Masters of Orion II: A Personal Strategy Guide

It’s been a while since I’ve played this game. Out of sheer boredom recently, I decided to pick this game up again from Gog. Masters of Orion II is one of those games that can last a solid day or two depending on your settings. In my case, I restarted the game a few times in trying to remember how I used to play this game. Now, a fair warning in advance: I DO cheat. And I frankly don’t care what other people think. That said, as a “power gamer” type, I typically go for the Custom race and have a set of “Picks” for various attributes. Since I haven’t played this game in a while, I’m still trying to determine the best setup.

As I mentioned, I usually cheat in the early part of the game. My typical configuration is an Impossible sized galaxy with all Events, Antares attacking, Organic Rich worlds and a few other things. Now, the one stumbling point for me was the technology aspect. I think in the past, I would go with the Pre-Warp era but on this play through, I was unable to utilize a Colony Ship after researching it. It might be a bug due to a later version from Gog. So I ended up just using the Average technology option to obtain a Colony Ship from the start.

I tried a different path too where I used the “Creative” pick to grab all research items anytime I leveled up my research. I read that this might be seen as a waste or a trap but from what I can tell, the trap is applied in a person-to-person setting. But I do think that this wasn’t my normal go-to for a pick.

Then I realized what the issue really was: in the past when I played this game, I would use the alt + einstein cheat to enable all research in a Pre-Warp era. Doing this cheat allows me to avoid the “Creative” pick and go for some more useful Pick(s). Given that scenario, what is a good custom race look like?

First, after selecting a Custom race, I clear out the defaults so I can have a clean slate. The top priority in my list are

• Subterranean (6) – Maximizing your population is one of the most important things in this game. Therefore, this practically is a must have in a Custom race selection.
  
• Lithovore (10) – Another really good pick due to removing the need for Food. I could be wrong but I think when you use Lithovore, you don’t need to build any food type of structures. I’m not sure if there’s some conversion from Food to production though. But this definitely is a really good Pick.
• Telepathic (6) – This is a great end game pick because of an effortless assimilation tactic
• Omniscient (3) – This right up there if I use Subterranean and Lithovore because you can see the entire system as well as your enemies. I think there’s a research option that gives you +2 additional Picks. So I try to leave enough points to grab this one (especially after enabling all research from the start)
• Large Home World (1) – Kind of a leftover pick that works nicely for a small early advantage. I think with the right negative picks, you can choose this one and leave 2 points out for Omniscient. It’s been a while but I vaguely remember something like that.
• -1 Research (-3) – If you’re doing the alt + einstein cheat, then there’s very little reason to have a high research early on
• -0.5 BC (-4) – This hurts early on but once you have planets with all the factories, etc. you’ll be swimming in currency. Otherwise, you can just do alt + moola for that tiny bit of help now and then
• -10 Spying (-3) – I think this is the other thing I would take. It does take the enemy (especially computer opponents) to build up their spies. By the time they’re ready in my configuration, you shouldn’t have to deal too much with spying.

I might give this configuration another try tomorrow. I got pretty far with a different one today but I felt it went too slow compared to normal and I ended up losing a lot of time due to restarting or just piecing together how I used to do this. But I want one more fresh start just to give this another try.

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