First of all, this is my first /real/ FAQ, meaning I made it from scratch
I know my ASCII art is bad, and I'm not that good at this game, so I intend
for this FAQ to heavily be based on contributions to Stealthfury@aol.com
I just made this FAQ because I was bored, and I noticed that there were
NO FAQ's for IG2. Most of the tips/ideas/strategies I give in this version
(1.0) are mostly common sense. Again, I would greatly appreciate anything
you have on this great game. Put in the subject line "I, oh powerful one,
humbly gravel and give this advice to you."
Always remember that you cannot send reinforcements in
ONCE A BATTLE HAS STARTED. Moving you fleet is almost useless until you
are only faced with fighters. (small dots that look like gnats) Concentrate
all fire onto one ship, until it dies. This is much more effective than
letting each ship decide on which ship to attack, because once you have
killed a ship, you have less stuff flying at you. I am still debating
on whichever is better: many small ships or a few large ships. See, if
you have lots of little ships, when one dies, you still have the majority
of your firepower intact, plus, your enemies might try the dumb attack
(spreading out fire at all ships, instead of one at a time). However,
if you have a large ship (battleship) you can fit better shields and
it has a much better chance of surviving, plus they can hold groovier
waepons and can move much faster. If you are chasing a fleet that is
a bit faster than you, you might be able to catch up to it, especially
if it stays in your planet's radar range. This is possible because they
often zigzag instead of a straight line, more often than not picking up
fighters in the way. Don't retreat, the only time you would was if you
had lots of ships left, and then why would you want to retreat? Combat
Cloaking is a good accesory to have if you are up against a big ol' enemy
with like an anti-matter ray or something. Don't use your cloaked ships
until they fire their massive weapon on some stupid ship, then attack all
at once. If you see a small fleet appoaching a highly defended planet,
look for any "free" planets, (ones which have no defences or very little,
like 1 rocket fort late game) because chances are the small fleet is
going to make a detour around your planet and take the undefended one.
Designing:
Unless it's not possible, always make sure that your ships have shields
instead of torpedos. As much as you want them, save them for destroyers
and Space Bases. A shield is extremely useful because unlike health, they
are completely recharged when the battle is over, making your ships ready
for long missions. Ship manipulators are good, but stay away from anti-matter
rays. By the time it charges, you could have done more damage with the gun
you could have put in there.
II.B Tanks/Ground defenses
Battle:
Don't even bother trying to win if they have a fort and you
only have a wheeled tank. A few tracked tanks have a chance with a rocket
fort, and maybe a machine gun fort. AG tanks can take care of rockets by
themselves, a few will take a machine gun fort with moderate damage, and a
lot might be able to take a laser fortress, depending on the weapon. Now,
with MT's, they can obliterate rockets, kill machine guns with ease, take
down a laser, and a lot (equipped with a moderate weapon) can take a heavy.
Now, I will discuss Tank weapons because, unlike ship weapons, they are
different and more varied. A good setup for about 10-20 tanks is to make them
all MT's equipped with Ion turret, laser turret, range extension, and either
missile or radar jammer. If you have more than 20 tanks, try this: Make a few
tracked, equipped with anyhting as long as you make it radar jammer. Then,
make the rest MT's, with laser strike, laser pod, range extension, and missile
jammer. Drop all your tanks in the farthest place from the enemy tanks/buildings.
Now, all you gotta do is hit the button next to retreat, and select a target.
I doubt the enemy will find you, because you have on radar jammer, and since
you have lots of MT's, you get 20+ free shots from your friends in space.
A warning, though, the lasers are pretty inaccurate, and I guarantee you will
destroy buidings other than the target, which means you have to replace them,
out of your own pocket. Shouldn't be too much of a biggie, because your tanks
didn't even get shot at! If you do get a caravan of tanks coming toward you,
try aiming ahead because it take a few seconds to hit. Anyways, you also have
that laser turret allowing you to mow down the enemy! A word about Air Strike:
This is a pod much similar to Laser Strike in that it is a "remote fire tool."
(Able to fire from any distance at any target.) However, instead of having a
few powerful lasers aiming in a somewhat small area, this sends signals to
fighters in space (I never tried without a fighter in a fleet, though) to
come down (remeber the Solarian intro video?) and swoop across the whole
screen (the only part you can see) and literally rain down small lasers
everywhere. Don't even bother to aim, it's too inaccurate. The only good
I can see from this is when you have a bunch of tanks scattered everywhere.
This is as powerful (as far as I can tell) as Laser Strike, but each individual
laser is about enough to kill half tracked tank. One last thing I will
hit on is that it is very advantaegeous to have at least 20 tanks. This is
because after 20 I think is when they group up. This means that you may have
like 3 tanks when you only see one! This is good because usually, when you
attack a fort, first you have one, then three, then five... Making the first
one have a greater chance of getting killed. Now, what would happen if the
first tank was really a barrage of three? The fort gets killed much quicker,
and keeps your tanks in danger shorter.
II.C Research
(yet to be completed)
II.D Colony
If you have a planet with 3 Bld research buildings, 3 Tank
research buildings, and 3 Ship research buildings, and you are only researching
a tank tech, and the population is short, TURN OFF THE OTHER 6 BUILDINGS!!!!
Same goes for factories. Build lots of military establishments, but turn
them off. Turn them on if ANY fleet other than yours comes near your planet,
even if it is an ally. Put in lots of planetary guns and planet shields.
FREE TECHS/BUILDINGS!: Take a stupid colony (barren, barely enough to support
a low population) and then turn off all the buildings, and make the tax oppressive.
Have an extremely small fleet nearby. Save your game right now. Turn off Autobuild.
Watch as your colony revolts, and when it does, check to see who to. If it goes
to any nation you are not at war with, load back up your old game. Keep doing
this until your planet revolts to pirates or a warring nation. (preferably pirates)
Now, lauch a satillite over to your planet and wait until it builds a fort of any
kind. When it does this, send over the small fleet you have to capture the planet
for free. Hopefully you got plans to a new kind of building, but chances are
that you got double the buildings, and you didn't even pay for them! I'm not sure if
this works on planets with bases because the pirates/enemy nation might
enable the base, but if it is technically behind you, it will get plans for
a new base, power plant, etc.
Kickuindanuts says:
I think it is better to build a lot of Planetary Guns and Space bases. I have
built at least 5 planetary gun 5's and 5 Adv Space Bases fully upgraded. Some
Laser fortresses seem to work [butt] well if they (enemy) get past (your defences).
Not much here. Bloodthirsty, warlike, self-sacrificing. (and no,
they are not humans) Commanded by a dude called a 'god emperor'. You are an
Imperator, who basically does what the god emporor tells him to do. Made for
the easy game, because they are made for the "easy" way to beat the game, kill
everyone.
III.B Pros/Cons
Pro: Player doesn't have to deal with diplomacy, spying, or trade.
Con: Player can't make alliances, steal, or buy stuff.
Pro: Player cannot be spied upon.
Con: They are ugly.
Pro: Maybe they kill that way.
Con: Can't use the stuff more advanced races can.
Pro: But they make warships cheaper.
Con: They are bent on taking over the galaxy.
Pro: They are bent on taking over the galaxy.
III.C Strats
Common sense: Make lots of warships and send wave after wave of men until
you win. Do whatever the god emperor does or he'll get real mad (don't know how
mad, never tried)
III.D Goodies
You get to see a terraformer toast a planet.
They have psychics (called 'seers') that may be able to give the positions
of enemy units for a while.
Every once in a while you are forced to sacrifice a percentage of your
population to the god emporor.
Ok, I'm gonna try to make sense of the opening movie. The beginning
opens up with some bad dudes trying to start a civil war. Then, it moves to a guy,
I think he's a normal human, who talks about humans evolving or something and why
the 'tears' were stolen from us, then he goes into cryo sleep. Then, you come into
power of the 'evolved' humans, the Solarians, and hope that this dude, who founded
the "Brotherhood of Tears" doesn't come back again. Somthing like that...
This is for the intermediate game, and this one actually has a storyline.
IV.B Pros/Cons
Pro: They actually have a storyline
Con: Hope that you play through the storyline before you conquered the galaxy
Pro: You can use diplomacy, spying, and trade
Con: You can be spied upon
Pro: Research goes faster and cheaper
Con: Average in all other areas
Pro: The guy has neat hair
Con: The guy never smiles
IV.C Strats
(yet to be completed)
IV.D Goodies
You see a picture of a guy with neat hair.
You may find a 'Tear'. (hint hint)
-Shinari-
(I once had a Toulen spy named Shinarri)
V.A Backround
Merchants, diplomats, spies. Don't trust these guys, they have double the
spying success rate. Alias: "Backstabbers." As you can see from the movie, the
Pirate leader needs an escort, claiming that his cargo is not too valuable. The
Shinari turn on the vessel mid-flight and kill the pirate ship, believing that
the cargo was more valuable than what the Pirate told the Shinari.
V.B Pros/Cons
Pro: Double Spying success rate
Con: Less trusted in Multiplayer
Pro: Better chance of success in Diplomacy (getting what you want)
Con: Military is less powerful
Pro: You are approached more by mechants with info/technologies
Con: You have more of a chance to be gipped.
Pro: You get double the money on trade.
Con: No Mezongun
Pro: You can use manipulators (tank, ship), and I believe that you can
buy ships (Trade screen) with Mezonguns.
V.C Strats
As the manual says, use the distrust between nations to your advantage.
Spy like heck, lie about other nations, of course while foming alliances.
Be backstabbing. Use manipulators, they literally let you control a ship.
What you do is have all your ships without manipulators target the weakest
ships, and have the ones that do target the strongest enemy ships. This
way you can make up for the Shinari's weak military power by controlling
enemy ships! If a ship is manipulated, it will have a green halo around it.
Call off all attacks on it unless it's the last ship left. Now, unless you
need it to fight, move the controlling ship far away. You can instruct the
enemy ship just like your own! The same tactics apply to tanks, however since
tanks are so frail I would move the controlling tank far away from battle,
because if it is destroyed you lose control of the enemy tank/ship.
V.D Goodies
Same Terraforming movie as Kra'Hen (you gotta see it).
You can spy better.
You look like a ram.
These are for cheap people who don't want to risk their money in investing
possibly false technologies given to you by merchants.
Skip this section if you enjoy taking risks.
(note: All of these were taken unless otherwise noted as "I'm interested" and/or
"I agree." If you get different results when choosing other answers please e-mail me)
1. "Alien Artifacts on planets"
Case: Merchant approaches you with coords to strange, alien artifacts
on a planet.
I believe that half of these are false. If there is something there,
you usually get a technology that you could have already researched (IE:
you chose to research corvette over bar, then you might get bar.)
However, unless you have a large empire (3/4 the galaxy) this planet is
usually far off. This allows you to send an armed colonization party over there
to springboard your planet and race contact, as well as provide you with
a "safe place" to hide so noone can hopefully find you, or at least a planet
to give to a race for trade if nothing else.
I would consider it a deal.
2. "Hypergun"
Case: Merchant approches you with plans for a highly powerful weapon.
Takes all the energy of a planet to fire on shot, even so, inaccurate.
Unusable.
3. "Tenori Drive"
Case: Merchant approaches you with plans for a drive to literally move planets.
So instable, that, as your scientist puts it: "It's like asking the whole
population to sit on a large nuclear bomb."
Unusable.
4. "Planet with strange crystal"
Case: Merchant approaches you with coordinates to a planet (mine had a dense
asteroid field) that hides a 'strange crystal.'
It's worth all the money you have.
My 'strange crystal' was a Tear. If you have a dense asteroid field around it:
Send in 5 fighters to the area. You might want to have a ship with a hyperdrive
go with them, just to speed up the flight. When you arrive, answer like this:
Only fighters. 5 fighters. (even though if you said "all" only 5 would go)
Imagine Civ2, Comand & Conquer, Homeworld, Warzone 2100, Chess, and Simcity,
all watered down and put into one game, with a random storyline, and neat
cinematics. You have IG2.
In depth:
Before I got his game I was (and still am) a big supporter of the extremely hard
but fun and well done Homeworld. Knowing this, a friend told me that this game was
"Homeworld with politics." Although still a great game, this game is almost
completely contradictory to this statement. The space battles are pitiful. :)
This game is most like Civilization 2. Because this game was four years in
the making, a bit of it (main starmap) has old-school sprites, and it runs in
640x480. There is a setup that will let you run it in higher resolutions, but
it still looks exactly the same. Most of the game is done well, though, and
the CG movies are excellent. I think that since it deals with raw data more
than the fancy 3D graphics and 3D plane of Homeworld (if only IG2's main map was in
3D...) that the only slowdown I experience is every 2 years (autosave) and when
I do real well (I have too many fleets/planets). The neat thing is that I have
a 350mhz computer, and a really bad 3D card, yet I can still run it fine with High
graphics effects. The ground battles are of the C&C type, and not as in-depth as
C&C, but since you can change the view and the graphics are really nice colony-wise,
this part of the game is eerily Warzone 2100-like. You can move the view around,
tilting, slanting, and zooming in. The space battles have almost no tactics, just
"Which ship should I kill first?" I think that the worst part of the game is the
space battles, but oh well. GET THIS GAME NOW! Wait, you are reading this FAQ...
You must have this game...
The holder of the e-mail address Stealthfury@aol.com will henceforth be referred to
as "Mike."
This document (Henceforth known as "File") may not be sold, in any way, for any thing,
to any one or many, unless otherwise specified by Mike. This File may be reproduced
electronically for home use, and on paper or any other medium for home use only. It may not be
used for any use in any commercial publication that is sold or otherwise makes any kind of profit,
electronic or by any other medium. This File may be not be used on or by any non-profit or otherwise
"free" publication, excluding any freely accessed "website", and only then if the webmaster
sends the URL of the website to Mike. However, any copy, any distribution,
any part, or any other form of this File must contain all of the text under the heading "Legal
Stuff". This File may not be modified and shown to the public, in any way, unless given approval
by Mike first. This File may not be copied without the section entitled "Legal Stuff".
Certain rules may be deemed null and void to any specific party that Mike
deems appropriate. Copyright Mike, 2000 All trademarks are used without permission.
Someone (Kickuindanuts@yahoo.com) has finally sent in a contribution. I
would like to thank him for this, so, thanks! Added info about Air Strike
pod for tanks.
.999 9/26/00 -Current/Available at GameFAQs.com-
Still no suggestions, rewrote some stuff on Shinari, added strats for colonies
and space defence. Rewrote spoiler section a bit. Rewrote the FAQ so peeps don't
know my real name. Next revision will be ".9999" unless sufficient people send in
contributions.
.99O ?/??/00 -Soon to be Available at Stealthfury@aol.com-
A projected original .99, I know some modifications I accidentally made, so
I can hopfully reconstruct a somewhat accurate .99, but it won't be perfect.
.99M 9/25/00 -Available (modified version of .99) at Stealthfury@aol.com-
Slightly rewritten from original version (.99) While writing .999, accidentally
was saved as .99, permanently deleting the "untouched" version of .99. The accidental
modifications were realized after being saved mid-modification, leaving a choppy FAQ.
The modifications over .9 can be read in ".99"
.99 -Lost forever-
No Suggestions, Added minor Shinari stuff, Added spoiler section.
Added a few strats. Never published.
.9M 9/26/00 -Available at Stealthfury@aol.com-
Simply rewrote Legal section of FAQ. No other modifications made to ".9"
.9 9/23/00 -Original FAQ, Stored but not Available at Stealthfury@aol.com-
Decided to be released as .9 because this was mainly a "beta FAQ," literally
half-finished, and I wanted the "1" FAQ to be released with USER CONTRIBUTIONS!
