Can someone link me a good tutorial/beginner's guide? Preferably in non-video form, since those are too slow and people tend to drone about for way too long.

Thanks

Just google "master of orion 2 strategy" and you will get plenty of hits. There used to be a really good blog with lots of beginner and advanced tips, but I can't find it (the blog has an olive-green colored background iirc).

I would start with one of the pre-made Races rather than making a custom race until you know what you are doing. Play on Average difficulty / huge galaxy / average age / average tech level / 8 players. The Psilons are probably the easiest to learn with since they research all techs automatically. But a big part of the game are the painful choices you need to make in your tech tree, and trading/stealing techs from other factions. So I would try the Humans once you have mastered the Psilons. The Klackons and the various feudal races are probably the hardest races to get the hang of, since their research is gimped and you need to know what you are doing not to fall too far behind everyone else. But they make a fun challenge once you do.

Send your scouts out to explore the nearest stars. For most races, the very first thing you need to do is build a Freighter Fleet before you colonize any planets, since it is likely that the new colony will need to have food shipped in from your homeworld. After that, have your homeworld start building Colony Bases to settle all the planets in your home system, and send your starting Colony Ship out to settle a new planet in the most appealing star system your scouts have discovered.

Techs you want to research ASAP pretty much every game:
- Research Lab
- Automated Factory (Advanced Engineering 2nd tier tech)
- Hydroponic Farm or Biosphere (Farm makes things easier in the early game, but Sphere is better in the long term imo)
- Deuterium Fuel Cells (for increased range to explore)
You want to get one of each built on pretty much every new planet asap. After those, the other techs/buildings are pretty much situational depending on how you want to play.

If you have any specific question that needs clearing up, feel free to post here.

Your first game ever should probably be a 2 player (ie. you and 1 AI) game in a minimum size galaxy, on the lowest difficulty, and with Antarran Attacks OFF. You should use this to muck around with the UI, to get a grip on how you can navigate around it and what information is available. With the game settings, it'll be unlikely that you get screwed over by failing to respond properly to a random event or that whatever race you face will stomp you into the ground while you're trying to figure out how to fight it.

Taking the Psilons for a spin in that game is a decent idea, since you don't have to pick between a ton of useful techs you don't quite understand the importance of yet.

The reason I'm saying you should keep Antaran Attacks off is that their tech can be hard to handle for a newbie in the early game. A single frigate of theirs can handle a decent fleet using early tech stuff and if they win a battle they'll bombard the planet.

Once you feel comfortable with the UI, including diplomacy, spying and combat, you should probably make a new game with more players, larger galaxy and up the difficulty.

http://masteroforion2.blogspot.com/2005/03/master-of-orion-ii-strategy-guide.html
http://www.gog.com/forum/master_of_orion_series/master_of_orion_2_multiplayer
and its much harder to provide a video, oppositely, as there are literally none available sadly

Yes, that first link is the olive-colored one I was talking about. Thanks DarzaR.

most weird stuff is what its 4-th link in results after you google the words you had suggested. its pretty obsolete data, but still usable, also strategywiki have some not so bad data for beginner too [url=http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II:_Battle_at_Antares]http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II:_Battle_at_Antares[/url]

Thanks everyone

Honestly, just dive in.

Play as the different races to learn what the different traits do, then start experimenting with custom races. Gradually up the difficulty level. The game really opens up when you can win in a variety of ways on "normal" difficulty, and then you move into the harder difficulties to try to hone your favorite strategy.