Single Player Galactic Domination

Discussion on how to play against other humans.
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PhataLerror
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Single Player Galactic Domination

Postby PhataLerror » Fri Mar 11, 2016 1:51 am

In my ever-continuing quests in Obsessive-Compulsive Gaming, I am wrapping up a Master of Orion 2 challenge to myself established some years back:

Getting the most points possible in a single player game. In a huge, pre-warp galaxy with eight players. On impossible difficulty.

This required starting games with a very disadvantaged race that benefited only from a +2 Food bonus and Cybernetic, while absorbing the -10 Espionage, -50% Population Growth, and -1 Industrial Production penalties. Upon researching Evolutionary Mutation, I am able to "upgrade" to Lithovore, which cancels out the +2 Food bonus, and upon reversing the Lithovore selection, the score is multiplied by 340%.

Along the way a lot of partially played games were restarted due to the lack of favorable races or galaxies (I needed a combination of Aquatic, Tolerant, and Subterranean traits among the different races). I also had certain goals I wished to achieve, including:

Obtaining the services of the three Lords and the Supreme Leader for the Colony Leaders.
Obtaining what I felt to be the best mix of Ship Officers (Nile for his unmatched Ground Combat bonuses, Karg for his Navigator bonus, Tellik for his Engineer bonus, and Loknar).
Acquiring as many technologies as possible without the benefit of Creative, which in turn necessitated the Psilon being one of the necessary computer-controlled races.

Maximizing points especially involved maximizing population potential through the use of the Stellar Converter on toxic planets or planets smaller than large class (in systems having multiple planets) followed by Planet Construction to build the rubble back into large planets.

There was an incredible amount of reloading utilized in order to obtain Nile early in the game (which helped in subjugating the Sakkra by turn 150) and ultimately restrict all seven computer-controlled races to a single system by turn 175 (at which time my total population was 334). Reloading was also needed to obtain technologies as soon as possible, resulting in having only miniaturization applications left for research on turn 209.

I am presently at stardate 3528.5, with every race except one (the Silicoids) isolated to a single planet in their home system that I previously took control of, terraformed to the point of Gaia Transformation (requiring a galaxy with at least one discoverable Ancient Artifacts special), fully populated according to race, and then returned to their respective race. My total population is 3,358, and there are only 41 more technologies for me to learn. Every technology class has been researched to at least Level VI (half to level VII).

One of the most interesting things I found is that when I have two units from every race (three in the case of the Silicoids) building housing with the benefit of all morale- and industry-boosting buildings on a huge Ultra Rich Gaia planet directed by Commissioner Xantus, I generate +8,245 thousand population at that planet every turn (+8,107 with the Food Replicators building offset by the other two food generating buildings). If I had managed to obtain the Core Waste Dump technology, that number would tick a little higher still.

One of the most irritating things I discovered is that the 32,767 point cap on research points generated per turn results in a less-than-1% chance of successfully obtaining the Level VI miniaturization on every second turn. In seven more turns, I will be able to focus on Level VII, which will require three turns to research, but will be more forgiving on restarts.

I expect to exceed 5,000 population well before turn 300. I'm also hoping by then to have cut down the number of remaining unknown technologies from 41.

For the purposes of this exercise, I have determined that conquered units should not be counted in the final score, as the game actually allows you to inflate that number merely by conquering planets, returning them to a computer race, and then conquering them again.

At turn 285, the game lists my current score at 4,852, which means that the score multiplier doesn't kick in until the end of the game.

I did this so you wouldn't have to.

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