As our ships depart with new orders, we're still on Turn 3. Click Next Turn and watch the ships move. We'll continue building factories at Sol for now, so click Next Turn again. A scout arrives at Bootis.

We're three for three on finding habitable planets. This one is on the smaller side, but still good. Click Next Turn again to move to Turn 6. A scout arrives at Spica.

Wow, a 75 planet. Our fortunes are riding high. We've barely left the driveway and already we've got almost enough good land within range to be competitive.

After acknowledging the scout report from Spica, action at Misha will occur with our colony ship.

You may only create a colony during the action phase. That is, if you choose No and opt not to settle, you will have to wait another turn to get another opportunity. You can't settle during the Orders phase. Click Yes instead and create our second colony.

At this point you can change the name of the star, if you like. I often do when playing single player, giving my stars thematic names tied to the race I'm playing (kitty-type names for the feline Mrrshans, for example). However, for the purposes of comparison, names should be left at default if playing in a tournament game, to allow easy comparisons. Single player games, do whatever you please. For this tutorial, leave the names at default so you can follow along more easily.

New colonies begin with two million colonists. This is enough to have 1 BC worth of production. (You get 0.5 BC from each unit of colonists).

Now that we have a new colony, it is time to transport more colonists there, to speed its growth. How many should we send from Earth? To understand my recommendation, you need to learn how population growth works.

Population growth in Master of Orion works on a bell curve. When a planet is half full, the population grows at the maximum rate. When a planet is almost empty or almost full, growth proceeds at the minimum rate. Population has the same production (0.5 per pop unit) regardless of its location, so moving people to the new colony will not hurt our production. What it will do is slow Sol's production a bit but speed Misha's production by the same amount. You don't have to move colonists. For some strategies, this may not be the right move. However, if you want to maximize your total growth curve, this is my recommendation.

Since pop growth is fastest when a planet is half full, I recommend sending enough colonists to reduce Sol to half its maximum. Let's take a look.

Sol's pop max is 100. Half that is 50. Current pop is 66. If we send 16 to Misha, there will be 50 left, and Earth will grow new colonists at the best rate. The colonists moving to Misha will take three turns to arrive. Once they do, Misha will be closer to half its potential, and it too will grow population at a faster rate.

We can send 16 this turn, then continue to send more each turn if we like. My rule of thumb is to stop sending colonists when the new colony reaches one third of its maximum. That leaves the meatiest part of the bell curve for it to work with in growing its colonists. The middle third is the fastest growth rate, while the first and last third are both markedly slower.

Normally, I will do this with my second colony, then max out my home planet. The home planet will build colony ships, while the second planet gets up to speed. Then I will use population from the second planet to help seed all the others, while the home planet stays full. This won't work if the second planet is too small, though. Say, anything below size 40. (I've had my second planet be as small as the minimum, which is size 10. Not much you can do with a size 10).

To send colonists, click the Trans button in the planetary control panel. Use the slider, either with single clicks or by clicking inside the slider reading, to set the number to 16. Then point the cursor at Misha.

You must click Accept to confirm these orders.

Now we have a new problem. The removal of 16 colonists from Sol has changed the spending balance. We no longer have enough allocated to Ecology spending to clean up all of our factory waste. This can be determined by reading the Ecology slider for Sol.

If we allow waste to accumulate, the effects will be detrimental. This could reduce the planet's maximum population potential, temporarily, which will slow pop growth a bit. And we'll still have to pay to clean it up later. Better to do that now.

To fix this, use the right-hand arrow on the Eco slider to increase Eco spending one click at a time. When enough spending has been allocated for the job, the readout will switch from saying Waste to saying Clean. From that point onward, any additional Eco spending would apply toward temporary pop growth. (In effect, you can buy extra colonists for a certain amount of BC apiece, if you spend enough into Ecology. We don't want to be doing that right now).

In this case, one additional click spent into Ecology will be enough. The reason we only need one click, despite sending away a fourth of the planet's population, is that our Colony ship has been used to found a colony, so we are no longer paying maintenance on it. If we hadn't been ready to send all these colonists (for example, if playing on higher difficulty, where Earth starts with only 40 colonists) then we'd have needed to REDUCE clicks on the Eco slider to get down to the proper amount for cleanup. The maintenance on the colony ship makes that much difference in the early game.

You can lock the Ecology slider by clicking the Eco button. The game will automatically adjust Ecology spending for you in some cases, and otherwise you probably won't need to mess with it much, most of the time. I usually keep my Eco sliders locked as a rule of thumb. It is possible for the automatic adjustments made by the game to set half of a click. You can't move a slider half a click, so if you empty the Eco slider by mistake and try to recreate the proper spending, you may not be able to come as close to the ideal level, with manual control, as the game had set for you automatically. It's your call, but I recommend keeping your Eco sliders locked unless you are adjusting them. When locked, you can't interfere with their settings by accident.

We're set as far as our new colony, for the moment. Now we must consider further expansion plans.

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