Master of Orion/Best races

There are three races that many players consider to be easily among the best possible races to play almost without exception from nearly everyone with significant experience in the Master of Orion game.

The Psilon race is unquestionably the absolute most powerful race in the game. Anyone who plays this game for any length of time will quickly find them to be one of the top two easiest races to consistently win with and one of the top two races that is consistently the hardest to defeat as an opponent.

The Klackon race is almost undoubtedly the second most easy to win with race and the second most difficult opponent to beat.

The Humans are, arguably, the game's third best race almost entirely on the strength of their racial relations. They have no production advantages like the Klackons and nowhere near the technological advantages of the Klackons, but every race gravitates toward being on good terms with the humans and because of this there is no easier race with which to win elections than the Humans. When playing this race it is very very easy to get voted as galactic ruler, ending the game in the "win" column right away in many cases.

Each of these three races has a combination of things about them that puts them far ahead of the average and worst races.

For the Psilons, their advantage is purely in technology. If left alone for even a small length of time, or if they can manage to hold the game, their racial advantage of 75% extra research points in every category will tend to lead to them getting a huge and increasing lead on all of the other races, one that is very very difficult to come back from as any other race. If you have a Psilon opponent you usually begin hoping right away that there are tons of enemy races right next to the Psilon home world and those races are able to keep the Psilons from getting more than a couple worlds here and there.

Equally as likely, though, is the situation where the Psilons control half the galaxy and the other half is split up between everyone else.

The Klackons' racial advantage is that they double the production of their manual labor. This may not sound like much, but this is the only race with a production bonus that is enduring. Every other race with a production bonus has their bonus cut short in either the beginning of the game or at the end of it, but the Klackon advantage is present in both stages, and it is what enables this race to take its place as the number two most powerful race.

The Klackon advantage is keenly felt at the very outset of the game. On most difficulties, the player begins with 50 population units and 30 factories, for a total of 55 BC in production (50 x 0.5 + 30 x 1). The Klackons get 80 production at the outset (50 x 1 + 30 x 1). This gives them a production advantage of nearly 50% compared to all the other races starting from turn 1. This race is the absolute best at getting an early lead and then running with it for the entire game.

Due to the nature of the beginning of the game, this advantage is acutely felt. Whereas all the other civilizations are looking at well north of 20% fleet maintenance on turn 1 due to the huge cost of maintenance on the colony ship, the Klackons only pay 14.6% maintenance on turn 1 on most difficulty settings.

About 40% or so of most races' production will be wasted on reduction of pollution on the first turn no matter what race you play (except Silicoids). Combine that with the maintenance burden and you see most races are paying about 65% of their total production into thin air on turn 1. The Klackons, however, are only throwing away about 55%. That leaves 35% for the other races (non Silicoid) and 45% for the Klackons. That is an advantage to the Klackon of nearly 33% in excess production usable beginning on turn 1.

As a Klackon player, you want to take this advantage and run with it the entire game. It is akin to being born to really really rich parents. The fact that this is so easy to do as a player and that it is so easy for the computer to do most of the time as the AI seals the deal for this race's number 2 slot.

The Humans, as mentioned previously, have a strong racial advantage that every single race gravitates toward "Relaxed" relations with them. This makes it very easy to sign "non-agression pacts" with nearly everyone and to really only have to fight who you want to fight at any given time. Alliances are also usually yours for the taking if you happen to want them.

The humans also get two other significant advantages. Firstly, they profit immensely from trade deals. Most races start out at a 30% loss on trade treaties immediately when the deal is struck. This trade hole decreases by 5% per year till you break even on trading after 6 years, and then raises by 5% per year for 20 years till the race hits 100% of the agreed upon trade value. The humans, however, shift this curve by +25%. They only start out in the hole by 5%, they break even on turn 2, and they increase for the next 25 turns, ending at 125% of the agreed upon trade value.

The fact that they can get these trade deals so easily and keep them so easily with nearly every race allows them to generate huge additional cash that gets poured evenly across their planets to generate excess production. This is akin to putting a Turbocharger on your car. It just plain puts out more power pound for pound than before. The Humans are often going to be running at nearly double production on all their worlds for most of the entire game due to these advantages and that is a VERY strong advantage.

The Humans also get another noteworthy advantage. They receive +40% research points when researching Force Field technologies and they get more technologies in that area than the other races, on average. This makes them more likely to have the critical Class V Planetary Shields in their tech tree than the other races, and this is an unquestionable advantage. If having or not having this single tech can make or break games, you want to be the absolute most likely to have it, and Humans are the race that applies to.

Humans also get a 20% bonus to both the Propulsion and Planetology tech fields. These are both very important at the outset of the game for getting a good start. They help to make sure your ships can go the distance to the habitable worlds, get there fast enough, and to be able to colonize them when you get there. Only the Psilons are better situated overall when trying to colonize the many hostile planet environments out there. Being the first one to access these (assuming the Psilons are not present in the game) is a key advantage that can last through the entire game.