Master of Orion 1+2

[octavius]

Well, one thing I've learnt that past few weeks is that the Alkaris, Bulrathi and Mrrshan are definitely the three hardest races to play; much harder IMO than the Darloks who are usually numbered amongs the four weakest races.
With other races you can afford to make mistakes, and you have something that you can use to work with, like the Humans being well liked and getting extra income from trade, the productivity of the Meklars and Klackons, the fertility and manpower of the Sakkras, and the awesome (IMO) spying ability of the Darloks.
The combat bonuses of the birds and cats are just not enough. With the birds I typically face Meklars using Megabolt Cannons which negate their defensive bonus and in 2/3 of the games I've started with them I never got to research Propulsion better than Retro Rockets.
The cats are probably the worst, having bonus in the perhaps least useful tech: Weapons.

I'm currently playing the Bulrathi, and I got a break by securing a 105 pop Ultra Rich planet (by using a Colony Ship with Reserve Fuel Tanks), right before the beaks of the Alkaris. They bombed the new colony, but only killed 1 of the 2 million pop, before moving on. Also got 500 extra cash trough a random event, so I was able to build up the planet ASAP.

One thing that is good tactic is to research Inertial Stabilizer, for tech trading. For some reason the other races will give you very good tech for this. Got Impulse Drives from one race and IRC III from another, which was a tremendous help.
So I may just win my first Impossible game with the Bulrathi. No Sakkras in this game for a change.

 

[octavius]

MOO expert players (if any):
Does anyone get any use out of the plantetary reserve assuming both planets have no special advantages whatsoever? I'm thinking if there is some way for use it to gain an economic advantage

Doesn't look like anyone else answered, so...
If planets have no bonus you get no positive effect from generating Reserve, since the effect is only half that of the other things you can spend BC on.
But if I have Rich or Ultra Rich (which don't affect tech research) I often use those Rich planets to sponsor Artifacts planets to double their research bonus, if I don't need more ships at the moment.

 

[Average Manatee]

Reserve is mathematically awesome even with the 50% loss. Consider this:

Factories produce 1 BC and cost 10 BC to create (starting, this goes up and down with tech), so industrial growth rate when investing in factories is about 8-12% (i.e., if you have 100 factories building one turn, you'll have 108-112 the next), leaning to the lower side when you count pollution. Reserve allows you to double that rate (ignoring the population's contribution to production).

Let's pretend you start with 15 factory-equivalent (coming from base 30 pop production) and your cap is 200. Under an idealized model w/ 10% growth rate and ignoring population's production/pollution, you'll take ~26 turns to cap out, at which point you are getting 200 production to spend on what you like.

Let's say you invest the first 5 turns from your reserve. This is a reserve investment of (15 + 18 + 22 + 26 + 31 + 37) = 149 BC, costing 298 BC of production from another (normal) world. In exchange by the beginning of turn 6 your colony is at (15 * 1.2 ^ 6) = 45 factories rather than (15 * 1.1 ^ 6) = 27 factories. From there without further investment (10% growth rate), the 45 factories will grow into 200 factories in only 16 turns (21 turns total). By about 300 BC of investment for the first 5 turns you've gained an extra 5 turns of 200 BC per turn production, for a profit of 700 BC.

TL;DR reserve spending on planets doubles their growth rate and is insanely efficient at the early stages (think of a planet that only produces 2 BC, by investing 4 BC you'll double the turn's growth and earn a full turn of production at the planet's full capacity later). Someone could probably find a formula that tells when to stop investing.

And yes, Rich/Ultra rich are basically the planets that should always be dumping into reserve if you don't need ships.

Also in case it wasn't clear, you can dump 10k reserve BCs on a planet and it will spend them over as many turns as it takes to use up. I commonly do this if I land a rich/ultra rich planet.

 

[TigerKnee]

IMO, war races are very iffy in FFA 4X games to design/balance - if you make them too strong then what happens is that whoever is their neighbour is just fucked from the start unless there's some extreme map generation variance - see the Romans in Civ IV. And then depending on how rewarding conquest in your 4x is, grabbing another production base while wiping a rival off can be game-winning from the get-go. And on the too weak side you get the Alkari/Mrrshan.

Incidentally, I keep saying I want to do a detailed race balance write-up for a theoretical MOO1.5 even though I have no idea what is possible to be patched but I keep putting it off. Maybe I'll do it now

I'll rate them by "Chance of Winning if you play them" and "Subjective Quality of Design" and very quick idea brainstorming for balancing.

Top
Highly likely to win the game or achieve dominance (Sidenote: Wish there was a "ban race" option in MOO1 for game set-ups)

Klackons (Low)- Exponent growth of productivity that turns into more ships, more research and just more things overall. Unstellar design since it doesn't really motivate you to do things differently - you just get more of everything. I would probably hit the race with more research penalties to try to simulate a more MOO2/MoM Klackon design where you can build a lot more things but they tend to be lower quality overall.

Psilon (Medium) - Another one of those races which will likely become dominant if they don't get in an early war with 1, hopefully 2 races. Not very good design here either since every race is going to research a ton of things but accessing higher tier stuff that you might not get as other races adds a bit to the fun factor. I would lower the standard relations they have with other races just to ensure a higher chance of them getting into a war and putting stress on their ability to just burst tech research since they'll have to spend economy on defensive warfare.

Humans (Low) - This one is a bit borderline IMO - you can basically diplomat your way to victory and have peace the entire game on the lower difficulties which is a really boring way to win. If you're trying to win through military... well, you don't have any real economical penalties, which still puts you above half of the races. There's some design space here but the diplomatic advantage is adjusted too high, it seems.

Medium
Actually pretty balanced here - in fact I probably wouldn't change these guys much at all

Silicoids (High) - Probably one of the most interesting and differentiated races in MOO1 in a game where race differentiation is hard to do. The only issue is that I think the race is more luck-based/swingy, as map generation matters even more to the Silicoids in terms of having access to tasty hostile planets that only they can colonize within range is key to their gameplay.

Meklars (High) - Like a balanced version of Klackon. The factory power actually raises the skill cap to play them IMO because it's an "invest now, pay off later" power - you can't always wait for your factories to cap out before moving on to building other things because that's way too slow.

Sakkra (Low) - Well-rounded Bulrathi - you can spam ground warfare with your regenerating population or you can use the faster growth to just do general productive stuff. Adds a bit of different gameplay style because of all the colonist shuttling you have to do, though that can get grating.

Borderline
Only one race here

Bulrathi (Medium) - I think these guys are actually on the verge of being good, considering all it takes is a handful of ground troops to completely roflstomp a colony. The issue is that they have a huge "2nd place syndrome" issue where they can set up a stupidly defensive wall for their planets but can't gather enough power to conquer more to raise their economy - usually because their opponents have tech'd better ships and can beat them in air combat.

Don't know what I would change about them - removing the Computer research penalty and giving that to the Klackons instead?

Weak
Darloks (High) - I think Spying is not that strong of a gameplay move in MOO1 - it's rather swingy. Which is what makes the Darloks unique, since they get huge bonuses to it and are forced to rely on it to beat the competition. While it may be a bit OOC story-wise, I think I would probably just raise their relationship values to allow them to more easily play a diplomatic game... also because I think it's really stupid for a race everyone hates and distrusts to be good at spying.

Alkari/Mrrshan (Low) - Bonuses aren't high enough to reliably conquer in early game, will get out-teched making their bonus negligible later. Alkari are better because defensive bonuses are better than offensive ones (no point in "winning a war" if you lose too many units to keep your territory). The stupid joke of making these two races have the game-worst relationship because bird/cat doesn't do them any favors.

Now, I already stated the problem of making war races too strong, so I'm honestly kind of at a loss for these guys outside of just cutting them entirely. MAYBE make the Alkaris have very good (Human tier?) diplomacy because of their Honorable personality and... I have no idea for the Mrrshan - good research in more categories?

That's my opinion.

 

[RK47]

just kidnap klackon settler n allow them to breed.
if you need high g worker, enslave bulrathi,
if you want non-feeding workers, enslave silicoids
if you want low g worker / good research, enslave psilons

oh wait, moo2 only

 

[octavius]

Regarding Planetary Reserve: Yeah, it's a good idea to use the Reserve to jump start new colonies, especially if they are Rich or Artefact planets. I also like to populate the valuable planets fully ASAP to gain an even bigger boost. Ultra Poor planets are ideal for seeding new planets, since they are useless for anything else, and the game will likely be over before you can build a full set of factories on them.

But between two equal, non-special planets using one to generate Reserve to sponsor the other is a losing prospect.


Races:
I agree some modifications could be in order, but not at the cost of making the game too balanced, or the races too similar. After all, no one race dominates every game they are in (although the Psilons are close).

And I'd subjectively rate Darloks higher than the Bulrathi, if for no other reason that that I won on both Hard and Impossible with them without too much trouble, while I have yet to win on Impossible with the bears (although I think I'll win my current game, barring some unforseen diplomatic event).
The extreme toughness of Bulrathi troops is very nice, since it means your planets don't need as much defenses as those of other races, and you don't need to halve the population of several planets to crack your first higher tech enemy planet. And it can even be an idea to leave them open for enemy troops to suicide on.
But in practice I find the Bulrathi harder to win with than the Darloks.

 

[TigerKnee]

I agree some modifications could be in order, but not at the cost of making the game too balanced, or the races too similar.

Sure, my suggested changes were made with a consideration for trying to keep their racial identity intact, which is why Alkari/Mrrshans are intensely frustrating - there's very little to work with.

I have more issues with the strong races than the weak ones - if Alkari/Mrrshan spawn as an AI race, I basically just treat them like they were a minor NPC nation or something. Psilons/Klackons are annoyingly game warping.

Still, everything is just theoretical discussion unless Kyrub returns to us and decides to work on it.

 

[Average Manatee]

Give Alkari a range bonus to how far ships can move (+2 parsecs?) and Mrrshan a bonus to weapon range (+1?). Presumably being able to maneuver better means you can go further before needing to refuel and better targetting lets your weapons hit longer.

Alkari becomes more balanced, Mrrshan has at least something interesting that will let it get the first shot off.

 

[kyrub]

The important factor for assessing race playability is the universe size.

Alkaris are quite fine in bigger universes in my experience. I always go small ships early and use my bonus to defend easily invasions against numerous opponents. I use the tech advantage to get range and speed early and I try to expand as far as possible. It's quite effective, but it can become complicated if one of arch-enemies show up early.

Bulrathis lack any appeal to me, so I tend to avoid them. I think they could do well in small universes, as their advantage lies in invasion defense/attack which matters a lot in early encounters. Mrrshans are the poor brothers, in any universe size.

 

[TigerKnee]

Small QOL mod request: Put a numeric value next to the planet colonization types so I don't have to refer to the manual to figure out whether Radiated is a higher value than Toxic

 

[octavius]

So if you are playing the Silicoids, what's the most annoying race to have as neighbour/competitor/enemy?

 

[Average Manatee]

None that I can think of as being specifically bad. Silicoids are somewhat like Darloks in that they aren't an amazing race but can play off really well from what would otherwise be horrible game-ending starts for other races.

Problem with Silicoids is that its easy to get to point where the AI is giving you diplomatic penalties for being too big even when you are 3rd or worse in empire population (and therefore economy). Taking lots of 10-pop planets and not being able to improve them much backfires like this. On the other hand if you can snatch a decent ultra rich planet you'll almost certainly win.

 

[octavius]

None that I can think of as being specifically bad.

Well, I think Sakkras are especially annoying to meet as Silicoids, since they are the race most likely to compete for those decent ultra rich Toxic and Radiated worlds, since their progress in Planetology research is so rapid. And if you leave the juicy Terran worlds alone, the Sakkras will gobble them up.
Also, the Sakkras can overwhelm the Silicoids with sheer numbers of troops that are quickly replaced, while it takes ages to replace lost silicoid pop.
The Sakkras are always annoying (to me, at least), but even more so when playing the Silicoids. Fortunately it my current game they were alreasy at war with the Psilons and Mrrshans.

Problem with Silicoids is that its easy to get to point where the AI is giving you diplomatic penalties for being too big even when you are 3rd or worse in empire population (and therefore economy). Taking lots of 10-pop planets and not being able to improve them much backfires like this. On the other hand if you can snatch a decent ultra rich planet you'll almost certainly win.

True.
You can crank out lots of spaceships with the Silicoids, since you usually have early access to Rich and Ultra Rich planets. But reserach will be slow unless your Rich planets can fund double research on Artefacts planets. I'm ready to go to war against the ever present Sakkras in my current game, and can produce a huge battleship each turn, but I don't have the tech to brech their planets.

An annoying thing with the silicoids, in kyrub's words:

Re: silicoids and Cloning, there is massive disadvantage, that the Sils need to clean up their planet first, before Cloning works. That makes it a not-very-good option. It seems like a design flaw [bug?], Sils should always ignore the waste, it is not logical.

But all in all, the Silicoids are of course much easier to win with than the Bulrathi, Alkaris and Mrrshans.

BTW, I'm currently reading The Forever War, and one sentence was like taken out of MoO. When the humans encounter the Taurans in space combat for the second time (after 20 or so years) their missiles move twice as fast but do same damage, meaning "their progress in explosives has not matched their progress in propulsion".

 

[TigerKnee]

BTW, I'm currently reading The Forever War, and one sentence was like taken out of MoO. When the humans encounter the Taurans in space combat for the second time (after 20 or so years) their missiles move twice as fast but do same damage, meaning "their progress in explosives has not matched their progress in propulsion".

Personally, this short story is a good summary of my expertise at Master of Orion 1

http://www.mayofamily.com/RLM/txt_Clarke_Superiority.html

 

[octavius]

Great story from one of my favourite SF writers.

It reminds me of what usually happens in MoO: the dominant races (usually Psilons, Meklars or Sakkras) getting an early lead, building up a huge Death Fleet, but by the time war breaks out that huge fleet is so obsolete that it's not much of a threat, especially compared to what they could build instead with their current tech (which is still way ahead of mine).

 

[octavius]

I finally managed to win on Impossible with the Alkaris.
I got a good start in one corner, two early Artifact worlds, no Sakkras (my arch enemy) or Meklars (always make things hard for the poor birds in my experience), and the main danger, the Psilons, having their style cramped by starting right next to the Mrrshans. The rest were Humans, Darloks and Bulrathi.It was an unusually even game with the Darloks and Humans doing well, and the Psilons not running amok, but as usual the cats and the bears were the prügelknabe.

Is it just me, or is it a bit sad the races based on the nicest creatures are also the weakest ones? I always feel sorry for the bears, birds and cats...
Speaking of cats, now the Mrrshans are the only race I still have to win on Impossible with before I can write "completed" next to Master of Orion on my play list.

 

[Galdred]

I finally managed to win on Impossible with the Alkaris.
I got a good start in one corner, two early Artifact worlds, no Sakkras (my arch enemy) or Meklars (always make things hard for the poor birds in my experience), and the main danger, the Psilons, having their style cramped by starting right next to the Mrrshans. The rest were Humans, Darloks and Bulrathi.It was an unusually even game with the Darloks and Humans doing well, and the Psilons not running amok, but as usual the cats and the bears were the prügelknabe.

Is it just me, or is it a bit sad the races based on the nicest creatures are also the weakest ones? I always feel sorry for the bears, birds and cats...
Speaking of cats, now the Mrrshans are the only race I still have to win on Impossible with before I can write "completed" next to Master of Orion on my play list.

Afterwards, you can still try to win with a single system (so you'll have to use stellar convecter on all other ones). It might be too hard to do it with a non custom race, though (as you'd want to maximized system boni).

 

[octavius]

Afterwards, you can still try to win with a single system (so you'll have to use stellar convecter on all other ones). It might be too hard to do it with a non custom race, though (as you'd want to maximized system boni).

Heh, I haven't even got started on MoO2, yet.
But I guess the ultimate challenge in MoO1 is to win with the Mrrshans on Small, Impossible.

 

[TigerKnee]

Is it just me, or is it a bit sad the races based on the nicest creatures are also the weakest ones? I always feel sorry for the bears, birds and cats...

cats

nice

 

[octavius]

Cats are very nice, especially to people who are allergic.

 

[octavius]

Last time I tried to play MoO2 I ended up playing MoO1 instead.
Making a new try I was wondering how would people rank the default races in MoO2, from best to worst?

 

[Average Manatee]

Well I'd say top tier are:

Humans. Democracy is amazing and the race comes with no crippling downsides. Charismatic is alright.
Elerians. Have Telepath/Omniscient which is OP for early rushes. Ship bonuses help as well. Feudal at least is put to good use to get some early ships.

Honorable mentions:
Psilon: Creative is really good if you don't aggressively tech trade or steal, but otherwise it's merely alright. Other choices aren't bad though. Research bonuses stack really well as opposed to production bonuses (only stacks well with Tolerant).
Silicoids: Tolerant is REALLY good and Lithovore combos with it since all those food works can be changed over to production. Pop growth penalty is almost crippling but can be mitigated through housing colonies. Also I don't really like playing repulsive races.

IIRC most of the rest are just mediocre. They tend to be gimmicky. Feudal is cripplingly bad for any kind of non-rush build and even a really good Dictatorship tends to have problems competing with a Democracy or Unification. The only Unification race (Klackon) comes with uncreative which is pretty much the worst trait in the game unless you are really lucky at tech stealing/trading, and Unification kind of needs Tolerant to truly shine.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Charismatic can ruin your fun when you win the game before you get to fight at all.

 

[Mozg]

The size-1 colony housing exploit in moo2 makes getting a few shit planets in your home system so important that your species hardly matters.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I suggest any race with a bonuses to science first and industry second. Psilon's would be perfect, except they lose too many points to being Creative, which isn't really needed. A lot of times I like to make a custom race, but it does make the game a lot easier if you do. Whatever happens, try to take out the Silicoids are any industrial race over early, and use your science to get the higher technology while using the conquered industrial races to build your fleets.