races, you would like to get RL and AF up and then go expand. One way to speed this up, is to add pop from your colonies to your HW.

This is the same as I may do in a Sid level game of C3C. Where I take some workers and improve my tiles in the capitol. I then join those workers, as they finish their tile, to the capitol. Now my capitol is larger and can make that great lib before those other civs.

So if your HW has had its pop near max and is a large planet, with a AF, it can make ships in a reasonable pace.

"What are your priorities between colony ships and colony bases?"

I will normally get colony bases up quickly on the home system. I will rarely make them in other system, as I do not want the game to last that long most of the time.

I tend to not make a lot of colony ships, as I prefer to get my local systems and then start taking someone else's systems. I may drop a few colony ships as I spread out to fill gaps.

"What's the use of outpost ships? I've used them a couple of times, but there doesn't seem to be a lot to gain from them. They claim star systems for you, is that it? Does the AI keep out of these systems?"

The AI will bust your outpost, when it goes to war and will build planets in that system. I use them for two things. 1- range extenders, 2- for the marine barracks if not a uni.

So if I want a given planet, especially early, I send an OP. Then a CS. Now I am up with a barracks and the OP let me scout farther out before I could get a CS ready.

I may even do this as a uni. This still works as a range extender and I am going to need a barracks someplace to build transports, unless your are a Tele.

	17-04-2005 01:10									#3
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vmxa: you are using far too many acronyms my friend. From what our buddy has said, it's apparent that he's very new to the game.

Carolus:

uni = unification (race pick; government type; at a difficulty of average or above you can customise your race)

tol = short for tolerant (race pick)

RL = research lab (technology advance)
AF = automated factories (technology advance)
CS = colony ship
HW = homeworld


I'll add my two cents to your questions a little later.

	17-04-2005 02:17									#4
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

You are probably correct, but I did spell out uni and CS and HW a few times.

	17-04-2005 04:38									#5
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by Brutalisk vmxa: you are using far too many acronyms my friend. From what our buddy has said, it's apparent that he's very new to the game.

Right on both accounts!

Thanks for the list! HW and some others were not too hard, but unitol?!

Thanks to both for your answers (here and in the other thread). Perhaps there are some good, older threads you can recommend?

I'll probably be back with a lot more questions as I really enjoy this game!

So you can actually stay in your home system and not worrying too much about expanding (I realise this depends on the system's resources etc)?

I often feel really stressed in the beginning when I get to know how other races expand, so I try to grab as much "land" as possible early on. Otherwise I feel I'm not keeping up, but that seems to be something not to worry too much about then?

Carolus

	17-04-2005 06:32									#6
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Staying home or turtling is for specific races. Namely creative, as they will have all techs and have powerful defenses. They can afford to bust out later when they can make killer ships.

This will not work, if you are not familiar with how to design ship that work well. In that sort of a game, I would get to Deep Core and Megafluxers or what ever teh 3500 rpt one is that comes with High Energy focus.

At this point I refit 5 or 6 ships and take down Orion. Maybe refit, if I get X-armor from it. Use my newly refitted ships and Loknar to start busting planets.

Other races are better of to expand rapidly and use their production advantages to run over the map.

There are a few good threads, but they are full of BS and hae lots of topic changes. I am not sure if it is worth plowing through or not. If you like to read that stuff, then change the dates on the default and go back about a year.

You will see lots of stuff and can read what you like. Otherwise just post your questions as you have them. They will get answered. sometimes right away, others in 10 or so hours.

	17-04-2005 07:17									#7
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Personally, I beeline for the techs which boost research and industry or give "city improvements" which do. I expand as fast as possible and use my home planet as the only food source (but don't forget to make freighter fleets!), allowing me to colonize less-farmable planets and especially rich ones.

Scouting is especially important - don't ever send your colony ship to a planet where you haven't explored, you might get unlucky and find a monster or the Guardian there.

I go for the planets with high production rates (rich, ultra rich, etc - never poor planets) and focus on building all the useful improvements (which is most of them) on every colony. Once a colony has everything major done which you've researched, including space stations (but preferably battlestations or star fortresses, if you can build them), it's a powerful force in its own right, and can help you pump out warships. By then you probably won't have much need for colony ships, as you'll probably be invading enemy planets (if you're playing warlike, anyways, and if not there won't be many planets left for you to colonize).

Personally I like the telepathic pick for the ability to mind-control entire planets (once you crush their defenses), and creative is very useful if you're not going to be trading techs or spying for them. If you take creative and research bonuses together you can put together a good tech lead, but beware of the AI spying to steal your techs. :P

P.S. This is great, this forum is more active than the Moo3 forums here.

Last edited by Shadowlord on 17-04-2005 at 08:23

	17-04-2005 22:12									#8
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To point you to a thread, I'd have to go digging and it would take far more time and effort.

I noticed some other forums these days have one thread pinned on teh top with all the essential info new players need to know. Anyhow.


MOO2 is separated into six distinct categories of traits:

Three Main Ones:
- tech races
- industrial races
- war races
Three Support Ones:
- spy network
- diplomacy
- population


It's now a matter of how you will combine them. Different types require different
style of play. Single Player Games (=SP games) are a lot easier than
Multiplayer Games (=MP games).

With the official MOO2 (several unofficial mods exist), the general conscensus is
that the best race is,

Unification, Tolerant, +1 production, Large Home World
(unitol, +1p, LHW)
Several industrial+population races are favoured, a lot of them are unitol
variations. Most of them if not all are focused on unification. Unification is
a very strong trait. Their strength is fact colonizing and building up a
huge population (tolerant increases the CAPACITY your planets can hold, while
production helps increase the RATE dramatically through "housing"). Put a normal
abundant planet on housing with only ONE population and preferably automated
factories and watch its growth rate.

A very strong research race is Democracy, +Lithovore, +Artifacts. This type of
races is referred to as demlith races. One of the routes for winning with this
one is to gain some key war technologies early on and either attack an enemy
very early with technologically superior SMALL craft OR capture a favourable
monster world very early. Monster Worlds are the systems guarded by monsters,
such as crystals, amoebas, hydras and dragons. That is a skill you need to master.
Whatever race you are, the sooner you get hold of one if not mroe monster worlds
the better.


A strong War Race can go a number of routes. One of the core races includes,
feudal +telepathic +transdimensional. The first one cuts the cost of ships
dramatically allowing you to quickly construct some ships, telepathic gives
you the ability to assimilate a planet instantly and without the need for
transports. Transdimensional gives your ships the much needed speed and
battle maneuvrability needed to REACH your enemies fast and win those early
battles.


If you want to use creative, try Unification, Creative, Subterranean. It
allows you to hold considerable population and creative boosts up your
defense as you get some technologies which are usually sacrificed by non
creative human players. (eg two early ones heavy armor, missile bases)


Another race you can play is unilith. Even though you lose the food bonus,
trust me, unilith is a very VERSATILE race and can adjust to a lot of
different situations. In games against the AI, you'll even have the time to
get the terraforming and use it to increase your populations dramatically.
This race's success often rides on the ability to get a monster world early.

Other races you can try...

Since you are playing SP games, the AI is rather
easy to handle, so you can experiment with the diplomatic route. Being
charismatic goes a long way in working your way towards maintaining peace
with the feeble minded AI while you have time to grow in strength or abuse your
allies.

Winning through a purely spy race is one of the trickiest ones. Once you get
familiar and confident with the game and want to explore more of it, then try
a spy race...

There are far more races you can try. I'll leave it upto you to explore.

	18-04-2005 07:47									#9
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The best strategies are from active (multi)players. Over the past five years this Apolyton foruim has presented some dandy advice. Some other advice on how to develop is collected at my website.

I've been playing MOO2 since the Christmas after it was published. However, I should warn you that it's been many years since I designed or used a warlike race myself, and I'm a single-player. I generally choose a research race and beeline for Android Workers, or an industrial race and show the "Impossible" AI how to colonise.

I recommend that you obtain and apply the 1.31 patch as it provides individual ship initiative which opens up many battle tactics that the older versions lack.

There's also a DOS version patch (version 1.40 b 19) by Lord Brazen that's designed for multiplayer, has additional (command-line) options, and has many bugs and exploits fixed so that MOO2 is more challenging (as was originally intended).

In case you have a Macintosh, there's an excellent MOO2 patch (version "1.6" by MacSoft that removes many exploits and bugs.

Back to warlike races: the Feudal/Telepathic/Transdimensional combination uses only (-4)+6+5 = 7 picks, leaving 13 picks for such handy warrior skills as Warlord (+4) and Omniscient (+3).

As a conqueror, your best plan of attack is:

(1) Choose picks that benefit your empire independently of race. These include all of the above suggestions, and Ship Defense, Ship Attack, Stealthy Ships, Espionage, Unification, Creative, Cybernetic (for ship repair only). Of no interest to you are Charismatic, Fantastic Traders and Lucky. You might well choose Repulsive (although it frightens off most prospective Leaders and makes those who approach you charge much more.)

Some people like Rich Home World (RHW) for an aggressive race, to get ships built faster. Someone recommended this combination of picks as strong in an Average sized galaxy in both single and multiplayer:

Feudal, Telepathic, Transdim, Omni, Low-G, Artefacts HW, RHW.

In Large galaxies, this was recommended:

Tele, Warlord, Transdim, Omni, RHW, Feudal, Repulsive.

I suppose if ship-building is your thing, you could experiment with +1 or even +2 production.

(2) First capture populations that have strong production capabilities. Examples of good "serf" races include Sakkras, Klackons, Silicoids and Trilarians. (The Alkari, Darloks, Elerians, Gnolams, Humans, Mrrshans are useless in themselves as their traits don't carry over to your empire. The main uses for their colonies is as stepping stones to your real targets, and as places to settle the more useful races. The Bulrathi may be of marginal utility on High-G worlds, if you have no good industrial serfs. At least they make decent defensive marines, but so do Sakkra.)

(3) Telepathic gives you the ability to use captured ships during battles, as well as the (very desirable) option to Mind-Control colonies once their defences are down.

(4) Enjoy the battles; observe the AI's tricks and weaponry. Steal techs often by spying and scrapping captured ships.

Study the manual (and player-made strategy guides) as you play; try out a great variety of ship systems and battle tactics. (Quicksilver's MOO3 has nothing approaching the possibilities of either MOO1 or MOO2: probably because it wasn't the Starfleet Battles team that worked on it. Pity! Worse still, almost none of the QS programmers and artists had played either game at all, so they didn't have a clue what was great about the gameplay. Shame!)

MOO2's Battle Theme 1 is playing as I type, and I hungrily yen to enter the fray.

(5) Two things matter most in battles: mobility and firepower.Transdimensional empires get +4 to combat speed, so there's a good chance you'll get to move first (unless against Antarans and fast monsters. Get the first shot off, or manoeuvre around your foe where their weapons (often) don't face.

(6) The best early game weapons are missiles. If you attack quickly, you can take down whole empires with Mirv nukes. (Others can provide the details.)

Early in the game Ship Attack values are low, so point defence doesn't do much; then interceptors may also be handy to defend against missiles and/or to trouble enemy ships. Interceptors use regular strength weapons but strangely only those that have the point-defence option (Laser, Fusion, Phasor, Particle Beam). There have been some articles at Apolyton on appropriate weapon technologies for interceptors: if i recall correctly, as fighter-mounts, lasers are as strong as fusion beams

(7) With half-decent Ship Attack, I've occasionally rushed the AI with Heavy, Autofire, Armor-Piercing, Continuous, Nonreduced-Range Lasers.

But if you're conquests are delayed (due to inexperience or misfortune), then you will have to adapt to developing situations, so upgrade your ships.

(8) Space Academies are very handy, especially if the game looks like lasting a while. I generally find a system with 4 or 5 planets and place an Academy on each. Parking fleets there for a while soon raises their Experience Points.

Not that a war-oriented race has much time to keep ships in one place for long (fleets are too busy advancing the frontier), but it's very useful if your empire is industrial or scientific.

As an aggressor, you will still want one Space Academy in each ship producing system, as new ships built there will automatically gain one experience _level_. This gets a Warlord's ships quickly up to Ultra-Elite, which means deadly (+75) ship attack, agile (+75) ship defence, and tough (+20) boarding marines.

	18-04-2005 07:59									#10
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Zoetrope: there is a place for charismatic as well actually. It increases your chances of getting a good ship leader that you can use for your early attack fleet and it can make all the difference.

It also helps for diplomatic purposes (against the AI). No, I rarely if ever use charismatic, but the option is there.

	18-04-2005 08:21									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Yes, Charismatic's cheaper, better Leaders are handy, and although good diplomacy (Charm + Tel = +75 diplo) seems in conflict with constant aggression, I admit that if you're cunning the AI can be manipulated.

When playing MOO2 (or MOO3 or any of the Civs) i do miss the more rational (and more complex) behavior of AC's factions: so many more options for Machiavellis with both good and bad intentions!

	18-04-2005 12:35									#12
	Full PM-box? Change here!

I would think that CivII and CivIII would have improved AC's AI behaviour (?), sicne they came after it. I haven't played Civ II and III - believe it or not, lol.

I'm one of those that just wanted Civ for multiplayer. There was "civnet" circling around at a time but it prooved way too unusable.

	18-04-2005 15:07									#13
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I recommend this guide:

http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/...998255037872720

	18-04-2005 18:06									#14
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AC was actually released after II but before III.

Civ II: 1996
AC: 1999
Civ III: 2001

	18-04-2005 21:20									#15
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

The main players in AC were not working on CivIII.

	19-04-2005 00:01									#16
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Thanks all; a lot to digest here!

Carolus

	19-04-2005 00:04									#17
	Put an end to popups!

BTW, Zoetrope what do you mean by "like RHW"? You get what you get, it's not like you have a choice, right?

Or do you mean that certain races start out with better homeworlds every time?

Carolus

	19-04-2005 00:37									#18
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

RHW is Rich Home World. It is a trait that can be selected when you create a custom ace. It cost 2 picks.

It means you are sure to start on a rich planet.

	19-04-2005 10:57									#19
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Well, by "like" I meant "prefer". Some people prefer to choose RHW (and some even pick AHW) to give their warlike empire a boost at the start, which is when it matters most to them.

But I'm a researcher or builder at heart, so most of my strategies are hybrid. In the medium to long term you have to balance both industry and science in MOO2.

The warrior idea is to prevent anyone from reaching the medium term. I think Mike Montgomery achieved a conquest win in Huge/8/Impossible in just over 50 turns. The details are recorded in one of the Antares archives at my website. (After closely following his example, I managed it in under 60 turns repeatedly, but my light sabre's since lost its edge.)

	22-04-2005 08:29									#20
	Re: Early expansion in MOO2... Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by Carolus Rex How do you guys expand early in the game? I often find that it takes a very long time to get anywhere at all... I try to get "fuel cells" and "drive" techs early to get some reach, but it takes forever to build colony ships early on (50 - 90 turns, which in Civ would be a disaster). Is this not like Civ, where you should crank out settlers early on? Should I first build some "city improvements" and then colony ships? What are your priorities between colony ships and colony bases? What's the use of outpost ships? I've used them a couple of times, but there doesn't seem to be a lot to gain from them. They claim star systems for you, is that it? Does the AI keep out of these systems? Carolus

First pick the right race, a techer or a blitzer will not be all that interested in settling new planets, you'll want production. You need to be able to get a colony ship out atleast every 15 turns.

Second, You will want atleast autofactories before you start producing colony ships. and with a teching race wait till pollution processors and Robotics mining planet probably.

third you have to check your own expansion against your ability to defend it all,you'll have to throw up some cruisers or your neighbors will invade.

outposts give you fuel range, the ability to later settle a planet and get a "free" Marine Barracks, and yes they do prevent others from settling them.

	23-04-2005 04:12									#21
	Got spare money?

Zoetrope: where's that strategy? There are quite a lot of files and quite a lot of correspondence , pages and pages of people "talking".

I d/led these files a year or two ago...

	23-04-2005 06:23									#22
	Increase Your PM Length

Well it sounds like Tele Trand with either Warlord or Feud. Doing 50 turns in a Huge sounds like a special map.

It will be so hard to reach all 8 races in 50 turns, even if they put up no fight at all. I am guessing they looked for a mpa with lots of wormholes near them or maybe it is possible to build such a map.

I have been playing since day 1 and play all the time and have yet to see any map that it would work on for less than high 60's.

It is not a question beating the races, but of reaching them that fast.

	23-04-2005 08:42									#23
	Remove this text

Antares2/strategy.zip contains many threads on blitz strategies.

The main discussions were 7 years ago, and i misremembered badly. Mike Montgomery claimed (in April 1998) that as a Teleblitzer by turn 57 to 63 he could produce a battleship capable of taking down a starbase, and that in a Huge galaxy at Impossible difficulty he could conquer all races on the map by turn 134 to 140.

Quoting from Mike's article of 14 May 1998 in the thread "Feudal Blitz"), his preferred teleblitz race is:

Unif/Tel/AHW/LHW/Warlord,
with your favorite -10 negs. (I like Rep/-.5BC; or LowG/-Spy/-GC).

I had reported some success with my first tele-drill, which was at Tutor (hyper-caution) in a Huge galaxy with Feud/Tel/Lith/AHW/Rep/(some other neg picks), and Mike was querying my choice of race and difficulty.

On 9 May 1998, Imam, writing in the thread "defeat the blitz", stated that a Demo/Lith/AHW race [normally considered a research race] can "eliminate a neighboring homeworld by turn 35 in a pre-warp game (assuming good proximity) through judicious use of MIRVing Nuke destroyers."

I'm gradually working through strategy.zip. On 27 May 1998, Mike Montgomery wrote of conquering a Small, Pre-Warp, Average, Impossible galaxy in 61 turns using a missile cruiser teleblitz with Uni/Tel/Omni/AHW/RHW.

"Missiles, Blitzes and Early Defenses" (around 9 and 10 June 1998) comprises a series of articles on early blitz strategies and tactics.

Last edited by Zoetrope on 23-04-2005 at 09:49

	23-04-2005 20:49									#24
	Inflate your Upload Space

Kharrus claimed 20 turns on a small map. I figured that was a cooked map or at least a very carefully selected one.

I think most of those games are not prewarp, but are average tech. They do ot want to have to learn to fly and build a ship from scratch.

	24-04-2005 02:30									#25
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OK, Mike's feat now comes down to earth and as it turns out is not a true "accomplishment" but not bad either.

In my view, anyone who uses LowG is a fool btw... its 25% penalties are simply too heavy.

	26-04-2005 17:22									#26
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I've just played a very quick game with the following parameters.

HUGE,
8 Players,
Impossible,
Average Tech Age,
Average Age Galaxy,
Tactical Combat ON
Antarans ON
Random events OFF
Galaxy Parameters: NONE (do not change anything) - ie wormholes ON, blackholes ON, Orion ON, Splinter Colonies ON, no preset start for homesystem - people familiar with the mod will know what I am talking about.
Game Version: 1.40b19 (simply because it gets rid of several bugs from 1.32)


Anyway, I played it pretty quickly and did it by turn 141. Not good at all, plenty of room for improvement, but I posted it here to get a race going. Keep a SAVE file of one turn just before the end of the game and be honest with yourselves. Don't use the "save/load" approach. Just play it and use save only in case the game crashes.

	27-04-2005 12:31									#27
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Brutalisk: what race picks did you choose?

Back to the Future: ("Sid Meier's") Alpha Centauri was Brian Reynold's follow-up to Civ2 before Firaxis got the rights to Civ3. After SMAC, and before Alien Crossfire was released, Brian left Firaxis and formed Big Huge Games.

In many ways, for example diplomacy and society wise, SMAC is far, far superior to Civ3. Sometimes single-play SMAC is almost as Machiavelllian as the board-game Diplomacy. That really is something the MOO series needs, instead of the "Have I met you before? Then I hate you, and will get myself killed to spite you! (whoever you are)" approach of the MOOs' AI (Artificial Insanity).

	27-04-2005 20:04									#28
	Got spare money?

Speak for yourself, I do not like diplomacy. Not in SMAC, not Civ.

	27-04-2005 20:41									#29
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AC has more options for your government, since it is modular. You aren't just confined to democracy, communism, fundamentalism, dictatorship, feudeul, and so on. However, the combat is much more simpler in AC. I really enjoy tactical combat in MOOII. If you don't have tactical combat turned on in MOOII, you might as well play AC.

	28-04-2005 02:08									#30
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Zoetrope: I won't say what I used, just yet. No point in this "competition" otherwise, as part of the fun is coming up with an effective race and strategy to win the game ASAP. BTW, in case I haven't mentioned it above, we are referring to winning by conquering all the races (not killing the antarans or diplomatic win)

In a second game, I gave the race above another go and did it by turn 135. With that race it can certainly be improved, since i had some hiccups during the course of the game.


I agree, the AI is not the best of AIs but it does relatively well (for an AI). It does relatively well in the battles as an AI as well. BTW, MOO2's battle system is probably one of the best if not the best that was ever made and I have seen a lot of battle systems...

One other thing about the AI, it's often the case that the AI is made to be beatable. I know first hand that people complain a lot if the AI is too difficult...