Master of Orion/Tips and Tricks

Getting the most out of Poor planets
Poor and Ultra-Poor planets are usually low on the colonization priority list. But you'll usually colonize them eventually - often one is a good stepping stone to other planets, and you don't want your enemies using one as a stepping stone to invade the centre of your empire.

We know that Industry, Defense and Ship Building are all impeded on these planets. But Ecology and Research are not, and this is useful. Stop looking at the Poor planets as a place to build factories. Look at them instead as a place to build people!

Consider: initially it takes 10 BC to build a factory, which gives 1 production of which half is taken up cleaning up its own pollution. Initially it takes 20 BC to build a colonist, which gives 0.5BC production and no pollution. Same yield, different cost. But on a poor planet the cost is the same - and the colonists can be exported!

For Klackons, or Ultra-poor planets, this works out even better.

If you've colonised a poor or ultra-poor planet as a stepping stone to other planets, set it to 100% Eco initially. (And ship a few colonists out there - poor planets are often quite large!) By the time you get colonies planted beyond the poor planet, it should have a decent number of colonists already. Send half of them off to the new colonies. This is useful twice over in the early game where your colonists only move at speed 1 - the poor planet can be used both to leap-frog colonists to the outer planets, and when they're moving people of their own breeding, those people don't have to go so far.

If they're full of people and have nowhere to send them, you may as well build factories. If they manage to build all their factories they will do a very nice job generating research for you. But otherwise - mercenaries! These are the planets you want to send soldiers from - or to send replacement colonists to planets where you have already sent off half the population as soldiers.

The biggest weakness of these planets is usually defense; they often won't have missile bases or shields of their own. Even this can have a silver lining, depending whether the enemy sends a small or a large invasion fleet after them. Sometimes it can be better to leave a small invasion fleet hovering over your planet, while you breed people on the ground as fast as you can; let the Silicoids or Meklars tire themselves out sending wave after wave of attackers, while your other planets continue to advance the empire.

Dealing with invasion
Oh no, there's an enemy fleet over one of my colonies! What now?

That depends whether you can effectively chase the fleet off or not. If you have enough of a fleet nearby, and you can get them there before enemy troops land, without compromise your other goals, that's the obvious solution. Blow up or chase off the enemy fleet and then shoot all their invaders out of the air - great!

But what if you can't?

Sometimes you have a monster fleet over your colony. Your goal may have to be to delay that fleet at your colony for as long as possible. In that case, do NOT build factories; build people. (If you're totally full of people, and you don't think you can effectively build any shields/missile bases, then do research! Building factories only increases the chance that the enemy will capture techs from you.)  Re-taking the colony afterwards is often quite feasible, because monster fleets often go back for a visit to their home planets before being sent out again. So when they uncover your planet - pounce!

(It's quite Ok to bicker over one planet for 10-20 turns, so long as you can keep most of your empire at economic investment and research, and if either you are profiting by stealing useful techs off them, or they are NOT profiting by stealing techs from you because there are no factories left.)

If you have a little enemy fleet to deal with, it may not take much to chase it off. In which case, see if your planet can build a missile base before the invaders land (or after, if there aren't too many enemy soldiers coming.) (You may also want to ship in extra population from nearby colonies.  Try to do this in one or two big parcels, because each parcel gets attacked separately by the enemy fleet.  You might backfill the source planet using small numbers of colonists from other planets.)

One base may be enough to chase off even a monster fleet, if it is under a planetary shield, and the enemy didn't pack bombs. The AI won't stick around waiting if it can't do anything to damage you - and Class III shields plus a Class 5 planetary shield is 8 points of shielding. Given that beam weapons do half damage in atmosphere, Fusion Beams (4-16) won't be able to scratch it. Fusion Bombs, however, are a problem.

To improve the effectiveness of this strategy against fleets that can threaten a single missile base, first get one missile base MOSTLY built - in the early game a colony's full production may not be up to two missile bases in a turn. Then, in the next turn, dump everything the planet has into missile base production, and go into the Planets screen and transfer money from the planetary reserve to equal the planet's normal production. Usually this will get you 2 or 3 missile bases instead of 1, sometimes up to 5, which can easily make the difference between victory and defeat. (If you can get several missile bases in a turn, simply double your production using the planetary reserve and max out defense.)

If the enemy fleet is packing ONLY bombs, then you need a ship, any ship. The bombers will unload ten rounds of bombs on your planet and then leave - if you still have a ship in combat. A sufficiently serious fleet of bombers may destroy the colony before they vacate, but at least they've left; in this case send in a colony ship, but do not land it until after the enemy soldiers have perished from the lack of food & shelter. This also works if the enemy ships have only lasers and gatling lasers, damage 1-4, and you have class IV shields on your ship.

There's another time when you set the planet to breeding people instead of defenses. If the enemy race is weaker than you, particularly if you have a good set of ground combat techs, and the bombs aren't falling too painfully, let them wear themselves out sending wave after wave of attackers, while your other planets get on with the research. This is a good option for poor planets, and works especially well against Silicoids. The AI will only send one group of attackers at a time, and will wait until it lands before sending another; if they are still speed 1 you may have a lot of time to recover your population between attacks.

Eventually the AI may ask for peace. (Or you might ask them, successfully.) In the 5 turns following a peace treaty, the AI will withdraw their fleets from *any* confrontation with your forces. The least little scout will cause the monster fleet to withdraw from your colony. And you need that least little scout, because otherwise they'll dispatch more troops to invade your colony. Fights will still occur over their colonies. Troops, both yours and theirs, will still land. You may yet lose a colony to them - but if your troops, still in the air when the treaty is signed, subsequently land on their planets, they will probably declare war all over again.

Yes, the AI is hypocritical about invasions. Their scout over your colony will usually be followed by troop transports - even if you have a Non-Aggression Pact - and you can't declare war on them. The diplomacy interface doesn't allow it. But if you retaliate - War! Best is usually to avoid the issue by not letting their fleet orbit your colony at all.

Why Hostile planets are great
In the expansion phase of the game, you'll research 2 or 3 Planetary Technologies that allow you to colonize hostile planets. Around half the planets in the galaxy are hostile - being able to colonize them before the other races gives you several advantages.

One, these planets are far more likely to be Rich. Rich planets are the backbone of your ship-building in the later game. (Once you have a few you rarely need to build ships anywhere else!) They're also much faster to build all their factories and defenses and become productive contributors to your empire.

Two, they're often useful stepping stones to other planets. Particularly if you're trying to extend your reach around another civilization.

Three, they're worthwhile members of your empire in their own right. Maybe another race or two has outcolonized you in the early game - but you can make up the gap with a second surge of expansion as you plant colonies on a bunch of more hostile planets.

And later on you can make them into much more populous members of your empire. That size 10 Toxic planet won't hold many people now - but add Improved Terraforming +40 and it's doing very nicely; if the game runs so long that you get Complete Terraforming, it'll be size 130. Size 60 and 70 is quite large as a starting size for a hostile planet and those are worth more effort.

(The reduced population growth on these planets is not much of a problem if you send a good sized group of transports to add to colonist numbers; usually half to 2/3 of the planet's starting size, less in the early game and more in the late game.)

Now of course these planets get bigger still when you research Atmospheric Terraforming, which may be offered shortly after Control Radiated Environment. But - frankly, it's often better to hold off on Atmospheric Terraforming, and research a few other techs first! Why?

Firstly, if you have claimed hostile planets next to or even within an AI empire, that hostile environment provides a measure of protection. The AI can't invade if it hasn't researched good enough environmental control, and it only rarely bombs the place to pieces. So your planet gets to sit there building up its economy and defenses without needing a fleet hovering protectively over it. This is a gamble - you risk losing the planet to them if they do have or get the required tech - (less of one if you do a little spying) but it often pays off quite well, and not having to build a fleet early means you can build a better fleet later.

(Side note: The Silicoids often seem to rely on this. You may be able to scout many of their planets in the early game, and once you have the required tech yourselves, you may be able to take several planets off them without even building warships!  This works best if you have also researched faster ship movement, and one or more ground combat advantages, and if you have populous planets not too many turns away.)

Secondly, Atmospheric Terraforming is a fixed cost, and it's attempted before any other form of Terraforming. Size 10 planets struggle with it. Much easier if they can upgrade themselves with Improved Terraforming +30 or +40, and the factories to match, and then do Atmospheric Terraforming.

The planetary size increase you get from Atmospheric Terraforming is partly random, and appears to depend on the original planet size. It kicks in very early though - before you have paid the full cost. Your planet also becomes 'Minimal, Hostile' as soon as you have put anything into Atmospheric Terraforming.

If you have tiny little hostile planets in early development and you have Atmospheric Terraforming being researched, then use the Planetary Reserve to speed up the development of the tiny planets. It won't cost much and it will help them a lot. When the bulb is nearly full (or you're in % chance to break through) set the tiny planets to maximum terraforming. When the tech does arrive, set them to maximum industry. Then they'll make rather lighter work of the transformation.