Master of Orion II: Gnolams

See Master of Orion II: every race for introduction and links to games with other stock races.

Gnolams are another race which where introduced in Master of Orion II. Their stereotype is money making and their trait list reflects that quite strongly: +1 BC, expert traders, lucky, low G and dictatorship government.

BC (also shown as tax +1) bonus is quite powerful (cost 7 points) because it's multiplicative with other sources of income such as government, morale and buildings. It's as if each population unit counts as two for the purpose of taxation. Fantastic traders (in some places referred as expert traders, yeah, game can't make up it's mind) have all sorts of situational bonuses: +25% BC from trade treaties, double income from surplus food and double profit from building trade goods. Trade treaty bonus looks decent but absolute numbers are not to so big and normal taxation bonus will always overshadow it. Extra cash from surplus food is also symbolic bonus because early on you want to have as smallest surplus as possible and later on you won't be producing so much food to see comparable difference to regular taxation. More cash from trade goods on the other hand can have big impact because a good planet can dish out a lot of industry points. The perk costs 4 points but in the eyes of many players it's not worth half the cost unless one is about exploiting credit cheat. Lucky is another ineffective trait, for 3 points only good events can happen to the player and Antarans rarely attack his colonies. Well, events happen every 50 turns to a random player so in four player on average this perk does nothing for 200 turns. Or on the positive side it does one thing during the whole game. Not being pestered by Antarans early on is helpful but they too appear very infrequently. Low G is negative trait, it costs -5 points and the race suffers -25% penalty to farming, industry and research on normal G planet and -10 in ground combat. There is no economy penalty on low G planets and the homeworld has low gravity. Dictatorship is default government type, see Alkari playthrough for more details.

Since last few games on normal turned out to be quite easy, this time I've started a game on hard. My starting position was decent, large desert and small ultra rich barren. Not spectacular, weak early game potential but quite good for the long run. While homeworld was providing food, large desert became research center and small ultra rich an emergency shipyard and main housing (extra population growth) center. Neighboring stars were so so, couple of irradiated average planets and a medium tundra in Weg system. I've landed my initial colony ship on tundra and immediately (turn 7) got in contact with Sakkra. At first I thought it's going to be an opportunity to use my trade bonus but it turned out Sakkrans were repulsive. If that didn't spell early war clearly enough, positions of their colonies did. In four player maps homeworlds are usually near corners but their was in a middle of the map. Cephee, their first expansion was in my direction and it was quite logical they will use it as staging point for attacking Weg. I've scouted remaining stars I had in range, encountered space crystal at Mensa system which guarded large ultra rich gaia with natives and parked other scout at neutral Yen system. That proved to be a good decision because on turn 22 I've spotted Sakkra troop transporter going to Cephee and it gave me time to prepare defense at Weg. My defenses were humble, two frigates, former scouts refitted with two unrefined nuclear missiles each. On turn 30 Sakkra moved to Weg but didn't attack. They blockaded the system for a few turns, until I've built 3rd frigate.

The war was dragging out, I've kept building missile frigates and eventually had enough to blockade Cephee and keep Weg safe from invasion. I've also invested in espionage and managed to steal deuterium fuel cell and biosphere technology, to sabotage a few buildings in Sakkra main system and most importantly the star base in Cephee system. After some time I even attempted to conquer a colony at Cephee but my ground combat score was too low, partly due to my -10 from low G and partly to Sakkran +10 while defending. On turn 110 I've researched planetary supercomputers and established contact with Meklars. While Sakkra and I played tug of war with two systems each, they expanded to four systems. I've tried my diplomatic skills on them but they kept refusing to sign any treaty so I tried something silly, trade supercomputers for heavy armor. It improved my standing a bit but still it took a lot of perseverance to get trade treaty. At least one solid step toward non-aggression pact. War with Sakkra went well, I've advanced chemistry by researching tritanium and started replace frigates with destroyers. On turn 151 as I was getting ready to send colonization fleet to Yen system, hyperspace flux happened preventing all interstellar travel. By the time the flux lifted Sakkra built a colonization fleet too and occupied Yen before I could. While I finally got safety by signing non-aggression pact with Meklar, on turn 188 Antarans decided to raid Yen system. Sakkra was unable to defend so I got the second chance and took the system before anybody got the same idea.

Settling Yen got me in range with Silicoids, another repulsive race. At first I didn't know how powerful they were so I've left Sakkra alone (they where down to their home system) and hoped they will be a distraction while I build up my army. I managed to steal positronic computer from Sakkras and advance physics on my own so I started to refit missile ships with lasers, a lot of lasers. Plus usual special equipment for beam ships, battle scanner and battle pods. Thing is everybody had class I shields which are not strong enough to make lasers ineffective and miniaturized armor piercing lasers are very strong weapon. While I was arming up Tanus, a colony leader, offered me his services and when I hired him I got pleasantly surprised by getting imperium, an advanced govnerment technology from him. My first field test of laser destroyers was against Sakkra who tried to invade me with quite sizable fleet (4 or so battleships with 3 more smaller ones). Lasers ripped their titanium hull to shreds. Then I figured I have enough military power to deal with space crystal and on turn 212 I colonized juicy large ultra rich gaia in Mensa system. I pumped all my money and excess population (mainly from small ultra rich in my home system) to that colony and turned it into a heavy duty shipyard. At this point I've filled command point capacity with destroyers and the time came for bigger ships so I started to build battleships. Where destroyers where packing 9 lasers, battleships could go up to 40. While I was preparing for eventual Silicoid invasion I've also backfilled systems around my homeworld and on turn 240 I was a candidate for galactic council. Silicoids were too numerous to be out voted by Meklars and me at that but that event gave me hope of eventually winning the game with diplomaticy rather then being forced to conflict.

Silicoids on the other hand had no other options then to expand through conquest. On turn 255 they defeated Sakkra and were at war with Meklars and few turns later they tried their luck on me. My laser destroyers and few battleships were strong enough to handle their titans but not powerful enough repel Antarans who decided to raid Yen (again but with me controlling it this time). Their fleet was quite big at this point, 3 frigates, 2 destroyers and a cruiser. I managed to destroy their frigates and retreat battleships on time, thanks to heavy armor but unfortunately the colony got bombarded to oblivion. On the flip side I had second colony in the system so I've managed to remain in control of the system and rebuild the lost colony. After Antaran incident I've proceeded to conquer Silicoids and grow my population to increase voting power. I would have won at turn 290 election if Meklars did vote for me. I traded few more technologies with them to improve standing, tried to make an alliance with them but as usual they were not keen on signing. 50 turns later I assimilated more of Silicoid empire, switched weaponry to phaser beams, defeated Orion guardian and got Meklars to vote for me.

It was a bit slow game if you go by technology progression rate but considering the cause of it was early and constant war, it was an interesting game. The fact that most of the fights were fought with imperfect technologies (plain, non-MIRV missiles), sort of subversion of expectation brought extra fun factor. So did Gnolam traits influence the game and my play style? Low G certainly did slow my economy down. Monetary bonuses didn't look very influential early on while I was playing but in retrospect I was buying a lot more buildings than I could with other races, I was even able to afford buying ships and I didn't have to wait long to afford most expensive leaders. Also there was no mid-game deficit period where building maintenance cost would grow over tax income and by time as I was half way through technology tree I had enough income to go substantially over command point capacity. Gnolams are deceptively strong. I doubt lucky trait probably saved from negative events because Silicoids got a lot of good events but it kept Antarans away from me for the most part.

One side note, see how top right part of galaxy map is uninhabited? It's not because nobody has bothered to send a colony ship there, it's because there was no habitable planets. There was 2 toxic ones in Python system and the rest where either empty systems or filled with gas giants.

Master of Orion II: Elerians

See Master of Orion II: every race for introduction and links to games with other stock races.

Elerians were introduced in the second installment of the Master of Orion and their archetype is..., um, I'll keep my opinion to myself :). From the other perspective they are space elves. For some reason telepathy and other mind powers are perfectly OK magic to use in science fiction setting and Elerian traits are mix of mind magic and warmongering: +20 ship attack, +25 ship defense, telepathic, omniscient and feudal.

Ship attack and defense bonuses are straightforward extra accuracy and evasion (see Alkari and Bulrathi articles for more info). Telepathic gives a few ordinary bonuses, +10 to espionage and +25% to diplomacy (whatever that means), but the best thing is the mind control ability. After a successful space battle cruisers and larger ships can mind control planets to side with the attacker. Such planets do not suffer from conquered penalty and don't revolt. There is a small space battle effect too, when telepathic race successfully captures a ship, they can use it during the same battle. All in all it's great trait for rushing because early conquest doesn't require building and deploying troop ships and conquered planets are developed sooner. Trait cost is quite high, 6 points. Omniscient on the other hand is cheaper mind magic, for 3 points it reveals the details of all star systems as if they have been scouted and reveals all opponent ships, no matter how well they are hidden. Great for planning your game from the start and it's kind of counter for stealthy ships. Feudalism is a government type and a negative one. It costs -4 points, lowers morale for -20% on colonies without barracks and has -50% penalty to research. There is slight bonus, starships cost 2/3 of normal cost. If you didn't get enough incentive to blitz your opponents with telepathy, feudalism would be screaming "rush or die" at you. Imperium, the advanced form of feudalism has lower research penalty (-25%) and ship cost reduced to 1/3 of the normal price which is awesome if one can live long enough to research it. On the surface Elerians look like disaster, overcommited to rushing from turn 1 when you don't really weapons for breaking early starbases but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

Before doing any move, I observed the map. Systems around me were mostly poor with minerals, while some of them are tundras and ocean I wouldn't gain much by expanding and would lose time. By exploiting wormhole placement and extended range on colony ship I could have reached Darloks very quickly. Either by colonizing Ras system without escort or by colonizing Rhilus system and making outpost at Ras. Both systems had a medium tundra planet but I thought about going with the safer option and use Rhilus later for launching attack on Trilarians. Next question was how to take down star bases? Six command points is barely enough for big enough fleet of missile boats but a friend gave me a different suggestion: heavy lasers. Beam ships are not limited with ammo and heavy mount would provide the range for shooting while staying away from most of opponent's weaponry. Fleet composition was third question, there had to be one cruiser in order to use mind control on planets and the question was what to do with remaining three command points. After some time playing in the ship designer I've decided to simply go with 3 frigates, I could build them much faster (plus I could speed things up by refitting scouts) then a single cruiser or destroyer and frigate and they would be packing similar amount of firepower. I've never played with unminiaturized lasers before and my final ship designs where something unique: frigate design had only a single heavy mount laser (much like A-10 airplane, a cannon with wings and engines) and cruiser had one heavy laser and 20 PD (defensive) lasers. The idea was to have a cruiser provide anti-missile defense while frigates do the heavy lifting.

When I've finally pressed "end turn" button I saw Darloks sending colony ship to Ras. That was great for me because I could mind control it and get fuel range to Nazin instead of having to build and deploy an outpost ship. My colony ship was on the way to Rhilus and homeworld was refitting scouts with a heavy lasers and building the cruiser. On turn 22 the invasion fleet was complete and three turns later positioned at Rhilus system, ready for war. Instead of outright declaring the war on Darloks I've tried provoking it by demanding anti-missile rockets technology from them. In either case I would win something. They refused, got so angry they declared war on me and I had "justification" for moving through wormhole and taking Ras system next turn. On turn 28 Nazin fell and Darloks no longer owned anything. The battle at Nazin was straight forward, a starbase was launching missiles at the cruiser which was happy to shoot them all down. Occasionally a heavy laser would scratch the cruiser but not often enough to make significant damage. It took some time but starbase armor and structure was slowly worn down and I got to double my empire's population.

Next on my hit list were Trilarians. I've built an outpost ship and sent it to Praxis, hired commander Hawk and assigned him to the cruiser. His bonuses were not ground breaking, +5 to beam defense was not that impressive but navigation skill was actually good one. +1 to galaxy speed was nice (huge bonus considering the base value is 2) and secondary effect, no slowdown in nebula, was the best part. Both Trilar and Cryslon had a nebula in the way and being able to travel through with full speed was very useful. By the turn 39 I've established contact with Trilarians and had fleet ready in the Praxis system. I've tried again to provoke the war by demanding a technology but this time AI agreed. I got my self fusion beam but not the the war, now what? I've asked for research treaty and again they agreed. I sighed and decided to spare them for a while.

I thought about attacking Silicoids last but given the situation it was actually not bad idea to deal with them before they spread too much. I did a bit of research and development on my new colonies and then ordered a new outpost ship. Administrator Garron offered his service and I've hired him. All of his bonuses would be useful in some way, +10 diplomacy might give me some better deal with Trilarians, fame bonus would reduce the price of later leaders and megawealth (10 BC/turn) alone would justify hiring him. On turn 50 I've researched my first very own technology: research labs. The feudalism really makes researching early technologies feel like huge achievement. I've traded lab with Trilarians for hydroponic farms because they would help me a bit with food and Trilarians wouldn't live long enough to make good use of labs anyway. Few turns later Silicoids got lucky, they've uncovered a wreckage of an ancient ship and got a fusion beam technology. Then they've lended me a hand by colonizing Dendo system. Once I've made outpost in Honte system I was one system away from having a continious path to all Silicoid systems. Dendo fell on turn 63, but they were able to destroy two of my frigates so I took me some time until I attacked them again. My research was producing results and by turn 67 I had reinforced hull and automated factories and traded factories for space academy. I've built my second cruiser on turn 82, some time after researching fusion rifles so it had a bit more advanced weaponry, it sported AP NR (armor penetrating, no range dissipation) heavy laser. Too bad it was built one turn before I advanced physics field again. I've decided it was worthy to lose time refitting so I've sent it to meet with an old fleet at new outpost in Oba system. New physics technology was tachyon communications which gives an extra command point per starbase. I usually pick battle scanner for more beam accuracy but this time I figured I have good enough accuracy and bigger fleet was more important. And again I traded my new technology with Trilarians but this time for planetary missile base, an excellent planetary defense which can repel most early game fleets, including Antarans.

Fortunately Antarans were asleep whole game and by turn 92 I've mind controlled the last Silicoid colony. AP laser performed well, it was crippling starbase weaponry as it was destroying it, reducing the threat level considerably faster but it was not that great damage wise. The problem was I had mix of no-AP weapons which had to drill through armor so in the end it took almost the same amount of turns. Silicoids are awesome race for to have. They don't need food and they don't produce pollution which translates to almost quadruple industrial output. And on top of that they have higher population limit on hostile planets. Did I mention they don't eat food? Yeah they can spread like weed and bacteria combined. Once I've conquered them their former homeworld was capable of outproducing my whole empire. There should be no surprise if I tell you I made it my main shipyard.

As I was preparing for Trilarians I was concerned about missile bases. Would 20 PD lasers be enough? At the time I had enough command points for 3 cruiser so I've figured 3 times 20 should be enough. I was lazy to run the numbers but knowing how stuff works under the hood I estimated NR modifier would trick fraction rounding into effectively double PD damage, "autofire" modifier would increase actual number of shoots and "continuous" modifier would compensate for autofire accuracy penalty. While refitting the fleet my scientist have researched battle pods so I had even more firepower at my disposal and there was no worry about Trilarian defenses. Final cruiser design was 4 heavy and 9 PD lasers all with aforementioned modifiers. That's very powerful for turn 105 and there were few defensive improvements as well, tritanium armor and fusion drive I got from Trilarians while trying to provoke war. This time I just declared war after failed provocation, there was no more reason to let lone AI live. Trilar fell on turn 112 and missile base wasn't so hard, partially because the system was in nebula so their shields were not working and partially because their ships were busy bombarding my outpost at Praxis. The real battle with Trilarians happened at Kae system, they had a battleship with captain Mukirr, a destroyer with captain Altos, two frigates, a starbase, a missile base and defensive structures were shielded with class I shields. My cruisers were swift at destroying defensive structures, despite the shields, but their ships were good at evading my shots. Extra accuracy on PD lasers helped a lot, something I was scarcely aware it was there. While I was trying to land enough shoots on their titanium plates they managed to cripple and capture one of my ships. Few moments later there were fireworks, one of their ships exploded so hard that my captured cruiser got destroyed along with and Trilarian frigate. Last Trilarian system Yad was undefended and it fell one turn after Kae, concluding the game.

Well that was an interesting game. I've expected a disaster and got exhilarating roller coaster ride. I felt so powerful taking a whole race before turn 30 and defeating everybody else with lasers. Elerians are weird race to play with, as if they are playing a different game then everybody else. Rushing so early feels like cheating but that is the case in all games, not just Master of Orion. Limiting their research capabilities is actually nice touch since it balances out the fact that successful rush would double the empire and it really made me appreciate every single technology I got.

Master of Orion II: Darlok

See Master of Orion II: every race for introduction and links to games with other stock races.

Darloks, another race from original Master of Orion, are the race designed around spy stereotype. Like previous races in Master of Orion II they didn't have all stereotype related traits and had a little twist to the theme. In the original game their spies costed half the normal price, had 20 extra defensive espionage points (roughly +20% to uncover enemy spy), +30% to succeed in espoinage and 20% cheaper research in computer s field which also influenced spy effectiveness. As you can see espionage bonuses all over the place. On top of that all races had negative opinion of them because they are designed around parasitizing others.

MoO II races also don't like them either but not for espionage bonuses. In this game they have flat +20 to espionage and stealthy ships. How espionage works in MoO II is still the mystery, this old forum post explains some details but how odds are calculated is unexplained. I would assume it works similarly to the ground, combat which in turn uses the same formula as hit rolls in the space combat. So what does +20 to espionage means? Probably the same as +20 to the ground combat, 20% more chance to succeed and 20% less chance to get caught.

Stealthy ships is interesting trait that everybody avoids. It works the same as stealth field special equipment, ships are invisible on the galaxy map which makes it difficult for opponents to asses your defenses and impossible to see your attacking fleet. Unless they are omniscient, no kind of stealth can hide your ship on the main map from omniscients. One my argue that even non-omniscient AI could cheat and simply know were are your ships but I have confirmed they don't react to incoming cloaked ships. I have never actually used stealth field or stealthy ships trait and I've read somewhere that one or both of them is bugged so my experience with normal and phased cloaking device my not apply. Why people avoid this trait in custom races? It cost more then it is worth (4 picks vs omniscient which costs 3 picks), doesn't really help in combat (though my make combat easier), doesn't help economy and because of aforementioned bug.

I have played with espionage oriented custom race, it was fun and aggressive game. Almost as if playing with creative race but without the need for early game turtling. Now, I had no idea what to expect, except a lot of hate from other races. So let's begin.

After a little bit of scouting I've realized I'm in very poor neighborhood. There was no terrain or ocean planets, almost every planet was mineral poor or ultra poor and/or low gravity and Anraq, a monster guarded system, was very bad too. It was guarded by space eel and contained two planets: huge rich tundra with high gravity and medium ultra poor toxic with low gravity and gems. Tundra would be OK industry world if it had normal gravity and toxic planet was complete joke for guarded system. Gems give nice boost early on but there was simply no reason to build any building there. Fortunately I've found Vela system with huge rich high G tundra so I've settled there but sad fact was this and two more planets in home system were basically my whole empire for early and mid game.

To keep things more interesting other races introduced themselves fairly early. First ones were Elerian on 63rd turn. At first I was scared, I was weak and they could turn to annoying warmongers. On the other hand they had slow research because of government type and I was playing on a medium difficulty so they didn't have unfair bonuses. I thought for a while and traded research labs and automated factories with them. In ordinary circumstances I would withhold these two particular technologies but I figured if I was going to steal technologies I could give them a boost to get juicier ones sooner. That decision helped me to establish trade agreement so my situation was a bit less miserable. 10 turn later I've met Silicoids and 15 turns later, Humans.

Despite wet dreams of MoO fans, humans and Elerians didn't get along and unfortunately for me Elerians were on the losing end. My problem was that I was repeatedly losing contact with them, trade and research treaties would break and I'd lose desperately needed income source. To compensate and expand I've colonized a desert in Kochba system very near Elerian's homeworld. Things worked well for me for almost 100 turns, I've hired few quite pricey leaders with excellent bonuses, traded tritanium armor technology for missile bases and built some ships. Then out of the blue on turn 171 Elerians surrendered to Silicoids leaving me and Humans in a bad situation because it was only a matter of time when galaxy dividing Silicoids would decide to wage war on us.

But situation got even worse and weirder fast. Mere 6 turns later Antarans joined the party and attacked human colony making them even weaker for upcoming war. Couple of turns later giant space eel appeared to harass Silicoid's Ryoun system. It was good thing which turned bad for me but more about it later. In similar time frame I finally got enough technology to build a fleet for busting space eel at Anraq and secured gem deposits. Then Silicoids turned their ugly eye on me and declared war. My nuclear destroyers were good enough to keep them at bay so they gave up 10 turns later but again every good thing was counteracted by a bad thing and bad news. Bad news came in form of galactic council election where Silicoids alone held 8 votes of 16 total. Bad situation arised when giant space eel reproduced and sent it's equally giant offspring to my Kochba system.

I keep stressing it was a giant one because my fleet which easily destroyed normal one without loss was unable to carry enough nukes to kill this one and this one was definitely able to chase my ships down and one-shot them. Fortunately eel didn't want to destroy colonies so Kochba had lived under blockade. Around turn 220 situation improved, I've hired Tanus, a leader with good bonuses and advanced government technology and started to build bigger and more advanced ships. Humans were not so lucky, they were slowly losing to Silicoids so I decided to steal all of their technologies. It was not much but there were decent and made future stealing from Silicoids easier. To compensate I gave them technologies to defend themselves, zortium armor and missile base and accepted their plea for alliance. About the turn 250 I realized I could actually play as Darlok and help Humans by sabotaging Silicoids. Every few turns a building came down. If only I have started doing it sooner because humans became too few in numbers for upcoming election.

On turn 269 game again decided to make things more interesting by sending both Antarans and giant space hydra to me. Antaran fleet was tricky one, 4 frigates and 2 destroyers. I managed to deal with frigates but destroyers prevailed and Kochba was bombed down to 1 population unit. There were no problems with space hydra except it attacked Anraq making me pull remaining fleet far from Kochba and risk invasion there. That fateful election on turn 280 should have ended the game, Silicoids with their Elerian traitors had all the votes need to elect themselves because diminished Humans and my empire weren't big enough to make 1/3rd of total votes. When the game asked me whether I accept the ruling I chose "No" but for all intents and purposes it should count as if I have lost the game.

30 turns later I finally had what one could call a warship, a battleship with reinforced zortium, armed with antimatter torpedoes and supported with automated repair unit. About 60 turns latter I've conquered all Silicoid colonies. There were few sideshows like another Antaran attack and saving Nazin from going supernova but the game was straight forward, attack, invade, repeat.

So how was it being Darlok? Despite the game degenerating after one AI surrendered to another it was interesting but not because of my race choice. When playing other races I try to steal as much technologies as possible so Darlok espionage didn't feel fresh. Rate of tech stealing didn't seam to be significantly higher. Sabotage was somewhat better, there was an awesome moment where my spies have destroyed a star base on a planet I was about to attack on the same turn the attack happened. But most of the time saboteurs either did nothing or minimally harmed the opponent who didn't have any defensive spies and espionage technologies. It's hard to gauge the value of stealthy ships but I've noticed AI didn't attack undefended colonies when my overall fleet strength got big enough and it didn't concentrate defensive fleets when I was attacking him. Maybe it worked? All in all playing Darloks felt ordinary, as if they had no differentiating traits.