Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

I think the "one more turn" is great in SE4, however teh Ai is lacking. But granted SEIV is a much deeper game teh CIV making it harder to craft a difficult AI. I mean look at the Ai in simpler games like Starcraft and Warcraft 3. I've not played much, but the AI there is handing my *** to me on a platter consistently.

But i gotta go now, and play one more turn

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

The 'just one more turn' factor in SE:4 is IMHO close to being on par with Heroes of Might and Magic. I'm not saying Homm is better, they are totally different games. But I've logged many hours in both these games and when it comes to 'just one more turn' they both manage to hook me every time!

I have Civ2:ToT and It doesn't compare. personally I find it much easier to say 'no' in Civ2 than the other two games. Alpha Centauri falls somewhere between Civ and SE4, but slightly closer to SE4 and heroes than civ.

Just one more 'opinion' for the sandbox!

Cheers!

P.S. If I go a bit further back in time there was another game that managed to 'hook' me with the 'one more turn' factor,.. it was called Conquest of the new world: Deluxe Edition (a DOS game) I would love to see an updated 'windows' Version of that game! Nuf said.

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

right, i forgot about alpha centauri the good 'ole days, and SE4 looks to be the Last vestige of a glourious line. Too many high budget, low quality games these days.

[ January 02, 2003, 22:06: Message edited by: Skulky ]

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

the DEMO for SE4-g is better than Civ3. That game is Booooooooooooooooooooringggggggggg.

SE4 reminds me a lot of STARS! Stars is fun, but limited, and late game tedious, but that can be overcome with victory settings. which are similar to to SE4's. race design is more complex in stars, and I got tired of waiting for super-nova to come out. I hear SE4 is lot like MoO2.

I only have the SE4-G demo right now. my copy has not been delivered yet. I got a whole 8 turns into the demo before ordering it Online.

My suggestion for you is DL the demo and try it out. I has JOMT like Civ2, SMAC, Stars!. besides, the demo don't cost anything but a little DL time, and a day and a half of eyes-glued-to-the-screen to get the idea of the fun factor.

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

i think se4 is miles above any other 4x game...

thats saying a lot in a fairly populated genre,

however, moo3 is turning me on, from what i've heard so far, but i doubt its depth will satisfy me...

the only real areas that se4 lack are in tactical battle and ai

the game mechanics and depth are the amazing part... the ai and combat depth are lacking

i've worked as a programmer in many capacities and have discussed the ai a few times with geo and of course here on the Boards... what i didn't really mention was that i used an alpha-beta pruning algorithm when i worked on programming chess when i was doing my comp.sci degree ;p

anyway, the more i get into it, the more i think that a chess brain applied to se4 ai would make it really rock... anyone else work on pruning tree algy's?

oh yeah, and the combat system needs real 3d fleet movements but in a starfleet battles like board game (which had energy usage, turn radius and speed/weapon power/shield power and hull size / inertia played an important role)

if those 2 things could be added to se5 for example, this thing could be the next hit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif (at least in the strategy realm;) and i mean in civ(1,2,3) sort of way ... sid look out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Cirvol
(or Hrv/Druid if any of you know me in pbw)

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Even though you can't see all the pieces, and are often lacking most of the information?

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Even though you can't see all the pieces, and are often lacking most of the information?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">ya, a lot of that can be taken care of heuristically... something even based on a game turn function to make reasonable guesses for fleet/tech strengths... and an equation for trade treaty amounts modified by racial trade modifier...

all you'd really need to do is setup a good hueristic for spending by each minister on each planet... even basic things like putting mineral miner facilities only on your high % planets etc etc http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif things which the ai seems to lack right now

with a good spending/expansion budget, i think a lot of the ai weaknesses would be overcome...
much of that can happen in a vacuum, outside of what anyone else is doing...

then u just need to come up with a good 'war budget' if stuff starts to hit the fan

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

Actually, what SE needs is more disadvantages for the humans. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif If sensor range was actually limited and you didn't automatically know everything about a system just by being in it the AI would have much more chance to surprise you. As it is, no AI ever coded yet can out-strategize the human brain. We can see things happening in many systems and see what the AI is 'thinking' while it is too slow to finish its own thoughts let alone guess ours. Viz, the yo-yo effect when it sees one threat, moves fleets and then moves them in another direction next turn because it sees another threat...

That said, yes, there's plenty of room for improvement of the AI, especially the development/infrastructure part of it. If it were smart enough to re-designate colonies to different types based on its needs, or even just change the course of colonizers to worlds with the type of resource it needs like a human would rather than 'force' the next colony to be the type it needs regardless of the planet value, it would be dramatically more effective.

[ January 06, 2003, 02:03: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

What about that combat system, ummmm remember that game Homeworld, how bout attaching that to SEV.

Re: compare with the big budgets like CIV3
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">It would also give birth to more strategy. "Do I conserve supplies and run straight past his planet, or do I sneak and skulk around the edges?" It would be nice to have, say, a three-sector sensor radius for planets, two for ships/sats/etc.