Master of Orion 2 – How to Get 30000+ Points (with Tips and More)

With this guide you become the true Master of Orion II!

Guide to Get 30000+ Points

All credit goes to MindShift83!

Introduction

I’m playing this game since 1998 on a 2 year interval basis. So i have thousands of hours of experience and i know what i’m talking about. My PB is close to 39k, i think 40k+ is possible but i‘m too lazy to find out as it took me over 60hours to get a Score of 38k.

You can’t speedrun the game to get such a score as you have to go through some Phases and the RNG hits you hard in middle game and only then you will know if you have to restart from scratch…

I never played this game in english, so i dont know the exact translations of technologies and i‘m too lazy to look it up, but you’ll know what i mean.

The keys to success are:

• Get Antaran Technology fast to conquer Orion.
• Captured Colonists and High Population.
• Score Multiplier.

RNG: Size and amount of Planets in your home System, Number of Systems that have at least one colonizable Planet in it, Total number of Planets, Enemy Races, Race Statistics.

To get a playable game you need ~5 restarts, to get „good“ RNG you need ~30 restarts.

Start New Game:

• Impossible
• Max Size
• Max Players
• Max Technology level
• Mineral Rich Galaxy
• Random Events
• Antarans Attack
• Tactical Combat

Choose Custom Race, preferably with Silicoid picture to make sure you don’t have them in your game as they are always repulsive. Make also sure you have a race in the game with Double Population Perk (subterranean) like Sakkra or Darloks (you need to save the game right after start and Cheat to reveal the Galaxy Map to see other race statistics in the info section, once you’ve cheated you can’t get a high score, so reload if you have good rng or start new game).

If Darloks or Sakkra have subterranean Perk is RNG! Usually they have subterranean Perk but also being Repulsive at the same time. Dont ever play a game with a race that is Repulsive! You cannot interact with them and its hard to have control over them, especially in the early game as you have to wipe them out by yousrelf, but since they tend to war with almost everyone they can be already wiped out even if you didnt make contact with them or the race they are at war with.

It is also essential to have Psilons in your game as they have creativity and research everything. A nice bonus in addition is a Race that has +2 Perk on Industry, usually Meklars and Klackons. Captured Colonists keep their Race Perks! Benefit from that.

Races that can be Repulsive: Sakkra, Darloks, Trilarians, Silicioid (always)

You have to play on impossible with -10 picks plus the 4 picks from Evolution Mutation to get a score multiplier of 3,4.

Choose negative Picks on

• Ship Attack.
• Ship Defense.
• Ground Attack.
• Espionage and
• Poor Home Planet.

Make sure you start at a border / corner, not in the middle.

Phase 1 – Prepare for Antarans (0-130 Turns)

Grow your population ASAP. Build colony ships. Expand. Get Science and Trade Treaties. Send spies but don’t get caught. Prevent others from stealing Technology from you. If its inevitable and someone steals a technology from you, load autosave and trade it! Be diplomatic at all costs.

Essential Technologies to research or trade:

• Board Ferry.
• All population Growth/Food producing.
• All industry boost/pollution Reduction.
• Gravitation Generator.
• Moral Boost Buildings like Holosimulator and Infantry Barracks

Build Battleships with 50% Extra Space and put only 2×5 + 1×4 Board Ferries into. Build 6-7 of them.

• Research Construction until Titan Ship.
• Research Physics until Plasmarifle.
• Research Chemistry until Thorium Fuel Tank.
• Research Power until Anti Matter Engine.
• Then Research Construction again until Death Star.
• Take Deep Core Waste Dump over Deep Core Mining.
• Get further Biology and Sociology technologies from other players.
• Force Fields and Computers are not necessary Research Trees and can be ignored for now!

The essential turning point and main goal in this game is: You want the Antarans to attack you to capture one of their ships, usually a Marauder.

This will need a lot of retries from scratch as Antarans often attack only the strongest Player (which is not you) and they also have a 50% chance on self-destruct when being captured (an already captured ship can be destroyed by the self-destruct of another ship!).

Please note that everything in enemies turn and your turn is scripted! So the outcome of a fight is always the same if you reload one turn back or load your autosave. You need to go 2 or 3 turns back at least, so save at the beginning of every turn and make Backup copies of your savegames after 10 turns.

Once you captured an Antaran ship (around Turn 124), you have already done the hardest part. If you‘re very very lucky, you get away with 2 ships. Now save the game and scrap it. You need these 3 technologies at all costs now:

• Particle Beam.
• Xentronium Armor.
• Damper Field.

Reflecting Field and Death Ray are essential for Endgame but you’ll get that from Orion anyway. Moleculartronikcomputer is also a good thing to have, no beam miss anymore. Most useless are neutronbomb, elogm, quantum detonator, spatial field and black hole generator. Although they can be later used for trading to get other Technologies like Interphase Engine. The technologies that you get when you scrap a ship change every 2 turns. So if youre not happy with what you got, reload and wait 2 turns. Sometimes you get 4, sometimes only 1 new technology. Choose wisely. Be patient. This is the turning Point in the game so don’t screw it up.

Phase 2 – Defeat the Guardian of Orion (130-170 Turns)

Now build 4 Titan Ships with +50% Space,3xArmor,3xReinforced Hull, Damper field and only HM Particle Beam (Approx. 16) to get to Orion AFAP.

If you didnt get the +125 Molecular Computer from Antaran ship scrap, your Ship Computer is too weak so the beams dont hit the Guardian of Orion. Then its better to use Zeon Missiles or better rockets. Equip rockets as 2-Shot with highest amount of rockets possible (20-25). In one Game the Guardian destroyed all my rockets so i had to use beam, in another game i finished him with rockets only…anyway how you do it, be sure you are the first to get to Orion of course…Save game, get to Orion, check out if the Guardian is defeated by beam, if not, reload and change to missiles. This will take time, yes, but you cannot afford to use extra turns on remodelling your ships as the more turns you need to finish the game, the less points you get. Sub500 Turns is essential!

Be sure to have only 3 Ship leaders before conquering Orion, otherwise, Loknar cannot join you.

Once you captured Orion, remodel your ships again. Build ships with +50% Space,3x Armor,3xReinforced Hull, Damper Field, 2x2HM Death Ray (2×3 and 3×3 Later) and put board vessels in stacks of 3-4 into(2×4, 3×3, 3×4 etc.).

Later in game add Transporter and Subroom Teleporter to the ships.

Use Death Ray to Break Shields of an enemy ship and kill Infantry, Teleport to enemy Ship and use Board Button to capture it. Send Boarding Ferries to next Ship. If you teleport directly left/right of a ship, boarding ferries will conquer the ship the same turn! Now you can wipe out any enemy by just capturing his fleet, use the fleet against him, then scrap it to get technologies. With Trilarians and Psilons in your game it makes it easy to get all technologies. Always kill Psilons at last! They‘re way too strong for you at this phase of the game! But spy them out and be friendly and diplomatic to them. Always refuse Trading Offers/Requests with other races if they contain one of the 8 Technologies. You can also gift technologies to boost their mood if neccessary. Androids and Population Growth Technologies like Advanced Town Planning or Gaia Transformation are always a good gift. Saves you time in late game.

Get better Engine and Fuel Tank technology from other players in exchange for something you dont need. Exchanging technologies is always unbenefitial for you as you have to give away better technology for a „weaker“ one. But its neccessary for completion to get all Technology points in the end. Never exchange one of the 8 Antaran technologies until you are about to wipe out a player!

Weapons are good for trading since you are already OP with Xentronium/Death Ray and Particle beam!

Phase 3 – Expanding/Conquering/Fleet Building (170-240 Turns)

Make sure no enemy is wiped out by another race! You will lose 100 points for each race you did not wipe out by yourself. Diplomacy is the key. Dont make allies! Only trading, science and not-attack-contracts. Once you‘re getting stronger, demand 5% of them. 10% will often be rejected and lead to immediate war. Use spies only for defense or if you are about to wipe out an enemy, make sure you get all his technologies you dont have before you kill him, therefore check the Info section to compare technology levels. Dont side with any player on council voting, only if its about to help you to get advantage. Exchange technologies just before you kill an enemy so that another player cannot steal your technology from him! If a player steals any Antaran technology from you, reload the game!

If Psilons ever get their hands on Xentronium or Dampening field, it’s game over for you. Focus on the weaker enemies first. Conquer Sakkra/Silicoid Planets and grow their population AFAP and send them to other planets to increase overall Population of planets in the Galaxy. Focus on population growth in this phase. Capture planets of another race until they have only one planet left. You‘ll still gonna need that player. Check diplomacy every turn to see who is at war with whom and try to get them end their war. If not possible, finish the player yourself.

Phase 4 – Population Explosion and Enemy Wipeout (240-320 Turns)

Once you have the Star Converter and the Planet Construction technology you can start Phase 4.

This will take the most of your time.

Important:

The key in this game is to have as many star systems with at least 2 inhabital planets. Like one Planet and one Asteroid belt. The more systems with only one or zero planets, the less points you get as you cannot colonize them. This is the main RNG in this game. Find the system with the lowest possible population (e.g. one planet, small, toxic) and save this one for the very end as you will not conquer this one!

And here it is, the final Strategy to win this game:

If you destroy a planet with the Star Converter and rebuild it using Planet Reconstruction technology, it will always be a giant planet, no matter which size it was before! So you can turn small planets into giant ones! That means by the time you will only have planets with 35 and 42 Population!

Unfortunately you cannot gift your home system to any other player so if you start on a small planet and with fewer than 3 (potential) planets in your system, thats unfortunate and you might think about restart.

Use this method to win the game:

• Have at least one ship with star converter in your fleet
• Capture a planet smaller than Giant from player you are at war with
• Build Alien Administration, Clone Center and infantry barracks on every captured planet
• Wait until population is fully integrated (not yellow anymore)
• Move one population unit of your own race to that planet
• Scrap clone center
• Relocate all the integrated aliens to another planet so that only one population unit of your own race is left
• Gift that system to a player you are at war with. Only gift it. No peace treaty.
• Attack the system next turn.
• Capture all planets in that system of the race you are currently at war with, except the one with 1 population.
• Destroy the planet with one population on it. Since it is your own race you won’t get moral minus in diplomacy.
• Use construction Planet to rebuild it
• Create colonization outpost or use colony ship
• Relocate citizens to new planet

Priority list of buildings:

1. Clone center (always buy this for 400BC immediately).
2. Automated factory.
3. Robo mining.
4. Robot factory.
5. Recyclotron.
6. Deep core mining.
7. Deep core waste dump.
8. Biosphere.
9. Infantry barracks.
10. Astro University.
11. Holosimulator.
12. Entertainment center.

Then terraforming and repeat build until its terran environment, then all biology related buildings (hydroponic farm, underground farm, weather control, gaia transformation etc) and all science buildings (supercomputer, autloabor, galactic cybernet) etc. and the very last sociology related buildings (space harbor, stock market etc). Dont build any defenses except Star Fortress to get Commando Points

• Have at least one planet in your system with warpfield limiter.
• Also never use androids!
• Turn Asteroid Belts and Gas Giants into planets as well.
• You can Terraform every Planet to Gaia except toxic ones. So all toxic ones need to be destroyed (even if its ultra rich and giant!) Use the newest researched Shield technology to turn hostile radiation planets into habitable ones.
• Start with the weakest enemies and make sure that you have always one player you can gift systems to, as sometimes you cannot use diplomacy on the player you are currently at war with. The reason why you gift systems to player you are at war with is that you can get it back the next turn by attacking it. Make sure your fleet is in that system…
• Watch out for rebellions. Keep a fleet of 1 or 2 death stars and at least 4 ground troop ships in that system to re-conquer it fast. Trilarians tend to start a rebellion quite often
• Never bombard planets! Only invade them. You get 1 point for every Captured citizen. Dead citizens dont create points. Be careful with your death rays when attacking planetary defenses! They kill troops but also citizens if they‘re too strong. Put death ray in group of max 5 at once on your ship and then add another Group of 4 or 5 depending on your space. You can start out with 2x2HM to get a feeling how strong they are
• You can use the exploit that you get one point for every captured citizen by gifting a system with like 120+ population to an enemy player and simply re capture it, but this will take so much more time and it really gets boring and annoying over time.
• If you have a system with 2 small Planets you have to do the process twice to get both Planets to giant.

• This will take a lot of time in late gameplay. Like hours for a few turns. One Turn sucks up easily 10-15 minutes as you have a lot of micromanagement to do when an enemy is defeated.
• Mix population on planets with the race that has double population perk to max out population!
• Choose 4 or 5 of your biggest and richest planets for ship production. Put a Gouvernor in that system who provides bonus on industry. 35 ultra rich is more productive than 42 rich! Check out your captured races who have industry perks like klackons or meklars and relocate them to that ultra rich planet. Use advantage of the perks other players that have like +1 on science or +1 on industry and use them in that specific field only. Like Psilons should always be scientists and not workers. Notice that the Limit of Science Points is 32767.
• Have only 3 ship or planet leaders so new ones can appear until you are satisfied with your leader Setup. Fire leaders with 2 or 3 perks to get leaders with 4 or 5 perks. Ship leaders arent very effective and pretty much useless in late gameplay bute here are the best ship leaders anyway:
• Loknar (of course), Dalan, Dantos, Caern, Karg, Tellik , Tulock

Best colony leaders in late game:

• Androgena, Black Razor, Necron, Tanus, Xantus, Electra, Mystic X
• In early and midgame, have at least one leader with the famous perk to attract better ones.

Following leaders never ever appeared in my gameplays:

Cassandra, Matrix, Ralleia, Torg

• Leaders appear every 50 turns but when you load a game the timer is set to zero! Usually Leaders appear and are promoted the turn after voting council.
• If a leader appears with technology offers, like Megatron, get him and fire him afterwards. You can keep the technology and use it for trading.
• Put only as many colonists as neccesary into food production to get slightly over zero to save freighters. Usually 2-3 should be enough (except for your ship producing planets)
• Get the technology that doesnt allow pollution on a planet (core waste dump) and you‘re good to go! 6 Turns for a death star….
• At this state you should have around 400-500 freighters. You can have only 40 Colonists moving through the galaxy at the same time so keep that in mind if you relocate citizens that take 4 or more turns to reach their destination…
• Send Outpost Ships to Systems without habitable Planets. Create Outpost on Asteroid Belt / Gas Giant. You can use this as Shortcut for your fleets once you have gained the Stargate Technology.
• This works also for Systems the enemy controls with Gas Giants/Asteroid Belts in it. Sneak through the backdoor to get around warpfield limiter!

Phase 5 – Last War (320-360 Turns)

At this time you should have 60+ death stars, excluded the captured ones.

Death Star layout suggestion:

• +50% space.
• 3xArmor.
• 3xStructural points.
• Damper field.
• Reflecting field.
• Transporter.
• Subroom teleporter.
• 2xattack/move per turn.
• 3×1 stasis field.
• 1 star converter.
• 3hm death ray.
• 1×5 boarding vessels.

This is an allround talent. If you simply want attack power, us 3×5 hm death ray and star converter…stasis field is good to slow down enemies with lots of more ships than you. Remember: Defenders always get their turn after attackers!

The final Battle takes like 20 minutes on Autoplay, Psilons have like 100 death stars at this point. You can decide to conquer the fleet or to destroy it. Depends on your gameplay.

Destroy the last Planets smaller than 35 Population and recolonize them (except for the one system i mentioned above for endgame).

Phase 6 – Endgame (360-500 Turns)

It’s all about sending your Sakkra/Silicoid Citizens throughout the Galaxy and grow Population as fast as possible to Max Out every Planet ASAP.

Defeating Antarans is 250 points, so wipe out the entire Galaxy except for the system with the lowest possible population like mentioned above. This should be in possession of the last player alive, it doesnt even matter if this planet contains only your own race.

Crush the Antarans with their own captured fleet and enjoy the sweet Victory!

The game can only display 32767 Points and starts to get negative then so a negative Score wouldn’t be displayed in the Hall of Fame, of Course…

Hope you enjoyed this Guide and learned new stuff to this Masterpiece of a Game.

Beginners Tips

Easy mode is Omniscient, Telepathic and Creative.

Tech trading is really really useful. For this reason, don’t take Repulsive, and try to stay friends with everyone right up until you backstab them.

Creative is the best attribute, even after the last patch made it more expensive. It’s also fun, and lets you try out more things in one playthrough.

Pressing the Z key during battle does superfast autocombat. You’ll thank me after you’ve tried to sit through a 200 vs 200-ship battle royale.

The hardest AI civs are the Sakkra and Silicoid. The Trilarians and Psilons can get bad too, but they are generally friendly.

Your weapons get additional mods as you tech up, so check back on older weapons to see if they’re better than new weapons. Load up small ships with missiles (Nuclear missiles equipped with MIRV are optimal) instead of beam weapons. I forget the reason why, but I think it’s because your targeting computers blow in the early game. You can also tech up for armor piercing, auto-firing Mass Drivers.

If you’re making a race, never invest in +Farming. Toward the end of the game, a couple colonies can provide food for your entire empire without too much effort.

If you steal an enemy ship and scrap it, you get their sweet, sweet tech. This holds especially true for the Antarans. However, even the smallest Antaran ship is going to put up a hell of a fight against being captured, and I think they self destruct the second they’re disabled.

You will probably come back to this game on and off again for at least the next 10 years.

Missile ships are excellent to start off with. Make them only have 2 lots of missiles rather than 5, you can fit more on. Sure they’ll be the occasional battle where you’re left with ships with no weapons left on them but a lot of the time you can turn a narrow victory into a decisive one if you up your alpha strike.

Build housing. When making new colonies, ship out 3-5 guys from one of your larger colonies to get the colony on its feet as a high population brings victory and two colonies growing very quickly is better than one colony growing slowly.

Last words

The big key to this game is getting a good start. What really matters is the first 50 turns or so, and by taking +2 food with Dictatorship you only need 2 Farmers at the start which produce 8 food.

Using Aquatic 2 farmers only produce 6 food, so you need 3 total farmers. On the other hand, you can take Rich for the same cost and still have more production, HOWEVER, you will have less Research potential.

I really like setups with Artifacts Homeworld that allow for maximizing research early, so using +2 Food actually works pretty well. I played a Psilon variant with Low-G, Creative, Artifacts Homeworld, +2 Food and -Ship Attack and Defense and pretty much ran away with the game due to being so far ahead on research. I’d say it was more effective than taking +2 Research since its a bit more versatile.

The key to pretty much all starts is eliminating or reducing your starting farmers. Overall I like Lithovoure better, but +2 food uses 3 less picks, so its not bad.