Master of Orion/Game roadmap

This is a page is devoted to laying out a simple road map for how to manage a game from beginning to end.

The following will describe a number of sub-games, or metagames, that the player will engage in during the course of play.

In each instance, it will help the player to understand where they begin and where they ideally would like to be in the future. Once those two things are thoroughly understood, the player can begin to map out the process for how to get from point A to point B.

Threats in game obviously need appropriate responses, but beyond that there are a number of general transitions that the player should be trying to make in the grand scheme of things. Those will be defined below.

The First Metagame
First, I will re-organize the game across the regular boundaries.

Primary Economy Techs

Improved Robotics Controls 4 through 7 (Computers) - Able to build more factories per worker

Industrial Tech 9 through 2 (Construction) - Reduces the cost to build factories

Reduced Waste 80%, 60%, 40%, 20%, Elimination - (Construction) - Reduces pollution per factory

Terraforming +10 through +100 & Complete Terraforming (Planetology) - Increases max workers per planet

Soil Enrichment, Atmospheric Terraforming, Advanced Soil Enrichment (Planetology) - Increases max workers per planet

Enhanced Eco Restoration 5, 10, 15, 20 (Planetology) - Reduces cost to clean up waste

Primary Colonization Techs

Controlled Barren through Radiated (Planetology) - Increases the number of planets you can colonize

Range 4 through 6 fuel cells (Propulsion) - Increases the distances your ships can travel, bringing more habitable worlds within range

Nuclear Engines Speed 2 (Propulsion) - Helps your ships get from place to place faster on the galaxy map

Primary Defensive Techs

Planetary Shield 5, 10, 15, 20 (Force Fields) - Keeps missile bases safe from enemy ships

Class 2 through 15 Shields (Force Fields) - Protects ships and missile bases

Battle Computer Mark 2 through 11 (Computers) - Makes missiles more likely to hit and defends against enemy spies

Anything that says missile in it (Weapons) - Equipped on missile bases, kills enemy ships

The above techs are the game's core technologies. They are very redundant. If you can't get Industrial Tech 9, you can probably get Industrial Tech 8. If you can't get Class 2 Shields, you can probably get Class 3 Shields. If you can't get Terraforming + 10, you can probably get Terraforming + 20.

No single tech, makes or breaks a game. The closest one to a make or break tech is probably Planetary Shield 5, but the player does still have a good chance to stay in the game without it, especially since it can be traded off of an enemy.

The above tech list constitutes the player's advantage or disadvantage over the enemy opponents. If the player is ahead in these techs, they are probably ahead in the game. Indeed it is quite possible to win the game researching ONLY the things on this list. The player should aim to stay as high as possible in each of these areas. If they do, the rest of the game will pretty much fall into place.

The lower level the tech, the more bang for the buck it tends to be. These techs have a multiplicative effect with each other. Each one strengthens the effect of each other one.

Take for instance, the 100 base size starting planet, terraforming + 20, and reduced waste 80%. Terraforming + 20 would make the starting planet 20% more productive (6/5ths) and reduced waste 80% would allow the starting planet to spend 20% less on waste (5/4ths). If you have both, though, the extra 20% of workers also spend 20% less on waste. That gives you 20% more mileage out of the extra 20% of workers.

Not only that, but purely by having a higher terraforming level, the population on the planet work harder. Each worker produces 0.5 BCs personally at planetology tech level 1, and terraforming + 20 is tech level 9. Planetology tech level 9 workers produce about 0.7 BCs each in addition to the factories they control. That is yet another free bonus that stacks with everything else.

By getting ahead and staying ahead in each of these core areas, the player is likely to be able to defend against any enemy threat and, in due course, to begin taking enemy planets which further adds to the players available technologies and the production of the player's entire empire.

There are 3 core "sub-games" within Master of Orion. The Economic, the Technology, and the Combat game.

Getting ahead any of them allows you to get in a better position in both of the other two.

If you do better economically, you will have more resources to spend on research and ship production. If you do better technologically, your ships will do better against theirs and your planets will be more productive. If you do better in combat, you can add new planets to your empire for production and you can steal technologies from the enemy.

Note, that only one of those also increases its own area, technology. If you do well technologically, you will have more resources to use for research and you will do better with spying which helps you increase your own research as well.

Doing well in one combat doesn't mean you are guaranteed to do better in the next by definition, nor does a production advantage now guarantee you a production advantage later by definition, but a technology lead does lead to a greater technology lead.

When it comes time to engage in galactic combat, you will probably want to trade for a decent beam weapon and a decent bomb, or find time to research them alongside your other research. That makes things a little easier, although good missiles do tend to last a long time in combat even without bombs or laser weapons.

So the first meta-game is just to continually add to the productivity and technology level of your empire in the above key areas.

The Second Metagame
The second meta-game involves the constant shift away from micro and toward macro.

In the first few turns of the game, it is good to micro-manage everything at a deep level. You may even manage every single planet every single turn. As soon as you get 4 or 5 planets, though, the effort required to micro-manage gets much and much greater.

It becomes more and more difficult to manage at that level as each planet is added to the empire. It also becomes less and less of a concern as a leader.

This is similar to the real world in the realm of business. The lowest level managers tend to be quite hands on. As they get promoted higher in the management hierarchy, though, they focus more and more about the big picture and less and less about the details.

Early in the game the player asks how they can maximize the production of this and that planet, later they ask how they can increase the production of the entire empire all at once.

In the beginning of the game, a lot of people skip the technology buttons to, for example, increase the spending on waste cleanup by 25%, 50%, 75%, etc. Later in the game, these buttons pretty much constitute most of empire management.

The same applies to technology. For at least the first 5 or 6 technologies, players tend to spend all their technology points researching one technology at a time. Afterwards, players tend to just hit the = button and raise everything evenly.

This is a good thing, and how things should be. Early in the game you want the big pick me ups as quickly as you can get them. You generally want to move away from that model pretty quickly, though, because 2 low level techs are cheaper and better than one slightly higher level tech. Thus it helps to get a bunch of low level techs across each of the industries rather than greatly advanced technology from a single field. The best way to manage that is just by setting everything perfectly even and letting things run their natural course.

The same applies to combat. In the beginning you focus on tactics, how to defend each planet individually. Later in the game when you have enough technology to have planetary shields and good missile bases, you start to think about how and where to strategically expand your empire on a strategic level.

Such is how it should be, and thus the second meta-game is managing the shift away from micro toward macro management.

The Third Metagame
The third meta-game is the political landscape. Early in the game, you want to focus heavily on politics in order to stay in the game. The player tends to be barely holding on in the early stages of the game and politics can make that phase go by much more or less painfully.

Early in the game, the AI likes to make a lot of treaties. Indeed most games you will see huge AI alliances right at the beginning of the game that a player would find it very difficult to get into. Somehow the AI seems to start out with the relation of "harmony" with all the other AIs. Even Mrrshan and Alkari's often ally in the first few turns of the game. Later, though, these alliances splinter and the AIs begin fighting each other as the number of uninhabited worlds starts to shrink very quickly.

This brings us to the absolute most painful stage in the entire game.

That being the stage when the AIs realize that their options for expanding by colonization are vanishing quickly and that they need to start focusing on conquest as a means to expand their empire.

Almost every time that point comes in the game, at least one AI will declare war on the player. If the player engages the enemy on their own turf, that usually triggers an aid request to all of that AI's allies, which can result in a dogpile on the player. That could be quite a large setback.

My advice, just try to weather the storm to the greatest extent possible, beating back their attacks without doing too much offensively. Most of the AIs will be engaged with other AIs on many fronts and at this time military spending starts to be a real drain on AI resources. The AIs will blow up each other's worlds and waste many population units trying to invade each other's worlds.

The player doesn't have to get too involved in this low end free for all power struggle, though, and its often better if they dont.

The resources that would be spent on ships that will die in battle or become obsolete could instead go toward building more factories or researching more techs. Thus when the dust settles the player can be far ahead and the AIs will struggle in vain to keep up.

Following this plan, the player just needs to have a large enough army to defend its own bases. Missile bases are very good for this because they can be upgraded for minimal cost later in the game as missiles are developed, unlike ships which become useless very quickly and which have to be scrapped eventually for only a small amount of the original build price.

Indeed the greatest part of the defense of an individual planet should be in the form of missile bases. A few missile bases and a small fleet can quite easily beat a large enemy fleet in the early game. Sometimes the missile bases can do it completely alone, especially after the first Class Whatever Planetary Shield technologies get implemented on the planets.

Focus on making ships with a lot of staying power and reasonable weaponry. You want them to stay alive a long time in combat to give the missile bases more time to devastate the enemy before the planet starts getting hit with bombs and missiles.

But I digress, this is about the political landscape and this does play into it. Blowing up your enemy's ships does little to anger anyone and it does provide a reasonable diplomatic bonus to anyone who is at war with that enemy.

Generally, you want to try to setup all of the trade deals and non-aggression pacts you can at the start of the game so you don't get dog-piled by enemies at the critical stage I have been describing. You also want to play defensively in order to reduce the chances of more AIs jumping in to assist.

You also want to keep up the ability to trade as much as possible. Enemies who hate your guts tend not to want to trade with you, and if they do they are more likely to offer favorable deals than if they dislike you. The more AIs you remain on good terms with, the more you can milk the trading system for the maximum advantage.

Later in the game, the idea is that you become the dominant power in the game and you steer the course of everything that happens in the entire game from your position of strength.

Early in the game, you will ideally want to war with the absolute tiniest enemy race. Later in the game you will probably want to put the smack down on whoever happens to be the next highest person directly below you. Ideally, this would result in yourself being the #1 power and varying enemies constantly rotating through the #2 spot. Each time one gets there you peace whoever you are at war with and start hitting the new #2 instead. This helps you to cement your lead.

At that point, you can pretty much ignore galactic politics completely. You won't need to trade and you likely won't benefit too much from what the enemy has anyway. You won't really care about their trade deals because you can get a better benefit just by taking over one of their planets instead. You can also get their tech for free the same way, without having to trade away key core techs.

Later in the game, you will just want to go one click into espionage on each enemy and then not bother much with the races screen other than to check which techs the enemy has that you don't have. That can help you to choose which fields to try to steal techs from when you do steal them.

Thus the third meta-game involves going heavy into politics early and more or less quickly phasing politics completely out of your play.