I've crushed original MOO since day it was released on very hard level. Just got MOO2 from this site. I cannot play without being destroyed, as the TECH tree is not visible to me, so I cannot plan military advances the way I would like. I find the game manual all over the web... but every site wants me to download some unknown PDF file opener. For many reasons, I am leery.
Can anyone PLEASE tell me how/where to get a schematic flow chart breaking down the tech advances, similar to the original game?
As is, my ships, assuming they hit, might do 1 point damage every 4th try, while enemy destroy my ships with a single hit.

Which is making the game really suck, basically destroyed as soon as an enemy attacks.

Secondly, how in God's name do I prevent every race from stealing my tech?! It's not like the original, for sure.

TIA

Each of the 8 disciplines are always researchable and each of them is entirely linear - so there's nothing like a tech tree. If you want to know what goodies might be unlocked with future advances then click on the name of the discipline. Eg. 'Construction'. It will show a list of the upcoming stages and list the (usually) three advances you will get to pick from. If you want more info on a particular advance, then right click on it and it will display a blurb describing it.

-edit- Got so excited answering the first part of your post that I forgot about the rest. Sorry.

Scouts should avoid combat. They have the crappiest weapon and lousy computers etc. Combat in this game is just like combat in other many games. Your forces need to be more advanced and/or more numerous than your opponent. If your opponent has the edge here, then they will win. Also important is that the design you choose for your ships is one that will work in combat. For me, designing clever ships and trying them out in combat is one of the more fun aspects in this game.

Enemies always attacking early game... I believe the AIs know exactly how strong your fleet is and if they detect you are weak they will attack. This can be mitigated by diplomacy, to some degree. Also, some AIs have personalities that will keep them from doing this.

Build spies to discourage or prevent theft.

Thanks, Al. I wasted 3 hours of my life today watching Youtube videos. They had good intentions, just sucked at educating. Overkill stuff obvious to a 10 year old, not touching on the intricate. I've played MOO unknown 1,000's of times, so some is obvious, some is new and unfamiliar. I eventually 'figured out' that spies on the alien race 'task bar' worked as counter-espionage, the more the merrier.
I bought MOO the day it was released in... must have been 1992-3? As such, after trying about 8 MOO2 games now, I can always build the biggest, likely best production 'empire' in the game. But the game ALWAYS ends as soon as I am attacked. Fleet destroyed in the same turn the enemy then wipes out a Gaea planet with population in the 20's. Several fleets doing this, and destroy another planet every turn and I have no way to stop them.
And, quite likely I have the highest tech, yet am still destroyed. What's killing me is that I have not found out yet the intricate knowledge of what ships, what tech to design, to combat the enemy civilizations. Or even put up any type of defense! Under all this frustration... it looks like it may be a decent game.

Actually it's the spies that are lined up in the lower right part of the screen that do counter-espionage. The ones on the alien races bars are your attempt to spy against the aliens. If you select espionage then your guys will try to steal tech. If sabotage then they tend to blow stuff up. If successful. Hide lets them sleep there - dunno what the real purpose for this is since you could always put them to good use defending yourself.

Err... yes, that's what I actually meant, sorry if I was not clear. But I just had to quit another game. I absolutely cannot defend anything even with new designs. No matter what I do, some massive sh!t pulls in and wipes out my entire fleets, then kills all my planets. I must say that, and pissing off whoever the moderator is, I'm damned near ready to say 'fuck this game' and delete it forever.

There's kind of an exploity thing you can do that helps in some cases. If you choose a race with 'creative', then you will get a lot of trash techs that you can gift to your neighbors. Doing that can boost their opinion of you to max.

i haven't played MOO1 in ages, so i don't remember.

MOO2's tech tree kinda depends on your luck, for what tech shows up on the tree. Pick the Creative trait , to make sure all techs are researchable. but with an early rush "Warlord"-like build, research is not that important, esp if you choose to start with Advanced age.

If you share your turn0 savegame here, i can record a youtube vid for it, including ship-building, so you can replay the moves yourself.

The game manual comes with the game. Not sure where the installer puts it but it should be on your pc.

Designing ships and combat are more disparate between the games than it looks at first glance. Like how there are so many modifiers to the damage dealt in MoO2.

Not exactly sure what you mean? You (obviously) understand what you mean, while I don't. Perhaps a little more clarity, please? 'Fleshed' out words? But TY for the thought.

Now that's a nice tip, brother, thanks.
What I have discovered, is that as a human player, I'm playing the 'long' game, whereas CPU 'players' are not. I try to balance tech research and, as always, build the larger 'empire'. However, those CPU generated civilizations are pre-programmed to 'play' in differing ways. Those erratic, warrior types are predisposed to pursue early military applications, while bypassing 'obvious' decent tech needed to better improve their civilization advances. Example: they are chasing specific military apps quickly, whereas human may not. Thus, say after each of us has 20 advances, I may have only 2 or 3 military specific, while they have 9 or 10. As such, while the better overall 'empire', they can swoop in and destroy you with the obvious (military) tech advantage the game touts. So, unlike MOO, I have to spend more time in the early stages, and throughout, pursuing military apps over long term tech improvement such as environment (or whatever). Way?! I gotta find the manual, then, geez! "Designing ships and combat are more disparate between the games than it looks at first glance." Holy crap, you sure got that right.

Oh yeah. In psychological/philosophical terms it's the difference between being and becoming. But in many adversarial games the AIs are drawn to attack players without credible defenses. Been that way since Civ 2 as far as I remember, and probably earlier than that. Also, AIs usually have complete info on player's forces. Not sure if the AIs calculation takes tech into account. You need to build some ships if you want to have time to research, colonize and build.

AFAIK when you choose the "Creative" pick when you create you own race( or choose Psilon), that pick should allow you to choose any tech research for the current unresearched tier. you still can't see the entire tech tree like in a Civ game, but you can choose almost all techs to research. you can also click on the category name on the Reseach section(e.g. click on the "Construction" text) to view what other techs can be researched in later tiers of that category.

on the flipside if you chose "Uncreative", you can only see 1 tech per tier, and that's totally random.

Without either "Creative" or "Uncreative" pick , you see 3 choices per tier but depending on your luck the game might give you only 1 or 2 choices ,or even skip a whole tier to the next tier.

i think the strategywiki page explains the Creative/Uncreative pick better than me.

strategywiki.org/wiki/Master_of_Orion_II:_Battle_at_Antares/Race_design_options

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oh and the manual that comes with the GOG version is in a PDF file. most game manuals are on PDF thesedays?
i recommend the opensource SumatraPDF reader prog. but it's only for Windows. no Linux version.

www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader

works much faster than the official buggyassed Adobe Acrobat Reader prog.
damn auto-URL code keeps screwing up in this forum.