Blitzing in moo2 is often very successful and preys upon an opponent’s unpreparedness. Arriving at the opponent’s home world with a ‘cardboard battleship’ is great fun. People who think that expansion is the only way to win at moo2 have never blitzed with success. For these people we will call blitzing ‘alternate expansion’ as it truly does expand your empire in a hurry if successful. There are many forms of blitzing to choose from all with strengths and weaknesses. I will try to cover most of the blitz methods here for your enjoyment of crushing the enemy.

Blitz’s can be divided into 2 categories, tele-blitz and non-tele-blitz. Telepathic is a tremendously effective blitz tool but has the downside of being ineffective if your opponent is also telepathic. Many blitz races should consider low-g as opposed to repulsive in the hopes of obtaining a navigator to facilitate a faster attack, especially if telepathic as u wont need ground troops to capture planets.

Uni, tele, +20 attack, warlord, RHW: This race can build a cruiser capable of destroying a low tech star base the cruiser is finished around turn 15. This attack is not difficult to defend against but is very effective vs. AI.

Uni, tele, +10 spying: this race can build a cruiser and a spy by around turn 22. Put the spy on sabotage and destroy the star base and waltz in with the cruiser.

Tele, trans d, uni, large rich, research fighter bays, build a cruiser, research fusion beams and go wild. The trans d fighters move very fast and can lay waste to an early star base.

Tele, lith, large, rich. Many options are available to this race as it can both research or build from turn 0. Zircon played this race a few times and usually went for a mirv nukes attack, I think he mentioned a mirv nuke cruiser ready around turn 40.

Feudal, tele, cybernetic, warlord, +50 attack, rich. I tried this race once, I had a battleship at the opponents home world on turn 39.

Uni, aqua, tele, large, rich. I have won more games with this race than any other race I have played. I gained notoriety to the point people refused to play me because I blitzed them so often. This race can have a battle ship with battle scanners around turn 55 if u build c bases first. It is often best to hold off a few turn before attacking, arriving at the enemy just after they researched super computers has a two-fold benefit. The obvious reason is u capture super comps technology, secondly they have spent all the stored production building the computers and cannot put up a defensive fleet.

There are a few other tele blitz’s out there, feel free to experiment at my expense!

For whatever reason you are not telepathic and u are blitzing. Often this situation arises out of desperation due to a distinct lack of places to expand in your immediate area. The downside of this sort of attack is the need to build transports. The upside is that you generally have a real fleet as opposed to the cardboard BB style attacks of the true blitz races. If I am playing a standard expansion race and find a long wormhole near my home world or don’t find suitable planets to expand to I switch gears to attack mode. Most races can have a battle pods/ augies /battle scanners BB around turn 60 and a supporting fleet of transports and outposts a few turns later.

Some races are decidedly blitz oriented from turn 0, and not telepathic:

Hvy-g, warlord, uni, large, rich: I believe this race/tactic was developed by Marius. You build a bunch of empty frigates, board a star base and capture it. Usually 3 or 4 frigates will capture a star base. This race needs to attack 5 turns ago so don’t dally and get aggressive!

Uni, tol, stealth. Scary stuff can happen with this race. If it find a natives world or some decent planets to get started on u wont know what hit u!

Warlord: many forms of warlords all have a similar tactic of getting a little tech and building an armada of destroyers. Destroyers are much harder to target than battle ships and don’t require star bases to build them. They do suck up the command points in a hurry so to employ this strategy warlord is imperative.

+50 attack races can also be effective, these races generally have a battleship as opposed to the DD armada of warlord.

Omni: special care must be taken if you consider omni. Most people who play omni give it away on turn 1 when they take too long, in fact they generally take too long every turn. There are only a few players who can seem to keep pace and play omni at the same time. I highly recommend avoiding omni style races in multi-player games as they tend to really slow things down and annoy the other players.