Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
| Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares | |
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Official North American cover
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| Developer(s) | Simtex |
| Publisher(s) | MicroProse (PC), MacSoft (Mac) |
| Series | Master of Orion 
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| Platform(s) | MS-DOS, Windows 95, Apple Macintosh |
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| Genre(s) | 4X, turn-based strategy |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Review score | |
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| Publication | Score |
| Macworld |   |
Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares (MOO2) is a 4X turn-based strategy game set in space, designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Simtex, who developed its predecessor Master of Orion. The PC version was published by MicroProse in 1996, and the Apple Macintosh version a year later by MacSoft, in partnership with MicroProse. Despite its age, the game has retained a large fan base, and is still played online.
Master of Orion II won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1996, and was well received by critics, although reviewers differed about which aspects they liked and disliked. It is still used as a yardstick in reviews of more recent space-based 4X games.
Long before the time in which the game is set, two extremely powerful races, the Orions and the Antarans, fought a war that devastated most of the galaxy. The victorious Orions, rather than exterminate the Antarans, imprisoned them in a pocket dimension before departing the galaxy, leaving behind a very powerful robotic warship, the Guardian, to protect their homeworld.
Some time after the game starts, the Antarans, having broken out of their prison dimension, begin to send increasingly powerful fleets against the players' colonies, to destroy them rather than to invade. The only way they can be stopped is to carry the battle to their home universe through a Dimensional Portal.
Master of Orion II is more complex than the original game, providing more gameplay options for the player. Three new alien races have been added, and there is the option for players to design and add their own race. Instead of the one planet per star system found in the original there are now multiplanet star systems that can be shared with opponents. Spaceships can now engage in combat, marines can board enemy ships, and planets can be blown up. Multiplayer mode includes one-on-one matches and games with up to eight players.
Victory can be gained by military or diplomatic means. Major elements of the game's strategy include the design of custom races and the need to balance the requirements for food, production, cash and research. The user interface provides a central screen for most economic management and other screens that control research, diplomacy, ship movement, combat and warship design.
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