File:Moo2 RacesMenu.png

Master of Orion II's Races Menu controls diplomacy and espionage:
 * The bottom right box is the "control panel" for this screen.
 * The little icons across the top of the "control panel" are our Spies. Newly made Spies appear here.
 * The "Bonuses" section states our empire's effectiveness in offensive spying ("Spy: 35%" means our Spies are 35% above the base level in spying and sabotage missions against other empires) and defensive spying aka counter-intelligence ("Agent: 45%", means they are 45% above the base level in counter-intelligence).
 * If you click the "Report" button (hotkey R), the screen asks you to click the empire on which you want a report.
 * If you click the "Audience" button (hotkey A), the screen asks you to click the empire on which you want a diplomatic (or undiplomatic) conversation via the Audience screen. If you used the normal negative pick "Repulsive" in your race design, the Audience screen is virtually useless - all you can so is declare war or surrender. Non-Repulsive empires can use use it trade techs, make or break treaties (Trade, Research, Non-aggression, Alliance), make demands (extortion) and make gifts ("Tribute"; but you may use it voluntarily in order to win friends and influence people, e.g. to attract votes in Galactic Council meetings and get elected as the supreme ruler).
 * If you click the "Declare War" button (hotkey D), the screen asks you to click the empire on which you want to declare war.
 * If you click the "Ignore" button (hotkey I), the screen asks you to click the empire which you want to ingore. You will not receive messages from this empire (via the Audience screen) until you remove the "ignore" setting by using the "Ignore" button again.
 * The other main boxes represent other empires with which we've made contact:
 * The vertical slider beside each image shows their attitude to your empire (higher and greener is good), and mousing over the slider gives a text description of their attitude. The 2nd empire shown (emperor Igneus Maximus) is "Wary" -it suspects that our intentions are hostile.
 * We could deploy Spies against this empire:
 * Drag some Spies to the box above the words "Espionage", "Sabotage" and "Hide"
 * Click one of the words "Espionage", "Sabotage" and "Hide" to give them orders:
 * "Espionage" makes them try to steal techs.
 * "Sabotage" makes them try to destroy the other empire's building and ships.
 * "Hide" reduces their risk of being found and killed, but at the cost of doing nothing. In standard MOO II this is useless: if you don't want to do espionage or sabotage, bring you Spies back home to defend your empire against other empires' Spies. But in some mods the "Report" option does not work unless you have at least 1 Spy in the other empire, and "Hide" is useful in that situation.