Master of Orion 2

[Valcarde]

With all this talk of games gone by these days, I felt the need to bring up this classic.

Even today, it stands as one of the better 4x (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) games. Build an empire in the stars, take over the universe, and smack the Guardian to get at that tasty green jewel of a planet with all its artifacts and gaian atmosphere and ultra-rich minerals and... mm...

Ahem.

So who else remembers and/or still plays this game?

One of my personal races I've been having fun with recently...

+50% Population Growth, +1 food, +1 Industry, +1 Research, +10 Spying, Feudal Gov't, Repulsive, and Warlord.

"Feudal? But that gimps your research! You're a madman, Valcarde, a Madman! And REPULSIVE?! Diplomacy is Fun!"

Feudal means Cheaper ships. Cheaper ships means faster expansion. Faster Expansion means more space for your rapidly growing population, giving more industry and food. More food means less people having to farm, more industry means building those cheap ships faster. Yes, your research is cut in half, but with the +1 research pick, you get 2 points per scientist instead of 1.5 (meaning, you need 2 scientists to make up for 1 scientist of any other race, where with 2 science instead, you still get a bit more for your buck, and makes the feudal penalty not hurt -as bad-.) Repulsive? Yes. first: its 6 more points of picks, nice. Secondly: IN higher difficulty levels, more and more of the PC races end up modifying themselves to pick up repulsive anyway. Better to get used to no diplomacy early on instead of being headless when the time comes and you're playing harder games. Besides, if you play Multiplayer a lot, repulsive is an easy 6 points.

[Apollinaris]

Awesome game. I have the original game CD in my CD wallet somewhere. The game loves to reside on my laptop for all eternity, and it's great to play it with a tablet PC.

Personally I never liked Feudal, I went collective if I had the chance. Telepathy is one of my personal favorites though.

[Knightward]

That was always a classic. I could never pull myself away from playing the Mentar? Why? Creative race = every researchable tech out there. And then if you're ballsy enough, you could start building ships specifically designed to capture enemy ships. The purpose of this being to capture Antaran ships and scrap them for their highly advanced and unresearchable tech.

[Apollinaris]

You get the antaran's tech if you scrap ships with that tech?

[Valcarde]

You get the antaran's tech if you scrap ships with that tech?

Sometimes. It's random what you get though, and due to those self-destruct mechanisms on the ships it's very difficult to capture one (they're also immune to ion cannons ;_; )

[Apollinaris]

Well, damn.. I've always not been using them because while the tech is nice the one ship by itself usually wasn't too helpful, and it would usually be on a teeny ship while I'm flying around in doom stars with stellar converters on them.

[Valcarde]

Particle Beams + Achilles Targetting Unit + Structural Analyzer = The Sex.

[MaligneFamily]

Anybody know a good abandonware site I can pick this up from? I bought the confusing MOO:3 which I heard as less good.

[Valcarde]

Anybody know a good abandonware site I can pick this up from? I bought the confusing MOO:3 which I heard as less good.
Ask, and ye shall recieve. (http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?gameid=689)

... No, wait, they only have a purchase option. It's abandonware.

[Apollinaris]

They re-issued discs of Moo2 shortly before Moo3 came out, and judging from the nigh legendary status of the game it's one of those things the owner of the game will keep selling until they run out of ways to sell it.

[Valcarde]

They re-issued discs of Moo2 shortly before Moo3 came out, and judging from the nigh legendary status of the game it's one of those things the owner of the game will keep selling until they run out of ways to sell it.

Actually, it is Abandonware at this point. That site has it on a compilation of Abandonware CD.

If you have a gmail account, I can send it: the full game is around 400 megs.

[WingedAvenger]

I liked Pax Imperia better... except for the fact that the game freezes for everyone in the LAN whenever one of the players enters combat, and you have to wait for it to finish before you can keep playing. Still, that game had great battle music.

[Noble]

I dominated in that game. I teched up like crazy, using my technology as diplomacy to keep the other races off me, then once I was ready, I built the biggest, baddest ships in the galaxy, and with only like 10 I conquered every other race.

[Apollinaris]

Actually, it is Abandonware at this point. That site has it on a compilation of Abandonware CD.

If you have a gmail account, I can send it: the full game is around 400 megs.

Atari would probably contest you on that one. ;)

[Remianen]

Ahh yet another classic from the minds of the former Microprose.


I still play MOO2 from time to time. Then again, I still play DAGGERFALL from time to time. I thought for sure that MOO3 was going to be to its predecessor what Morrowind was to Daggerfall but man, was I ever wrong.

My strat was usually pretty simple. I always played a custom race with telepathy (knowledge IS power, after all). I cranked up my research so I could get terraforming and hydroponic farms, which usually had me okay for food. Then I'd colonize another planet in my system and terraform it hardcore and once it was Gaia class, I think I then went full research and worked toward the Artemis System Net. Once my system was locked down, I'd shoot for the big ships with an eye to taking over the Orion system (Guardian makes for a VERY good point man when attacking the Antaran homeworld).

That game is fantastic and still playable years later.

[Valcarde]

I dunno. Telepathy, makes capturing worlds easier (only need to build transports when facing another telepathic race) and has a diplomacy and spying bonus, but other then that, I don't like it very much (Although a Creative, Telepathic, Unification race is... *twitch*

But the real power?

Democracy/Lithovore. If you can fit a bonus to Industry or even a +1 research, you will out-tech -everyone-. Creative, honestly, while nice to have all the technologies, is a bit of an industrial crutch: You have so much stuff to build you take forever to get a planet 'up to speed'!

[Greblaja]

Ack! I can't believe you summoned the demon by calling out his name!

That game was so addicting. I actually had my wife hide the CD from me once! (I found it though, heh) It's been years since I played that game ... and now I'm going to have to tear my office apart to find that CD again. Thanks alot!

Recounting one old memory: I tend to Tech up when I play. I was way ahead of the bug guys in Technology, but they were still way ahead at the moment in planets and what not. I was waiting for my new batch of high tech ships to cook while I watched him bear down on my outer rim. Ding, bombers were ready, and I began to systematically go out and off'd his systems: no invasions, just flattened them. He still had a healthy fleet, but since I had the change course tech (and could scan his travel space), I kept changing course to an open system while he kept coasting by. He really had me on the ropes, but then it all changed in just a few turns: man was that cool!

[Greblaja]

I accidently found my MOO2 disk tonight, and I immediatly lost about 7 hours of my life. This game is pure evil (but man is it fun!).

[Apollinaris]

Well if you love MoO2, we sure as hell better not introduce you to.. Galactic Civilizations 2 (http://www.galciv2.com), I mean, that would be like locking a crack addict in a brand new crack factory....

Opps...

[Valcarde]

GalCiv...

Enh.

I tried the first one, wasn't impressed. The big draw, for me, in Moo2 was designing my ships myself. GalCiv (1 at least) didn't let me design my ships: I wasn't able to see the combats and how they progressed; it felt.. unfinished, like little more then Sid Meier in Space.

Is Gal Civ 2 any better?

[Dr Jack Wolfe]

You can do all that in GalCiv and GalCiv2. Want to build an mass driver only destroyer class. Go ahead. Now the battles are less interactive, the captains fight their ships instead of the old turn based stuff of Orion 2. But its certainly possible to end up with 30 stand-off ships facing a couple of huge energy weapon vessels.

In GalCiv you had to zoom in to watch the fights, GalCiv2 give you an option box, all looks good in 3d though. You know Sword of Stars does this too, its an ok distraction for a bargain game.

[Apollinaris]

In GalCiv 2 not only can you design the capabilities of the ships, but you can create the look of the ships and build them piece by piece by piece in 3d. You can literally spend hours just creating cool looking ships. It's very easy too: You get a basic hull, then you can add as many massless "Jewelery" pieces you want by attaching them to hardpoint positions on the hull (just drag, click, and rotate part how you'd like it) then you can add fuctional bits like life support, sensors, weapons, engines, defenses, etc. My only really big complaint with the game is I think the three types of weapons is with corresponding three types of defenses is splitting hairs a bit. :/

Also, as for it being any good... (Remember, I like Gamespy's reviews.)

#6 PC Game of the Year
http://goty.gamespy.com/2006/pc/index6.html

PC Turn Based Strategy Game of the Year
http://goty.gamespy.com/2006/pc/index14.html

Oh yes, it's also know for it's good AI, which doesn't use any "handicaps" to make higher and lower difficulty levels (Like Civ4) and the game plays by the same rules a player does. Current version of the game has an option to use "more CPU intensive AI" which is aimed at dual-core proccessors so the game can assign the core that isn't running the game to process AI calculations.

http://gotymedia.gamespy.com/2006/images/screens/pc-turnbased-galcivII.jpg

(Intelligent or better is one of the enemy AI difficulty levels. You can also set different races in the same game with different intelligence levels.)

[Remianen]

Appolinaris.....YOU SUCK!


You...


.....just SUCK! :( :P