Master of Orion 2 grandpa's crack : Holiday edition

[@boozerbear60]

Of all the things I expected to see someone do a video on in 2024, MOO2 isn't even on the list. The first MOO was my first experience with starting a game in the afternoon, looking out the window to see sun, and realizing the entire night had passed in between. MOO2 is a classic and I'm thrilled to see this. Thank you, Francis, for bringing back happy memories of a time long past.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Just one more turn, just one more turn. Oops no sleep.

[@Smo1k]

I kept a Win95 machine way into this millenium to play MOO and MOM. When it finally broke down, there was much sorrow 😉

[@Palisades_Prospecting]

Yeah me too, when my friends came over I realized that it was the next day. Probably 30 or 35 hours straight

[@kirbyk1148]

@@Smo1k If you still have the CD/game files, you can run the game on W10/W11 using Dosbox. I'm still playing Moo2 pretty much every other day using DosBox on my high-end gaming laptop 😀

[@IanMcCloghrie]

@@FrancisJohnYT What's next, Civilization II? (still my favorite of the Civ games) :)

[@teux01]

I have spent at least a thousand hours playing MOO2, it's probably my favorite game of all time!

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Thankfully they have no stats on how many hours I spent playing moo2. One of the advantages of the time before steam.

[@teux01]

@@FrancisJohnYT I'm just guessing at my hours played. I got it back when it came out and spent many many happy days on this game. Always played creative races because I couldn't stand not having all the tech.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

All I played at first was creative races. But once you discover the power of housing you can afford to live without it.

[@Greybeardstavern]

Me too man! Me too! I still play it on Steam.

[@shhwinner6663]

well spent great game

[@hquest]

Aaaand we're back, with master of wait what?! Daaaaaaang the memories! Edit: Throwing Starsector into the mix is only adding to the nostalgia.

[@Sarnith]

I love this game, and played it almost every day with my grandad when I was a kid since at the time little me couldn't wrap my head around civ 2 at the time with him. Thanks for the stroll down memory lane, really brought a smile to my face.

[@Swordphobic]

Now this is a classic!

[@TheHereticable]

"It has to be the Elerian's. They look the coolest." - Uh huh... coolest. Yes, that's definitely why you chose them 😏

[@terrymckerral4104]

I played this for like.... i dunno 1,000+ plus hours, after Masters of Magic this was my next big entry into video games that could entertain and stretch your brain :) I remember days spent just restarting to make sure I got the starting planets i wanted lol

[@wkorsten]

Wow. That sounds just like my experience! Both this and Masters of Magic was absolute favourites and I didn't mind spending an hour restarting to get my best start positions

[@MikaelLevoniemi]

Master of magic - the very original - just got a DLC addon named the caster of magic. It's on GOG.

[@iansrven3023]

Heroic Slingers

[@lasskinn474]

master of magic was great. it doesn't get enough mentions, heroes of might and magic hogs all the space in that niche. homm is very simplified and had hot seat multiplayer, but very similar if you just make one paragraph explanation of how they play.

[@davidsalisbury1688]

Born in 1986, started playing video games in 1988. Never played this game, but it was enough to hit me hard with the Nostalgia Hammer. Unfortunately a lot of my favorite DOS games I can't play anymore because the graphics give me literal headaches.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Sorry to hear that, I can't imagine being denied going back now and then. I hope you can find a fix someday.

[@FrikInCasualMode]

There is a fan remake of this game. FreeOrion I think.

[@6StimuL84]

@@FrikInCasualMode Remnants of the Precursors is a Master of Orion 1 remake and done very well with current graphics and is completely free....

[@vineheart01]

Ahh, MoO, the ultimate origin of 4x strategy and imo to this day still one of the best in the genre, even it's modern remake pales in comparison.

[@Jagg3h]

Civ wants a word.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

I think the reason nothing "feels" like it can compare is because it was the original and once your mind got blown it's hard to get that feeling again. Also swarms of emission guidance cruisers butchering everything is just to cool.

[@Jagg3h]

@@FrancisJohnYT Definitely. If you were lucky enough as a youngster to play "great" games (usually without realising it) nothing ever feels quite as good :)

I actually prefer the first MoO over the second one. Mostly because it has a lot less micromanagement. The sliders were genius.

[@SilentSigil]

Civilization sucks and pretty much always has lol ​@@Jagg3h

[@timtuff7683]

Add me to the list of people not expecting to find MOO2 on YT in 2024. Wow, what a blast of nostalgia. Thank you! Also, if memory serves the portrait selection for a custom race mattered because it would prevent the AI from selecting that race. So if you had a particular preference, you could avoid seeing them.

[@agwgwegsdg]

I loved this game, loved the music. Hard to avoid doing the two turns + cloaking field thing to have an invulnerable ship.

[@tarsis6123]

OMG I played the hell out of this. Still one of the best 4x games, even when you removed the rose tinted glasses.

[@tiemanowo]

90% of my playtime with this game was Multiplayer in PvP mode (never cooperative). Usually 2-3 players. That is a way different experience then single player. But of course I really appreciate that you were brave enough to showcase the MOO II in 2024 !!

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Did some PvP with friends on same PC was a very long affair. Broken housing strategies for the win.

[@tiemanowo]

@@FrancisJohnYT Well. On the same computer it is not a great experience. I was talking about network play because MOO is one of it's kind. Even it is a "turn base" game all players can do their turn in the same time.

[@christopherrice2911]

This is one of those games I'd always watch my older brothers play, not knowing at all what they were doing but falling in love with space games. It's so cool to see it being played and finally knowing what's going on

[@TheFeralFerret]

Honestly it's aged really well visually. Love to see it! Ever play Dungeon Keeper Gold? I feel like it'd be right up your alley... speaking of ancient games of yore.

[@brunnmgamadd]

One of the best games ever made.

[@benjaminnafziger8737]

Wow! This was my first favorite game, but it’s been more than a decade since I’d even thought of it. Awesome to see again.

[@sim.frischh9781]

I remember that gem of a game. Though most of MY 1996 was taken up by Privateer 2 The Darkening. You can spy or trade tech, or you choose the Race Atribute "Creative", then you get all tech in one field developed. The Psilons have that as a base. The money is called "Credits", and the short of "BC" stands for "Billion Credits".

[@xyvernthederg5760]

what i would do to see francis play stellaris

[@ahmataevo]

LOL I got it and DLC's way back when for 50-66% off, never seen a sale on all the new DLC since. Seems like a scam to me.

[@xyvernthederg5760]

the new synthetics one they spent a year on is one of the best in the whole game. usually it or miss with the ones they take less time - but there is a subscription based thing to have access to the dlcs, did the math, its so much more worth it than it should be lol

[@furrymessiah]

To this day, MOO2 is still my favorite 4X game. My copy was on CD! Nice to see it in 2024.

[@Nbrodnax]

Loved this game so much. So much depth. So much strategy. Spent hours and hours playing it. So influential on all 4X games that came after.

[@rodbonner7370]

Yeeeessss! One of my favorite games of all time. Psilons were my favorite because tech was king, but I preferred to make a custom hybrid of them to get an even better version.

[@maeltac]

Aw crap. Now I have to break out MOO2 and bring back my "phasors of bypass everything" death fleet!

[@Ran0r]

autofire disruptors all the way ;-)

[@Rich4098]

One of the things I loved about this is that you could conquer the other species, and get all their special talents that you don't have.

[@Fireballof3]

WOOOOOW - this game is a total flashback. Thanks for digging back into the game archives for this gem!

[@uberghostmayuri5199]

Loved this so much when i played it, it came out when I was born love it so much

[@jri752]

This brings back the memories from 20 years ago - waking up at 7.30am on a saturday with the sun up then looking outside 10 minutes later and its 9pm and pitch black! Amazing game!

[@C-Hirsuta]

One of the best games of all time. To this day, my brother and I still play hotseat multiplayer.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Do you have a house rule against using housing? It's just so powerful I hear some players ban it.

[@C-Hirsuta]

@@FrancisJohnYT Nah, I'm a little stronger than him, but neither one of us are super power players so we just play our best and end up allied against the AI half the time anyway.

[@eddyvluggen]

Played this for a VERY long time! Love to see you play it.

[@Fabel555]

37 here and I think this was like one of the first CD ROM games

[@eddyvluggen]

@@Fabel555 47 here. Tried all options, and nice and cheap on Steam.

[@jorgemendoza6295]

What a wonderful Pipe of crack You find on the vault of the grandpa. Use with caution.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

omg the original thumbnail title was going to be "grandpas crack" but I chickened out because of fear of YT.

[@cobblestoneanddirt5795]

My favorite strat was rushing assault ships and ground combat tech with the aim of capturing the fist antaran raid ships, then scrapping them for end game tech. I don't remember the build, but the trick was using destroyers since they could fly adjacent to the target and launch the pods without any travel time. Of course, if you're capturing antaran ships, no other ship in the galaxy can hope to defeat you either - and now you have end-game tech too.

[@holisticreviews]

I’ll have to try that out.

[@Ran0r]

A friend of mine brainstormed hard on this and came up with a strategy to defeat the antaran homeworld with minimal investments by flying with all ships to the farthest end of the map, where the starbase couldn't hit him and finishing them off using anti matter torpedos - hurt my eyes to see that one work out.

[@keithchiang9770]

Goddamn Francis this is a treat. Thank you! This made my middle-aged day.

[@keyokediacherus2063]

Rofl, seeing this game pop up was amusing. I have learned that Francis and I play the game very differently - I'm a "hide away technologist" - hide in my starting system (make sure it's a good one), research like crazy, then explode out with waves of super-tech titans and doomstars.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Ohh I think we have all used that strategy at a few points. Creative, aquatic, subterranean, large home world. You can cram a few hundred pop into a small area and explode from there.

[@holisticreviews]

Sounds like fun.

[@Lys3rg1k]

Move over grandpa, because I want some of that there crack, too. Loved this game, love seeing you play it even more!

[@emmersoncharles205]

I still have my CD. Poured countless hours into this game. Great times.

[@docpayce1]

This was such a great game! Had so much fun! 🎉 Alas I am still no grandparent yet. 😂 1980 over here. Loved the nostalgia train, ty! ❤

[@FrancisJohnYT]

1980s kid myself, this game will always get fired up now and then. From now till the day I can play no more.

[@timetravelsmurf]

While there is some parts of the original miss, I found the remake to be quite good and I always returned to both every decade or so, since these games came out. Thank you good sir!

[@FrikInCasualMode]

Oh man MoO 2! That was one of best games back in the day for fans of strategy games.

[@ParameterGrenze]

This game is forever burned into my developing brain synaptic pathways. I spent so many hours with it, it’s insane.

[@martinfitzsimons5884]

Absolutely loved Moo2. Francis of course was kicking our butts at it 28 years ago too but so fun to play. Great series and was hoping for a Moo5. Maybe someday. Thank you so much for doing this throw back to the past Francis!! Fantastic :)

[@bbaker8330]

First game I ever played with a really satisfying diplomatic victory, by which I mean using terrorism and mind control to dominate all of my enemies into submission. Love the custom species builder, with the trade-offs. You can make a really really dumb species that can't do their own research, but produces such excellent spies that they can steal it all, while being so charismatic the other species will forgive them for it.

[@kartin174]

This is a total classic, I have a hard copy somewhere in some box in my house... However, you can buy it as a digital copy and that is what I did a few years back. This brings back found memories with my childhood friends during the 90's

[@mikhailgusev2394]

Oh my god. Was not expecting that! "HoMM 2", "Diablo", "I have no mouth and I must scream", "MoO", "Fallout"... That times were the best =) Damn, I am old.

[@6StimuL84]

lol...Yeah, we are.....

[@elsanti4220]

Never saw this game but francis always makes the videos really fun to watch. Hope to see more of orion 2

[@boraonline7036]

Still one of a kind. Some would say still the best 4x game there is, even if the graphics are outdated.

[@jfatgelinas]

moo2 is the perfect example of game that is a good game without the need of shiny graphic

[@fredrikkihlberg2757]

This was one of the games we used to play during computer class back in the 90s - while our teacher thought we were learning Excel :D Loads and loads of memories with this one. Thank you, Francis!

[@hyperdrv]

WOW!!! I can't believe this!! Is it christmas already?? I don't know how many thousand hours I played this game! I blame this game for my Sci-Fi addiction!! 😁 Great to see you play this!!

[@cha0sunity]

Moo2 has to be one of the best 4x games ever made. When I was in college i have the entire game save on the network storage they gave us as students so I could play it on any computer on campus.

[@wkorsten]

I LOVE IT, even before I started to watch it I still go back to this for a few days each year. Absolute gem of a game, and 100% looking to Francis show me how I've played this wrong despite being able to beat it on impossible (well, occasionally)

[@deathx0r]

Damn! Now I know where Star Wars rebellion came from. I absolutely love that game. Still play it from time to time. Didn't know this one existed. Looks a lot more complex than SWRII

[@muleorastromule3491]

Hook it to my veins. I've played a lot of 4X games. I've never recaptured the magic that was MOO2.

[@guyincognito1406]

Introducing MSDOS. The Microsoft Disk Operating System. Woot, oh you want a GUI? Hah! Hah I say! Command line or go home!

[@guyincognito1406]

Pre-windows was a wild time. I was a wee younger so my titles were commander king, xwing vs tie fighter, kings quest oh god the memberries are coming back… man dir cd ls lol

[@Jagg3h]

Or XTree

[@Nex47128]

Mate, the nostalgia this game gives me is truly incredible aye. Cheers Francis ;)

[@3v249]

Lol, poor little baby child who couldn’t survive without colorful icons, and an explanation in three words or less

[@FrancisJohnYT]

My friend gave me Start Wars Rebellion (1998) to play, it's similar to moo2, he bough it in France while he was studying there. So I played the French version of Star Wars Rebellion, it did not have any translations and I can't understand French. I learned to crush that game on hard and still remember that bouciller means shields.

[@jasonmartineau9315]

Phase cloak + time warp facilitator = unbeatable.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

The hard part was getting to the bottom of the two tech trees necessary to unlock them :)

[@esasher3455]

Love it! I was unreasonably excited to see this thumbnail. I still play a game of MOO2 every month or so. Low G, - Ground Combat, - Spying, Creative, Subterranean, Unification.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Ouch on the low g, have you ever tried an advanced start, tiny map with a combat focused race? Super fun and fast.

[@esasher3455]

Nah, low g gets fixed by the gravity tech and double bodies make up for it. For a tiny advanced map I like to roll + ground combat and steal or trade for assault shuttles. Capture everything. Keep the best and scrap the rest. The AI get so much free production on hard and impossible its the best way I've found to even the field.

[@DrEnzyme]

You say "dated" graphics but I'm honestly really impressed with how it looks, there are a bunch of games from around then that do not hold up art-wise but I can see myself playing this today and having a lot of fun.

[@7177YT]

Watching this makes my heart ache again thinking about what a letdown MOO3 was, in view of my expectations informed by Moo2.

[@timmay6699]

I know you're on vacation but i love these retro games lol great work as usual francis

[@DrownedInExile]

I'm also old enough to have played MOO2 back in the MS-DOS days. I still load up the GOG version from time to time these days. I like to customize the Alkari into Lithovores, and call them Dragons or Wyverns. Great times!

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Are you an Early start player? Got to imagine that is the only way you can leverage Lithovore to gain an advantage over the cheating AI.

[@DrownedInExile]

@@FrancisJohnYT Come to think of it I never tried early start. I didn't realize you are essentially Creative for those early techs. Even all these years later MOO2 surprises me!

[@stainlesssteelfox1]

Maybe Housing, includes basic hydro/aquaponics as part of the closed cycle life support system, enough to support the people living in it with a small surplus from processing local materials as feedstock. But for proper growth, you need dedicated agriculture domes.

[@urbndecay1861]

I love this game. I still have the the MOO 3 CD's and MOO 2 disks in a box somewhere.

[@morunaga]

I actually remember buying this game physically in a supermarket way back. One of my favorite games, and as far as space 4X go only Stellaris managed to scratch the same itch.

[@1kvolt1978]

Finally a good game to watch on a channel! Also, IMHO you shouldn't be afraid to colonize poor planets. Later those become a good science and food centers when you cannot afford to move pops out from production on rich planets.

[@Zero-ll1ov]

Me and my dad played master of orion for years. Simple but addicting game

[@aeonise]

For some reason I missed MOO1, but Master of Magic and MOO2 were the start of my endless love of 4Xs. It's rather a shame that so few modern ones get anywhere close, though. I'd say Fallen Enchantress and Sword of the Stars did the best for me (at approaching MOM and MOO2, respectively), but they're both pretty old themselves, now.

[@cptgone]

The one game from the 90s I still play regularly .

[@MikeEstlick]

I bought this new right when it came out. Still play it.

[@alex_reno]

Francis' plan to flush out all the olds has worked, I'm one of them. This is one of the greatest games of all time

[@davidmartensson273]

I still play this from time to time, one of the best of its class ever :)

[@uncletimo6059]

It is both incredibly joyful AND sad that this is still a top 3 4X game of all time.

[@RDKirbyN]

Oh wow this is a flashback, I haven't seen this game since my late dad played it in the 90s. Yeah, this one is definitely a foundational game for the ones that followed.

[@Caracal-lm6es]

There is a 2016 reboot of MOO2 on Steam (Master of Orion). It's slightly different but the core is identical. It has mod support and some of the mods people have made are pretty awesome.

[@pinegulf]

There is? Bless you sir for sharing this information.

[@tsorevitch2409]

There is an unofficial remake "stars I in shadows" and it's way better than MoO3

[@tcironbear21]

How to win moo2 at hardest difficulty: 1) take creative, democracy, artifact world 2) restart until you have 5 full orbitals with no toxic 3) Race up the computer tech, with occasional jaunts over for for planetary defenses and artificial worlds & terraforming 4) Don't colonize outside your home system. Limit trading techs. Just turtle up. The basic strategy is to stay alive until you get to late game. In late game the game AI sucks at research and are awful at managing their planets. In late game your highly advanced civ and superior resource management will allow you to conquer the universe from your home system. Occasionally they universe will unite under a single galactic ruler and will generate fleets too fast for you to leave your home system to conquer, but in that case you just go to Antares and conquer it for the win.

[@robertfarrow3218]

My tactic was to rush robots and replace all my citizens with them, so no food production. Then you can research and build ships with cloaking devices and two actions. With that you can use one action to attack and the second to cloak, that way you become invulnerable, one ship can take out a full fleet. If i remember rightly, been a while though.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Ah time warp facilitator and phase cloak. Bottom of two tech trees, the late game killer.

[@ratatoskr1069]

No mouse in MS-Dos? Then you didnt harness the power of Norton Commander!

[@davidsalisbury1688]

Congrats Francis, you are The Borg.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Ohh this is not the Borg race, I will have to do a quick run with the Borg race sometime they are lots of fun.

[@zangiry]

i still play this game on and off, same with Total Annihilation

[@zacharymoyer3455]

Love the videos Francis! Have a good holiday:)

[@bifflowman2948]

Star Trek TNG had a heavy influence on this game. The Antares cube ships (Borg), phasing cloak was an episode, you can tell the devs were watching the show at the time! 😄

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Maybe that is why the game sees so much love even now.

[@nervosadustbolt9642]

i LOVED THIS GAME, AS A KID, I ALWAYS PICKED THR DOG FACTION

Humans in MoO 1 were actually one of the strongest races, especially for the player. They are great at Diplomacy.

[@seb2750]

Jokes on you grandpa, I work in IT and I still type CMD to bring up the blackbox. XD I play Stellaris now and I could jump right into it on a surface level based on my previous experience playing the MOO series. I still have that MOO2 CD on my table now! My first Soundblaster and CD combo pack in the 90s and my first few CD games.

[@serversender9919]

don't forget moo2mod, it makes the game even better

[@Puschit1]

Also loved Ascendancy

[@TheVilmoreSlither]

Damn! That took me by surprise! Big fan of that game. My friends and I used to play at the University, and this was 15 years ago. Glad to dust off the old DosBox.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

You can buy moo2 on steam, which comes with a built in version off dos box.

[@Tofufiche]

Still in my Top10 best games of all times. After you have conquered the universe for the 100th time with all the overpowered abilities, there is a whole new world of making terrible, 200% score races work.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Don't you mean 340%? 20 available points is 300% bonus plus another 40% for getting genetic mutation and not using it? Have never done it myself, sounds way way way to painful.

[@Tofufiche]

@@FrancisJohnYT Did not know you could do 340%. What is genetic mutation? I just meant creating a fun race and make it more difficult by not spending all your points. Try lucky, uncreative feudal warlords. Go crazy with abilities you would not touch with a 10 foot pole. :)

[@FrancisJohnYT]

@@Tofufiche Genetic mutation is a tech that gives your 4 more race points to spend. If you don't spend them it gives you a 40% score multiplier. You can get another 100% from not spending your starting 10 points and another 100% if you take -10 in traits. But playing a repulsive, -ground combat, -ship defence race with zero bonuses would be a long long game.

[@LGSyrus]

I personally didn't play with this, but I absolutely love the graphics. My favourite old game is Imperium Galactica 2. It has a lot of mechanics from this game. Also, strip mining technology sounds oddly menacing.

[@kirbyk1148]

hah! That is my default battleship design! And I have to say, DAMN 2 huge ultra rich planets in your sector. That's pretty much game winning

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Yeah I had forgotten how good a huge ultra rich is. If the game lasts to titan production we will be able to churn them out.

[@dred3569]

My childhood flashed before my eyes! Between this and Dune 2 are some of my favorite gaming experiences from those early formative years.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Dune 2, damm that game was hard. No way to drag select units. Lots of base defense required.

[@zakkus]

I have such fond memories of middle school playing this with my buddy (psilons vs darleks). I remember seeing that MOO3 release date woudl be when i was about 16 and thinking "man, ill be too old to play video games then". Ha. Ha ha.

[@muraj7418]

Oooo! Aw man, nice surprise! I would love to see FJ try Outpost if this trend continues!

[@Francois424]

Still waiting for a PROPER remake of this game. The WarGaming one (to the stars or w/e) lost me the moment they mentionned starlanes... And was missing all the cool stuf from Moo2. And by proper remake I mean : Keep the game as is, add in some build-list you can import which will skip w/e you dont have researched but do it automatically once you have it, maybe allow more than 6 designs, fix the bugs, HD the music, SFX and graphics. Like I want to run this in 3440x1440 on modern computers. I guess at this point it's wishful thinking, but you just never know. Thanks for playing this, now I have something to watch for later when I get some free time 🙂

[@FrancisJohnYT]

They would have to leave in the time warp facilitator and phase cloak combo basically breaking the game. But maybe make the AI use it as well :)

[@tsorevitch2409]

You can try Stars is Shadows. It's basically a Indy MoO2 remake

[@Francois424]

@@tsorevitch2409 I have tried it and it's pretty good, even tho not what I want. Did they add multiplayer yet? you couldn't play this with friends as far as I remember.

[@tsorevitch2409]

@@Francois424 no support/updates or sequel as far as I'm aware :-( It's a shame as it's the only decent remake that shows respect to source material, and keeps the gameplay formula

[@Taudlitz]

somehow every time I played this game I ended up with full robotic nation, wiping out all original organic scum

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Oh you should try the assimilation races. You capture races with good traits and replace your population with them.

[@wolfen210959]

I can't remember if I played this version, or the original, back in the day, but they fueled my passion for strategy games. :)

[@mjp152]

DOS was a fantastic operating system. But I dont miss spending hours tweaking the autoexec.bat and config.sys files in order to massage out those 6 kilobytes of EMS memory that was needed for whatever game I was trying to get working. Back then it was *not* a given that your machine could run a game even if it matched the requirements - sometimes you were just outta luck.

[@samhughes1747]

Tolerant is a nice early-game boost, but I preferred subterranean. You get a +1 size-class boost, which gets you a smaller boost on barren/toxic/radiated than tolerant, but later in the game, it’s massive. My build was usually unification+creative+subterranean Tolerant without creative, though, is probably huge.

[@FrancisJohnYT]

Their are lots of fun builds, but if you are going to go full on population monster you should try subterranean, aquatic, creative, large homeworld. I would advise an advanced start, but your starting home world can support 30 pop right out of the gate. Also you get +1 food production from Aquatic. Once you get Terraforming it's basically game over. When you get the advanced city planning for +5 pop everywhere you can fit 40 pop on huge terran class planets. You should give it a go some time. Though my favourite build was a bit cheaty. Creative, Telepathic, +50 ship attack, Repulsive, -10 ground combat. Do an advanced start in a medium to large galaxy and keep repeating until you start beside a good target race. It's best on highest difficulty as the enemy races get more traits. Then beam blitz the target race and use their population to fill all your planets. So now on top of being creative, telepathic, +beam attack your population is Sakkra that have +100 pop growth, +1 food production, High Gravity, Subterranean and tolerant. Maybe Klackons with +2 food and +2 production. Maybe Silicoids with Tolerant, Lithovore and Subterranean. It results in a different game every time and you get to do a lot of fighting from right out of the gate. But your success depends on who you start beside. So much fun.

[@samhughes1747]

@@FrancisJohnYT, I’d actually go missiles. It seemed like I never had time, playing on impossible, to put together decently balanced warships, so it was hit and run with cheap tricks. I’d go for the first research boost on electronics, then construction for automatic factories then robo factories at the 650RP level. There’s a smattering of energy, propulsion, and biology in there too, but then it’s chemistry up to Merculite missiles and then zortrium armor, or whatever it was called, at the 2000RP point. Depending on pressure from other races, I might detour for Super Computers, but I’d usually be banking some heavy construction project to get ready for warships to drop right after getting to Chemistry 2000RP. By that point I could usually fit 4-5 2xMerculite missiles with MIRV on a battleship. If I had battle pods, it’d be more like 7-8. At this point, I could usually defend myself pretty well, and maybe have a ship or two free for some hit and run tactics. Missiles were a pain, but I’d have my fleet turn and run while firing off their missiles, and just try to milk the engagement long enough for the volleys to land. It usually worked well enough that I’d be retrofitting with phasers or gauss cannons by the time anyone had decent shields or armor. Good times!

[@monkmayfair3487]

My favourite tactic (which was nerfed with the patch) was to have invisibility and the time turner. You used to have a cloaked ship, which would decloak when you fired the weapons, and needed 1 turn to reactivate, then the time turner would activate, you do nothing, and your ship goes invisible again, then it's y our opponents turn. It was overpowered, but great against the Antareans.

[@kevinshort2230]

Haven't played in years, I always went the science route.