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MOO 2 PreFAQ [Born Dec 5, 1996.]
Mantainer: Fuwah Chez
Source: http://pages.nyu.edu/~fqc4951/moo2.html [HTML]
/moo2.txt [Text]

[HTML Version is updated much much much much more often.]

Any additions, questions, and especially corrections, are welcome.

News: I'm going to read the manual now to see if maybe it's got useful stuff.
Hum. Hum. Maybe the strategy guide would be nice, because it would have all the
leader stats, I'd guess. But it somehow seems unfair to steal it. So I guess I'll
depend on my little pieces of paper (and any submissions are helpful. :) )

[I. Heroes]

a) Ranks

1. Colony administrators
2. Ship leaders

b) Chart

I've been scribbling down the stats of heroes. It tends to
be a bloody pain. Maybe it's time to dig into the LBX's.

For descriptions of what the trait does just right click on it (in the
game, not here.)

An asterisk basically means the trait is a super-trait; when the hero
advances levels that trait goes up a lot more than normal.

Loknar - The Antarean Hunter (no maint.)

Fighter Pilot* +37
Galactic Lore* +37
Helmsman* +37
Ordnance* +37
Weaponry* +37


[II. Favorite races]

Remember that my experience and bias is mostly against CPs. Multiplayer
tactics must change - for example, the psilons in multiplayer may find
themselves quickly bashed up by aggressive players. They need room to
maneuver, well don't give it to them! And the human's charisma
advantage would find itself diminished, when your main opponent _will_
be the other humans. Personal charisma would work _much_ better here. Oh
yes, read up on Sun Tzu for psychological tricks. While much of it is
somewhat antiquated (okay so, I need 20 weight units of rice to walk a
team of 5 horses and 20 men over 30 li. That sounds real helpful), there
are general concepts that are most useful. I'll attempt to work it in.

A) Pregenerated
It's not only the player who customizes races. MOO2 races can have different
picks than usual. Check embassy reports for details.

Psilons: Of course! Creative is bloody powerful! The player,
besides mantaining a huge lead, can ignore trading techs
with the computer. Disadvantage is that one loses the fun
on which tech one should choose. You'll win, but it's less
fun.

Sakkras: Many have noticed that Sakkras tend to overwhelm
the other (!)AIs in games. In small galaxies, the balance
of 2 colonies per race will be soon shattered when Sakkras
invade one or two. In larger galaxies they'll be grabbing
huge chunks of real state.

Elerians: {idea from Greg Lary

I recently started up a game with the Elerians. They are
feudal (1/3 ship cost) and telepathic, so any ship cruiser-sized or
above can mind-control, that is, take over a colony completely
without the use of transports. Most instructive. I blitzed
fairly quickly to get a small fleet sufficient for taking out
a starbase (which, early on, is about the only defense they can
afford) and quickly took out most of the competition.

Elerian's -50 research production (from feudalism) places it
squarely in the Blitz category.

B) Wishlist

** Wish ** Save custom races. Further customize custom races: race
names, and race _picture_ (I can see a big headache in this one,
deciphering the bloody LBX headers.)

C) Other people's favorite races.

{From: rcjohnso@prairienet.org (Rob C. Johnson)}

1)Kinda-like the Vorlons 8-)

6 pts High G: troops are twice as tough (Vorlons are hard to kill)
6 pts Telepathic: get +10 spy and +25 to diplo and easy easy to take
over worlds (keeping supplied in transports takes quite a few
command points!)
4 pts Cybernetic: healing ships, don't eat food but do eat production
(Vorlon ships organically heal)

-3 pts -.5 food: don't need so much food, so not so bad
-4 pts -.5 Bcs: I can survive on this budget... barely. gotta get all
the money buildings tho

hmmm left 1 pt over, so that was Large Homeworld.

the favorite tactic with this species was to board enemy ships.
all you need is transporters and a big enough gun to knock down
enemy shields!

[Note that telepathy allows an immediate use of captured ships/starbases.]

2) Klingons? [Turtleheads!]

-4 pts Feudal: cheaper ships! [1/3rd normal cost] love that.
-4 pts -.5 Bcs: We don't need no stinkin' monet!
-2 pts -20 ship defense: Klingons ATTACK, they don't DEFEND

4 pts Warlord: extra command pts, more experienced (altho I didn't
check, I've heard from others it doesn't work).
[It works on new units, but it doesn't instanteneously raise the
levels of existing units.]
6 pts High G: extra tough warriors

hmm, don't recall what the other 10 picks were. probably some
ship attack and spy bonus (I really like spy bonus 8-))

[III. Strategic issues]

a) Maximizing production

1. The basic strategic bit for production-based games.

As in MOO1, it's basically a game of production. I flourish at
maximizing production, but one can't understimate wielding your
blunt instrument with finesse.

There's a few main stats on the game.

Resources:
Money, Ships, Population, Planets.

Production:
Industry, Food, and Tech.

(?) Haven't found the effect of surplus food production. I know
traders translate it into cash. What about others? Can't seem
to find any use except as a buffer.

Food is critical in the first stages, unless you play organic
rich. In mid/late game, one breadbasket planet can feed your
entire system, specially if you've bought all those hydroponic
and subterranean farms (+2/+4 food per planet respectively.)

Basically comes down to a very convoluted system. Lots of anything
means lots of everything else. But the most important two are
industry and tech, and I shift everything else to these two.
Got an extra 240bc's? Jump start a colony by buying automatic
factories.

Population generates money, consumes food, but can generate
food, industry, and tech. Industry can generate food, ships,
buildings (which means more tech/food/industry.) Tech, well,
just about gives everything. Yes, Clarke, it's *magic*.

2. We all love Data!
{Beowulf92@aol.com}

I tend to build MOST of the available structures in every colony. But I
have found a way to offset the incurred costs: once I've researched and
produced a single Android Worker, the morale of my entire _empire_ goes
up. I can then raise the tax rate to cover the building costs without
losing alot of production.

3. Excess production - Where does the rest go?

Planet is producing 500 industry units. Your ship/building/ect costs 490. The
ten that are leftover are bankrolled over to the next item. If there is no
other item, it will automatically add them to your treasury. What I've yet to
confirm is whether multiple items can be built on one turn. If this is so, it
makes it very efficient to use the *repeat build* button to build little gnats.

4. Bad situations - Okay, I'm doing _real_ badly.

The best reward, for me, is not quite winning, but learning how to win. So it is
a good habit to save games when you first start, and when you are in dicey situations.
Replay it until you win. While you will benefit from semiomnicience, because you already
sort-of know what's going to happen, it helps one learn _a lot_.

Note that the beginning of the game is critical - this is where
your decisions will carry the most weight, because they carry on through the
rest of the game. Example, if you find 100BCs in a planet, and are able to buy
that automated factory, you've gained at least 4 production (5 from factory, minus
maintenance).

b) Dirty tricks

1. You can have it - Not! (c.s.i.p.g.strategic, original poster
unknown.)

You are at war with the Psilons. You can't touch his well-defended
plannets. You have a sufficiently strong fleet orbiting a well-stacked
planet. Give away the system. Next turn, bloody well take it back,
and hope you get a few techs.

Tech acquisition during conquest seems to correlate to amount of
buildings in the planet.

Twists include giving back a planet you JUST conquered. Make
sure you've got lots of transports to fight back your own
troopers. :) I'm not sure which tech the troopers will have
in this case - I suspect your own.

2. Identity crisis.

Obviously, if you pick a race, the computer can't play it.
While creating a custom race you can prevent a race from playing
by picking its portrait. It was rather fun to play with two
psilon races, IMHO. Trading back and forth on everything. :)

3. Runaway!

Retreating fleets basically head back to their originating systems
(Is their speed affected by warp dissipators and the such?). There are
a few instances when this doesn't quite happen - If the origin of the ship
is the very same system where you flee from (possibly incorrect), and if
there is a spacetime flux. In the latter case my fleet disappeared. Hum.

C) Scoring

There's two types of scores, as in Civ. Well, it's one number,
but basically two ways to get the score.

1. Blitz and quickly conquer all the other races. Here is score is
basically population (conquered population counts double) plus a time
bonus, times a difficulty modifier (depends on picks and difficulty
level.) The heaviest weight falls on the time bonus (and the picks, if
you choose not to take them all.)

2. The second way is numerically larger, since you'll have a huge
population +100 for Orion, +250 (?) for defeating Antares, times
the difficulty bonus. There's no time bonus since one's been sitting
there micromanaging for quite some time. Ought to read NAFTA one of
these days and do something constructive. Let's see, printed up it's
a stack that's taller than my cousin, hum dense convuluted text, well,
you ought to finish before MPS releases Moo v1.3..

Best results in a huge galaxy.