Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

Reviewer's Hardware: SoundBlaster 32 AWE.
(*) As you can see, I reviewed the game on a significantly slower system than what is stated in the official requirements. However, the game ran fairly smoothly, slowing down when the amount of graphics in space combat was high, or during turn generation of complex games (that is to be expected with any system a game would be played on). I regret any inaccuracies in the review. such as bug reports, that may be caused by my less than adequate computer.

This is a complete review of Master of Orion II, with the added features of version 1.31 taken into account. If you've heard of Microprose's notorious delay in releasing a workable patch, and were reluctant to get MOO2, read on.

[Ed's note: While this game has been out for some time, our first review was done without the hindsight of several months' play and the latest 1.31 patch which Dan has tried out. So this rather extensive review makes good reading!]

The original Master of Orion needs no introduction, being the strategy classic that it is, and anyone of the thousands who got hooked onto the game should already have the sequel by now, but if you don't feel like blowing $50 on what could be a junk sequel, or you are a newcomer to the space conquest strategy genre, keep reading ...

If you haven't played the game, Master of Orion II could be described as a mix of the best elements of great space conquest games such as VGA Planets and Stars!, plus elements from Microprose's hit classic, Civilization. MOO2's features and gameplay are also very similar to another Microprose game, Master of Magic.

Starting the Game

You first start out by picking from a variety of settings, just like in Civilization. You can pick how old the galaxy is, what the composition of the planets are, the difficulty level and what level of development you want to start out. That means if you get tired of sitting around for an hour building up a decent empire, you can switch to the "Advanced" setting and be able to have a ready made empire. After those selections, you get to choose your race.

You have 13 unique races to choose from, ranging from the metamorphing, super-secret Darloks, to the lucky trading dwarf-like Gnolams. The best option here that pretty much makes the choice of 13 races all but useless except to the beginner, is the Custom option. You get 10 "picks" to distribute only dozens of attributes, ranging from how well you fight in spaceships and on ground, to extra bonuses in food, industrial, and research production. You also get to pick from a variety of special attributes, such as being a telepathic race (being able to assimilate populations from space, better spies, and better diplomacy), omniscient (being able to see all ship movement and enemy locations), warlord (better trained crews), Stealthy Ships (ships totally cloaked from scanners, and many more. Plus, you get to pick from four governments each having their own strength and weaknesses. If you don't have enough picks to get the more expensive options, you can always sacrifice how well you produce stuff and your population growth, or pick such nasty options like being Repulsive (cuts off nearly all but the most basic diplomatic options) and Uncreative (screwed in the technology race). In short, there are dozens upon dozens of combinations, giving the game a rather large replay value.

After picking game conditions, race, name, and flag color, you are off to start your galactic conquest. If you chose the Default development option, you'll start off on a single colony, with a colony ship and two scouts. The early stages of the game are the most boring, basically scouting all the stars finding suitable planets. Speaking of which, instead of having just one planet for every star, there can be systems of up to 6 planets per star. Running colonies in MOO2 is like running cities in Civ. You assign the population to three different duties, either growing food, building stuff, or researching. You also collect taxes from your population, much like Civ, to pay off maintenance. Surplus money is saved in the treasury so you can appease other rulers or quickly build products.

Building Your Empire

Research and growing food are self-explanatory, but building things has changed quite a bit from the original MOO. Not only can you build ships, but also buildings such as Pollution Processors, Barracks, Starbases, jump gates, etc. Each item you build takes a different amount of time to build, depending on how many production units you make in a turn, and how much the particular thing costs. One of the best additions to the game is a building queue, which lets you make a list of things in the order you want a colony to build, so you are not plagued with having to visit every single insignificant colony to assign orders. As I mentioned, building ships is no longer your only option, you must build buildings to make your colonies more productive. Most of them are just designed to make your colony more efficient, such as Research Labs to increase how much research a Scientist generates, and Factories to help workers. A few of them, like Ground Batteries, will aid in the defense of your planet.

Building and Commanding a Fleet

Building a good fleet is vastly different from what it used to be. In the original MOO, you could only have 6 types of ship designs, and be able to build vast fleets of death ray equipped dreadnaughts providing you had the production. In MOO2, you can have an unlimited amount of ship designs, and 32000 ship fleets are not possible. In MOO, every time you wanted to build a new type of ship, but all your ship slots were fill ed, you had to scrap an entire class of ships to create a new design. This problem is eliminated, and not only do you not have to scrap your obsolete ships, but you can upgrade them at starbases at your convenience e. Ship fleets are much smaller, expect to have no more than 30 or so huge ships at a time, too many can cost too much or be a hassle to control. The number of ships you can command without losing money, is determined by your "Command Rating." The yearly salaries of crews and maintenance of ships and other details not worthy of your attention is summarized under the Command Rating. The number of Starbases and your tech level will determine how many Command points you have. Each ship, depending on size, takes up a command point, and if you exceed your number, you will lose 10BCs for every CP over your limit.

Adding to your fleets of combat ships, are "support" ships. The ships that you use to transport surplus food and colonists around to needy colonies are freighters. Freighters don't appear on the map, they are just there automatically shipping food around, or shipping colonists when you want to. Another type of support ship is the Transport ship. Each transport carries 4 marines that you can use to stage planetary invasions. Last, but not least, are the outpost and the good ol' Colony ship. The outpost ship is used to setup a fueling and scanning base when you don't have enough money to resources to build a colony ship.

The Heroes

An element borrowed from Microprose's other strategic success, Master of Magic, is the ability to recruit Heroes. Heroes come in two type of flavors, ship officers or colony leaders. Ship officers can affect how a well his ship, or the entire fleet that his ship is in, attacks and defends, or other abilities such as being able to travel faster or ship repair. Colony leaders can affect how well the colonies within his/her assigned system function. The leaders affect such things as production, pollution control, morale, and ground battle. Heroes cost money of course, a starting fee and a cheap yearly salary. You can only hire four of each type, though.

Combat

There is an option, when you are setting up the game, to choose "Strategical Combat". This means that the computer will resolve all battles and design all ships, leaving you to build the empire. I can't for the life of me come up with a reason why you would want to do this, as combat and ship building are arguably the best features in the game. In MOO2, combat is more complex than MOO1 (as described below), and until very late in the game (see "Flaws" section), combat requires a good devious commander if you want to win.

After assembling your mighty fleet and crew, it is time to conquer a few of your fellow aliens. Ship combat is handled in a 2D field that is many times larger than the one in the original MOO, allowing for more ships and a more complex strategy. Another thing to account for is that your ships can no longer fire from the aft or sides of the ship unless you've equipped your ship with weapons with wide firing arcs. This means that ships have to spend a lot of movement points making 360 turns if their targets maneuver around them. A good tactician can use this to their advantage by positioning ships which are equipped with weapons on all sides to fire at a ship broadside or behind.

Each side moves all of his/her ships in a turn-based style to get into firing range. Ships that have the best computers will get to move first. Once in range, you can have your ships let loose their missiles and lasers and watch them rip through the enemies' shields and cause a nice quantum explosive reaction. Combat goes on until one side is destroyed or chickens out.

Combat is a bit more complex than in the original MOO. You can still destroy ships by punching holes thru their hulls with phasers. However, slugfests aren't the only way to beat a fleet. You can send fighter squadrons to do the fighting for you, or at least to provide another target for ships to direct their fire at. You can also board ships to raid or capture them by immobilizing the target ship and transporting marines over, or sending assault shuttles of soldiers over.

Ground combat is a minor feature of MOO2. As soon as you destroy any orbiting bases and ships, you can transport Marines down and take it over. The computer decides who wins, depending on the amount of troops each side has, and combat bonuses from weapons and heroes. You can opt to bomb the planet into a lifeless rock, or my favorite, use a Stellar Converter and turn a planet into an asteroid belt a la Death Star style.

The Arms Race

Another standout feature for the Master of Orion game is the large amount of technology you can research. MOO2 keeps many of the old techs found in the original, and includes dozens more. As I said earlier, you are now not limited to just researching new ship parts, but new buildings, new biological functions (telepathy for spies, mutation to be able to pick more attributes), and even an upgraded government. Researching tech is handled in a similar way to the original MOO and Civilization. There are eight basic fields: Biology, Chemistry, Construction, Computers, Physics, Power, Sociology, and Force Fields. Each field has about ten or so levels that you advance to in sequential order, and each level has usually three techs, one that you may choose to research. For example, Temporal Physics, which is a level in the field "Physics", includes three techs: Time Warp Facilitator, Stellar Converter, and Star Gate. You can choose one, and the other two techs you'll have to get from other sources, probably from your opponents. Getting to choose only one tech out of three makes the game a bit more complicated and strategical than in MOO, where you could go back and research older useful techs. The exception to this rule is when you are a "Creative" race; this allows you to get all three techs in a level (See "Flaws" section). And if you haven't played any space conquest games before, or Civilization, how fast you research a tech depends on how many research points your colonies generate.

Diplomacy

Yet another of MOO2's great features, is the way you can deal with your opponents. Diplomacy is expanded beyond from what was allowed in the original MOO...you can trade techs, offer gifts, make peace, non-aggression, trade, and alliance treaties. You can also demand a weaker race give you a tech, or even a system. For the silly leaders who are getting whipped, you can choose the "Surrender" option to give all your power to a race and leave the game.

Espionage, one of my fav features in MOO, is surprisingly less effective in the sequel. One of the reasons is that you have to build spies, and early in the game, that can be a useless frill. Also, there are so many techs that an empire can build to improve spies effectiveness, that the 20+ bonus a Darlok gets, scourge of the original MOO, is negated. You can also assign spies to participate in protecting against spies, which really puts a damper on any would-be thieves and saboteurs.

The Big Bad Anterans

If you are wondering where the title of MOO2 came from, it comes from the high tech xenophobic race who occasionally pop out of the dimension their civilization exists in, and proceed to wipe out your colonies with super high technologies. The Antareans provide another way for a leader to win; by traveling to their homeworld and blowing it out of your misery. Daring players will try to capture their ships in space battle, and thus discover new technologies that will place their empire light years ahead in the tech race. And if you haven't played MOO, "Orion" comes from the super-rich planet protected by a super ship called the Guardian. Late in the game, a player can go conquer the planet and discover all kinds of neat things, including the best planet in the galaxy.

Multiplayer

I regret to say that I cannot give an accurate description of this feature, except to say that it is a fairly well received option by other players who have used it. You can play network, over the modem, or old fashioned hot seat style. If you are a MOO player, you can obviously see the advantages and opportunities that a multiplayer game could have. As for me, I will likely not use the multiplay feature, seeing how playing just against the computer robs enough of my time.

Critique

OK, enough of the lists of features that MOO2 provides, here is my evaluation of the game:

Artificial Intelligence

In the original MOO, the computer was nefarious for getting huge bonuses in the higher levels, and this doesn't change in MOO2. However, the computer is a bit more aggressive in expansion and conquering, and the experienced MOO player will find it a bit difficult at first. The AI is fairly competent in ship combat; it will target the most dangerous ship of your fleet first, and if you are wasting their fleets with missiles or beams, they will beef up on ECMs and shields respectively. One of the flaws is that the AI, if you are a diplomatic race, will sometimes just sit around if you manage to make a Non-Aggression pact. The AI is still too dumb to recognize a huge fleet gathering at its doorstep, so once you get the technological edge, it is fairly simple to win. However, the AI is more aggressive than in the original, and will sometimes break treaties and do surprise attacks like any conniving human player.

The computer is a dunce when designing ships in the later stages of the game where dozens of weapons and devices can be installed; the AI has no clue in designing rear-kicking dreadnaughts, and instead, fills its ships with a few wimpy weapons and obsolete devices. However, in the middle and early stages of the game where technology isn't a big deal, their ships are quite competent and fleet commanders will have their hands full.

Obviously, AI flaws are negated during multiplayer play.

Gameplay Flaws

MOO2 is a great game, but a bit off from perfect. One of the things that irks me most is the race creation options. Getting to choose from only 4 similar governments is not enough (but better than nothing I'll admit). Combat races that get +whatever in ship or ground combat can't compete with races that get production and growth bonuses, as a race based on research will come up with better weapons to wipe out a fleet, no matter how well that obsolete fleet can fight. Speaking of research, one of the worst options, for the sake of challenge, is Creative. Creative allows you to get all the techs in a level, instead of one. This eliminates any strategical planning in what techs to get, and since only the Psilons have this attribute, any Creative human race should be able to win in the long run. Inversely, Psilons are a pain to deal with if you are *not* a Creative race.

Ship combat also needs to be retuned. The huge playing field is nice and all, but it is somewhat useless considering the two opposing fleets are placed in the middle of the field and within a movement turn of firing range. Any commander who expected to be able to move his/her fleet in wide formations to flank or hit the rear of the enemy, or attack long range with fighters and missiles a la the Battle of Midway, will be disappointed. This effectively eliminates a lot of incentive for players to use the long range fighters and missiles, as beam weapons are much more varied, and as I said, can be fired at the opposing ships after one turn of moving.

And as in many games where you can build huge armies and super weapons at the end of the game, the exciting MOO2 combat eventually degrades into "Who has the most ships armed with plasma cannons?" contest, meaning that combat becomes a no-brainer when all you have to do is move your ship into range and fire with your best weapons and neat gizmos. Also, fleets, especially computer fleets can be HUGE. A computer fleet of 40+ ships in a single battle will take at least 10 minutes for the computer to move. In the late game, combat with these huge fleets consists of moving your ships for the first turn, and then letting the computer resolve it in "super fast" auto mode, unless you have an unbelievable wealth of patience and resolve.

Bugs

Any complex game has bugs, and MOO2 is not without this flaw. I haven't noticed any gamebreaking gameplay bugs so far, but the game does crash in various situations.

Graphics and Sound

Snazzy graphics and sound sets apart MOO2 from an equally good game with a less professional look, such as Stars! or VGA Planets. The graphics are well drawn, and the effects such as shields blocking against beam fire looks like something right out of "Star Trek". Sound effects are equally nice, such as the sounds a weapon makes when fired. Music is appropriate, but tends to skip and slow the game down (may be because of my slower system), so I turned it off.

Gameplay

The interface is much improved over the original Master of Orion, adding such features as an autobuild and a building queue. The game design eliminates a lot of unnecessary details, such as finding minerals, and managing freighters. This does make the empire-managing part of MOO2 less complex and difficult than it does in other games, such as Stars! where you have to carefully decide how many facilities and warships to build according to the amount of resources and minerals you have. As a result, the game is more orientated towards wiping out your enemies, so combat and shipbuilding are the best parts of the game. As I mentioned in the "Combat" section, space battles are more complex in MOO2 than in the original, due to a larger playing field, diverse ships, and more toys.

Challenge

Because of the increased complexity, MOO players will find the game a little more difficult at first. But once you get the hang of it and start to notice the AI flaws and discover the uses for all the toys you can research, the game can be beaten regularly. Luckily, you can choose to design a less useful race if you want a challenge, as well as up the difficulty level. The players I've known find the beginning and middle stages the most difficult part, and the last stages where you have nearly every tech advance aren't too hard.

Is the Patch worth it

After endless delays, Microprose surprised the MOO2 gaming community by releasing version 1.31, after releasing the buggy 1.3 a month earlier. The patches make many refinements to the game, such as increasing the cost of the Creative attribute and changing the weapon costs and sizes. The game is thankfully more balanced out because of these changes. Some new features, such as initiative, were also added, make an already complex game even better. The patch isn't that big of a deal that it makes MOO2 twice the game it was, but then again, it was a great game to begin with.

Initiative, a much desired feature by many MOO2 gamers, is not a really revolutionary add-on. With this feature, instead of one side moving all of its ships and then the other, ships are moved in the order of how good their beam offense is and their sizes. This is fine in the early to mid stages of games, but like most of the game's appeal, it goes downhill near the end game. By then either you and your opponents have maxed in computer technology, or you are so way ahead that you don't need first strike. Also, most of your ships will be of the same design, so they all move in one block anyway. But I guess Microprose deserves some applause for listening to the cries of players.

Conclusion

Not surprisingly, Microprose adds another hit to its long list of strategy classics. MOO2 is similar to the original classic, yet is far enough of a leap in terms of gameplay and fun, that MOO fans must check it out. The biggest reason why you should not buy this game, though, is because of the game's ability, like its predecessor, to keep any player awake into the late hours of the night, trying to destroy the neighboring race or discovering the newest technology. This game is very addicting, and I've found it helps to lock up the CD in a box in order to get anything meaningful done in your life.

Pros:

• Great sequel that outdoes the fantastic original
• Nice graphics and sound
• Tougher AI and choice to play against real humans
• Better interface and online help makes gameplay a breeze
• Civ 2 meets Star Trek, need I say more?

Cons:

• More than its fair share of bugs and crashes
• AI doesn't stand much of a chance in the later stages of the game
• Game is centered around combat; managing the empire isn't as complex as it is in other games like Stars!

FOOTNOTES