Finding AI opponents / good mods
 

I've owned SE4 for about a month, and while I've had a some enjoyable games, I've found (as echoed here in the forum) that the AIs supplied with the game just aren't that challenging. There seem to be two ways that the player community has addressed this: custom AI/races, and game mods - although the line seems a bit blurred between the two, as I've read a number of Posts that make it seem as if certain race/AIs are part of particular mods.

I've looked a number of SE4 web sites, and frankly they're rather uninformative in this department - disregarding the 90% that are basically clan/empire sites, the 'general' ones focus on races and how they look - with no info on their AIs. As for mods, there's hardly any that are even linked to, let alone described.

And while the Archives for mods and AIs has lots of Posts, they're mostly from the authors - "Here's my mod!" - it's hard to tell what people think of them.


So here's my requests for all of the folk who've been around the SE4 block a few times:

1. What are some mods/AIs that you've found to make the game more of a challenge? If they're not in the Archives, where can they be found? Describe them a bit if you can.

2. Are there any sites that have a good overview of the mods out there, with reviews or descriptions?


[This message has been edited by Cylon99 (edited 25 May 2001).]

Re: Finding AI opponents / good mods
 

I personally use the TDM Modpack Version 1.72. It is a general AI improvement mod that does not add any new technology or components to the game, but does add several races (including my own pet project, the Rage Collective - but that is another story http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif ). I use it specifically because I am trying to make new races that are compatible with anyone's installation.

There are several good mods that do modify technology and/or components that sound great, but I have not used them, myself.

The best place that I know to look for mods is in the Scenario/Mods section of this forum under Space Empires: IV - AI Races/Ship Sets.

I hope this helps.

Re: Finding AI opponents / good mods
 

Heh beware the Rage, you mean end up tearing your hair out. Actually the TDM modpack is probably in my opinion one of the best baseline mods out there, the AI is challenging and the files are pretty well debugged, so not a lot of work is involved to get it installed and up and running. Another good addition is God Emporer's research mod. This one takes a little work to get it installed, but it will work with the TDM modpack you just need to add two lines to each of the races reasearch files and it include his modified techarea.txt file. There's other stuff you can tweak that helps out the AI, like adding resource storage to the resource extractors, space yards, and space ports. Depends on how much work you want to do etc. But for a baseline I'd start with the TDM modpack and God Emporer's research mod.

Re: Finding AI opponents / good mods
 

Pirates & Nomads is a nifty mod for playing the underdog. When you play as a pirate, every battle is critical, and you cannot afford to lose ships.
Your major source of funding will be scrapped ships, and possibly slave labour from captured transports http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.
When you're a Pirate, you'll find yourself constantly struggling to balance a budget, defend your holdings with a small navy, and using every one of your sneaky, underhanded human tricks just trying to survive in a hostile universe http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif.

Just be sure to follow these few instructions on how to create a truly Piratey race.
- select the advanced trait of "pirate" only. Adding "normal" or "nomad" will ruin the pirate atmosphere and make the game easy.
- don't wimp out and take a no-maintenance race http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif
- set your reproduction and environmental resistance to minimum.
- (more optional) set trade and physical strength to minimum.

Re: Finding AI opponents / good mods
 

Dev mod is also excellent.There are a lot of new things in it. Latest Version is 1.31 I think. Only two new races but lots of new ship/components.