from a newbie

[Crassas(s)]

I just discovered MOO II recently and have been playing it for less than a month. Before I had played too many times I read some of the strategy guides available on the internet. Please tell me what you think of my latest approach:

1. Pick Unification, Subterranean, +1 Research, and Large Homeworld with minuses in Ship Defence and Ground Combat.

2. Start off by moving all but one worker to Research and set Production to Housing.

3. Research Electronic Computer, but only to get at Research Lab.

4. Research Anti-Missile Rockets, but only to get at Automated Factory.

5. By this time there is an additional researcher available from Housing, so research Automated Factory, which will go faster.

6. Move all researchers into Production and build Automated Factory (only takes about 3 turns, during which RP are 0).

7. Move all workers into Research (the lack of any workers won't matter because of Automated Factory) and research Research Lab.

8. Move all researchers back to Production and build Research Lab (which should take about 2 turns of 0 RP).

This process takes fewer than 30 turns and leaves me nicely set up to expand my empire faster than the AI does.

Any comments?

Crass

[rewster1]

I'm certain I saw a post here by Cabman. Not sure where that went, but definitely read this strategy guide: http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2005 ... guide.html

Your build is efficient enough to out-expand an AI, but not a human.

There are better expansion races, for one. Try unification tolerant +1 production large home world, for instance. Antimissile rockets are a bad idea for several reasons: you give up reinforced hull (and fighter bays if you spot an early monster), and pd beams are almost always more efficient. You shouldn't build housing on your homeworld. If you are using a production/expansion race like the one I mentioned, build colony bases, and use those for housing with just 1 person on each. If you are using a tech race, have 2 or 3 people on production at all times and store production (put a colony ship in the queue) so you can build the buildings immediately after researching them, rather than switching everyone back and forth between production and research (this is inefficient as it generates a ton of pollution). The only time a tech race should have everyone on production early on is to build your colony bases after you've gotten automated factory.

[Crassas(s)]

Thanks very much for your response. I'll check out that strategy guide you gave a link to.

Right now I'm not concerned about beating humans because I don't know any other MOO II players in my physical life, so I'm kinda stuck playing only AI opponents.

Tolerant strikes me as very expensive at 10 points. I'm not sure how to get both Unification and Tolerant without also taking Repulsive, and Non-Aggression Pacts have been very valuable to me so far in the early stages before I'm ready to start conquering. Again, this is playing against the AI, which is what I'm stuck doing right now.

I agree that the homeworld shouldn't be used as a Housing planet in the long term, but in the first 25 or so turns it generates one extra researcher to research Automated Factory and Research Lab faster.

The reason I picked Anti-Missile Rockets is because I haven't done Tactical Combat yet. I want to learn how to beat the game on a less advanced playing field first.

Please tell me more about how switching researchers to production generates more pollution. I haven't noticed.

Crass

[Overlord2]

I'm certain I saw a post here by Cabman. Not sure where that went, but...

Heh, indeed. I saw it too. Cab, you removed your post?
I have a feeling the forum engine doesn't work well lately....

Tolerant strikes me as very expensive at 10 points. I'm not sure how to get both Unification and Tolerant without also taking Repulsive, and Non-Aggression Pacts have been very valuable to me so far in the early stages before I'm ready to start conquering. Again, this is playing against the AI, which is what I'm stuck doing right now.

If you want to learn how to play moo, you should study how are the best races played out. Generally the key with any race is to grow large pop and quickly, and also to be able to produce ships fast, when you have your pop grown and techs researched. Try hitting 100 population by turn 100 target, if you can achieve that, it means you have some progress. The record is (in 1.40b23) 252 pop by t100, which belongs to Cabman. That will be difficult to repeat, since he had amazingly good sector and planets, but something close to 200 pop is possible. This is what vets can do in an average game.

[Crassas(s)]

200 pop in 100 turns does indeed sound challenging. I haven't gotten even close to that, which might mean that I should be less picky about the planets I colonize.

Thanks for your input.

Crass

[Overlord2]

Btw, playing strategical combat turns this game from war game into empire building simulator imho

[Crassas(s)]

Take it easy on me. I'm just learning how to play it. I would think you would be glad there is at least one person somewhere on the earth who has just discovered MOO II. If only hyper-experienced players are welcome on this board, just let me know and I'll go away.

Crass

[Overlord2]

Take it easy on me. I'm just learning how to play it. I would think you would be glad there is at least one person somewhere on the earth who has just discovered MOO II. If only hyper-experienced players are welcome on this board, just let me know and I'll go away.

Crass

All I wanted to say that moo2 without tactical combat is meaningless. Besides, how can you learn to play tactical combat well, if you don't try? It's something like learn to swim without swimming...

[Jano]

You can play without taktical but this game is boring, except that the computer is always foolish to player.Na definitely better than the battle itself plays komputer. MOO or 2 league game for which I am me:)
sorry for the language but I can learn only

[rewster1]

Actually, I believe strategic combat makes the game a bit more challenging against the AI. I mean, let's face it, the AI is horrible at tactical combat, and even worse at designing ships for tactical combat.

[rewster1]

Thanks very much for your response. I'll check out that strategy guide you gave a link to.

Right now I'm not concerned about beating humans because I don't know any other MOO II players in my physical life, so I'm kinda stuck playing only AI opponents.

Tolerant strikes me as very expensive at 10 points. I'm not sure how to get both Unification and Tolerant without also taking Repulsive, and Non-Aggression Pacts have been very valuable to me so far in the early stages before I'm ready to start conquering. Again, this is playing against the AI, which is what I'm stuck doing right now.

I agree that the homeworld shouldn't be used as a Housing planet in the long term, but in the first 25 or so turns it generates one extra researcher to research Automated Factory and Research Lab faster.

The reason I picked Anti-Missile Rockets is because I haven't done Tactical Combat yet. I want to learn how to beat the game on a less advanced playing field first.

Please tell me more about how switching researchers to production generates more pollution. I haven't noticed.

Crass

Tolerant is expensive, but well worth the picks. In fact it is so powerful it is often a victim if any race picks are banned.
If you don't want repulsive, there are other combinations. You could take low gravity, and research gravity generator. Or, a combination of negatives in spying, ground combat, ship attack and ship defense would work against the AI just fine if you forgo large home world (-20 ship attack is not a good choice against a human, but if you are only playing the AI that's not an issue).
If you'd like to play against humans online sometime, there is a guide for setting up moo2 in dosbox for online play here: http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2006 ... guide.html, and once you get set up you should be able to find an opponent if you click on the chat button at the top of this page.

As far as short term housing on the homeworld, it's a trade-off. By building housing, you may research a bit faster, but you are not saving any production for the building of the research lab or automated factory. That means you're either buying it at a very high price, or you have to switch everyone from research to production. You'll notice the first 2 people you put in production usually don't produce pollution, and the third may produce a little, but with everyone on production, pollution is probably eating close to half of your production. So if you look at the total turns to both research and build the building in question, for a non-tolerant race it's quicker to store production over time and avoid pollution for the most part than to research a bit quicker with more people on research but then suffer a large pollution penalty. As for that one unit of population you give up, your population will more than catch up once you build colony bases and use those to build housing with only 1 pop on each, and you get those colony bases faster if you get the research lab and automated factory faster.

[Time]

By the way, welcome Crassas to the forum.
And don't worry, most of us don't get to that 200+ pop he mentioned earlier.
Since, most of my games have been for the fun of it, not competition, I only occasionally rise over 100 pop/turn 100.

Personally, I think that pop startegy ruins the "spirit" of the game.
If a planet was unable to transport more that half of it's pop off at a time, that would limit this abuse.
Planetwide evacuations should be extremely rare, as this would be nearly impossible under normal circumstances.
Also, require a planet to grow to 3 pop before any pop could be removed, then limit the minimum to 3 at all times, like the natives that won't leave their world.
Some people just won't leave.

[Child of the Sixth Sun]

In my opinion, the best picks to combine with Unification+tolerant would be cybernetic. You see, people need to eat food, and because tolerant increases the population of each planet, it also increases the food demands of your empire. Unification helps a little bit with this, but not enough; there simply aren't enough food-producing planets relative to all the toxic/radiated/barren ones out there, and your best planets shouldn't be wasting their population on producing food to feed your crappier planets. The fact that cyber races only eat half as much food helps enormously with this, and reduces the amount of time that you waste on building freighters, too. The extra workers that would otherwise be farmers should more than offset the fact that cyber races eat production. And to top it all off, that whole "ships repair themselves in combat" thing REALLY helps in drawn-out space battles.

And please, play with Tactical combat on. Otherwise, you're not really playing the game at all.