Using Mods
 

I'm relativly new to SEIV, and I hear that one way to get a good challenging game is the use of mods, like the TDM modpack 1.61, which seems to be popular.

I dimly recall hearing that to get the custom AI files to be used, you have to manually add the races? Is that true?

And how do you increase the number of stars?

Finally, is there a mod out there that will place a "random" ringworld in the map?

Re: Using Mods
 

The game sorta randomly selects races so you will hopefully get at least one of the TDM ModPack races in any game. But I usually add all of them manually, then edit each empire to set it to computer control and set the ministers to use the race style.

The default max number of systems is 100. You can set this higher--up to 255--by editing the file se4\data\settings.txt. I forget the name of the setting. But it is one of the top couple of lines.

I don't know anyone who has successfully added ringworlds to randomly created maps. There are a couple of maps floating around where players have created ringworlds during the course of play and then saved the map. If you tell your game to use such a map, the ringworlds will be present.

As long as you are downloading the TDM_ModPack, you might as well get the SoundMod too. Er, I forget what it's called. But many of the sounds are much better than the ones that come with the game.