263: How I Gained and Lost an Empire

[LadyRhian]

I used to play MoOII for hours on end. Some of my best memories are of when the galactic senate would make someone else ruler, and I would say, "No, not going to agree." and fight the entire rest of the galaxy until they were down to one world on one system (usually an ultra-poor planet) and I'd have all their worlds and peoples. And then I'd go to Antares.

And I'd play creative. Low G World, minuses in spying... And the Elerian Race Picture. I was the empire of the space chicks.

 

[MNRA]

Superb read! Loved every line of it!

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Damn you! I must re-install this now! Well, that's my afternoon gone....

EDIT - Success! And as for Creative being broken? Try Creative, Unification, and Telepathic - it's almost too easy...

I'll give that a shot, right over the Psilon avatar, so I don't have the Psilon enemy.

If anyone wants to get it, you can get Moo and Moo2 for 6 dollars for the two of them together at GOG.com

I always take out the Klackons myself, simply because I'm sick of them declaring war on me and attacking my fleets with HUNDREDS of crappy ships that take forever to blow out of the sky. I have a feeling that it was actually the Klackons who invented the Zerg Rush, they pull that crap with me so often!

 

[LadyRhian]

Yeah, how can you fight against Tamerlane?

 

[golgoth]

I never thought anyone else had ever heard of MoO2, i was playing it the other day and it feels so good to know when you lose one of the worlds and your fleets playing elsewhere you can bring that fleet all together and smash the stupid invader (ussually the elarins for some odd reason). Thank you for this article though it makes me feel a whole lot better about if one of my old games gets scratched someone somewhere will remember them.

 

[komodomantis]

This was a great article. It made me think of a space epic, like Star Wars.

 

[Exia91]

Nicely written there, mate. Excellent description of the Tyran's mind and it's demise.

A little off-topic here. Which Dutch Uni? [sub] If you ever are willing to answer this..[/sub]

 

[Azhrarn-101]

The game is still playable if you can live with 640 x 480 resolution but getting hold of a legal copy is next to impossible. There was a squeal MoO3 but is was just plain bad. The game suffered from terrible enemy A.I, a horrible interface, game killing bugs and missed half the features that made MoO2 good.

Actually getting a legal copy hasn't been this easy in years.
Good Old Games has a combo pack of Master of Orion 1 & 2 for sale, both fully patched and remastered to be compatible with current operating systems for a mere $5,99.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/master_of_orion_1_2/

An absolute steal if you don't have these games on their original disks, and even if you do, because these versions will work without issue on Windows 7. ^_^

 

[Aenir]

Damn, nice. Great read. You played Civilization 4?

Totally agree with your decision to end the game there.

 

[Georgie_Leech]

Curse you, Alex Donks. Curse you and your well-written article that will make me entirely waste my summer with this game.

Since I need to add some sort of value to this destruction, I almost never play the tyrant in civ manager games, usually a benevolent dictator on steroids. My society becomes well educated, humane, and almost ridiculously advanced. I have a fairly small civilization, with a fairly small army fo defence. Then some idiot gets cocky, declares war and attempts to, no doubt, conquer my puny civilisation. Then my factories start churning out troops far beyond their feeble imagination, and the war takes its natural course... Especially evident because of the timeline, Galactic Civ 2 declarations of war are characterised by sudden spikes of population growth.

 

[Archon]

Hurrah for Masters of Orion 2. That game, and X-Com, live forever as constellations in the heavens of my gaming.

 

[Lost In The Void]

Gah! I loved MoO and MoO II why must you remind me of those, now that's going to be all I play tonight. Ah MoO II did so much right.

As tactics go I was always the one who captured planets mostly because my ground troops were always so well equipped. The only time I would destroy a planet was if there was no hope of capture and it was a waste of my resources trying.

 

[ayanematrix]

Sounds like some good old times. Almost makes me want to get myself a copy to find out what I missed all those years ago.

 

[Spyre2000]

Ah you made the classic mistake when facing an enemy with far superior forces, you took them head on.

My most memorable game of MOO2 was one where I only manage to gain 5 solar systems each with about 2-3 planets on largest map size. I still won the game though through superior tech and tactics.

The largest empire in the game manage to get enough people to vote him President of the Galaxy. This was of course was unacceptable and I refused to accept it, something I wish other 4x games would let you do these days. In doing so it had all the other empires colonies and ships transfer under the control of the Empire that one the vote and they went to war with me. Five lowly star systems vs an empire that span the rest of the galaxy didn't look good.

Despite those odds I was not without a plan and not completely helpless. For I had gone the tech & econ route in the game with a fleet of Titans that had stellar converters on them. I had close to 30 of them and it only took 2 to clear a planet with all the planet side defenses and a star fortress. So I sent my fleet to about 10 different star systems while they sent a massive fleet of several hundred ships to a single planet of mine.

Needless to say it became a race of who could wipe out the other faster and well frankly I won. I never faced the fleet of several hundred ships which included many Doomstars. But I watched as it quickly disbanded because they could no maintain the upkeep for it. In the end I threw out a few colony ships to give them more planets to distract the invasion fleet and ended up with 3 of my 5 systems remaining completely untouched during the war.

The common flaw with the AI and many players is to muster a single fleet and use it to attack. A better tactic is to get a fleet just strong enough to take out worlds who's only defense is planet side stuff with no ship support. Then use several of those fleets to hit multiple systems while they use their 1 fleet to hit yours. After all there is no point in pulling your forces back if they are gonna get wiped out.

It's better to take the planet loses and do damage to them instead. I use this tactic all the time against AI and Players (when the 4x supports MP). It's easy to out flank them cause they are always trying to fly that one fleet to intercept your attack fleet and I have multiple fleets often on different sides of their empire.

 

[rddj623]

A brilliant article, about a game I had forgotten about years ago, makes me want to forage and find it again!

 

[artanis_neravar]

Hurrah for Masters of Orion 2. That game, and X-Com, live forever as constellations in the heavens of my gaming.

Agreed, two of the best games ever made.

OT: I usually choose the human avatar for my creative race, so those damned humans don't use their diplomatic skills to unite the galaxy against me

 

[Dr. Mongo]

Hurrah for Masters of Orion 2. That game, and X-Com, live forever as constellations in the heavens of my gaming.

True. MOO 2 is one of the games that permanently stays on my hard disk.
Thanks for this great article. Now that brought back memories.