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- Dominions 2: The Ascension Wars (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=55)

- - OT: SEIV (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=22990)

I was kind of turned off by the insanely high ship upkeep, actually. It seemed to me that you were always far better off sacking a ship when its injured or runs out of supplies and building a new one, rather than trying to resupply or repair it, which seemed just plain silly. IIRC, the upkeep was 1/4 the initial cost! Thats insane.

Personally, I think it's a great little space conquest game. Iused to play MOO II a long time ago, but when I started playing SEIV I put it out to pasture.

It's one of the few conquest games I've seen in which you can actually force an AI to surrender.

It's a great game, but like Dominions, you have to play it multi-player to realise how great a game it is.

I think the key feature is the research-ship designe-ship tactics cycle. Choose which technology to research, design your ships and create ship and fleet tactics to exploit your technological strength and minimise your weaknesses (and counter-act what your opponent has), and test the result in combat with fleets of dozens (or occassionally hundreds) of ships.

In some ways there is more micro than Dom2, because SEIV has much more economic infrastructure to build and manage. On the other hand, SEIV has some basic features like build queues and multi-turn move orders that make life rather easier.

Mark

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The_Tauren13 said:
It seemed to me that you were always far better off sacking a ship when its injured or runs out of supplies and building a new one, rather than trying to resupply or repair it, which seemed just plain silly. IIRC, the upkeep was 1/4 the initial cost! Thats insane.

Maintenance is usually equal to 15% of the total price of the vessel for most Empires (it is a bargain to get from 25% to 15%), and you can lower it to something like 10% or 5%. Upkeep is usually not a problem for most Empires, unless fighting a losing war, and it allows to set a limit to how many ships you can send in a single war (a very high limit, however).

I agree with the previous posters about the game being about multiplayer and mods. I would definitively not recommand playing the vanilla game in singleplayer, but mods make it much better. Mods and multiplayer, and it is much better all of a sudden. Odd game setups can also increase the interest of the game: a 200-ship game proved to be very interesting, as fighting a three-front war with limited resources is not the easiest thing in the world.

Space Empires IV is easily one of the greatest games ever created. I recommend everyone purchase it. Also Space Empires V is coming out this summer and will have a 3d engine for combat and system view. And PBW.cc(se4s multiplayer site) is very well designed and maintained. Also SE4 has the most deticated and friendly online communitys I have ever seen.

Also I maintain a very excellent mod for SE4 which can be obtained in my siggy(yes I know I am shameless everyone tells me)

Tell me but one thing: Will the right click of power be restored in SE5?

If not, I'll stick with SE3 !

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I agree with the previous posters about the game being about multiplayer and mods. I would definitively not recommand playing the vanilla game in singleplayer, but mods make it much better.

Wich mods are most widely used? Which mods do you recommend? I have played vanilla, but when I had to install some mods I was overhelmed by the huge amount so I didn't know which one (or which serie) to install to improve the game.

I liked the devnull mod.

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Beorne said:

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I agree with the previous posters about the game being about multiplayer and mods. I would definitively not recommand playing the vanilla game in singleplayer, but mods make it much better.

Almost necessary for some mods:
-Neo-Standard add-on - adds many new ship/unit pics for the stock races. Many mods use the neostandard pics.
-all Image Mods - a lot of mods use the Image Mod Packs which contain over 1400 new comp pincs, IIRC approx. 1000 facility pics, the Planet and Event Packs add lots of new pics to use, and the Combat pack adds new beam/torp graphics.

Recommended, because of widespread use:
-Proportions, which adds many new techs and several ship sizes. Introduced the famous Cultural Centers which give massive bonuses - and with whom your Homeworld is packed.
-Pirates and Nomads, also adds many new techs. You can play as a normal race, a Pirate who cannot colonize but is specialized in, well, piracy, or as a Nomad, who cannot colonize wither, but who are well adapted to life in space.
-Babylon 5 Mod - popular mod that emulates the TV series.
-Atrocities Star Trek Mod - also a popular mod that emulates the TV series.
-Adamant - a massive mod which adds Organic and Magical races.

And there are many more mods out there, some huge conversions like Adamant, some only small mods which can be used as add-ons. I'm (yes I'm shameless) currently working on two mods which both change gameplay, Capship where you get to have unbelievably huge warships which crawl through space and cost astronomical amounts of resources to maintain - not only because of the 50% maint cost, but also because the base cost of the hull is so huge, and Realism, in which you start with space travel technology which is actually slightly lower-tech than what we currently use. You later get solar sail ships for fast short-range interstellar travel, and sleeper ships which are slow but have a long range.

Check the SEIV forum sometimes for more info, and drop by the Won-Ton Violence Take-Out Hut for a nice drink & chat.