[dogscoff]

http://astmod.com its simple and it works.

And you really don't get much simpler than http://www.sandman43.fsnet.co.uk/se4main.htm

I remember a thread quite similar to this one (is se4 dying? Is the community finished) about half a year ago. And another one half a year before that.

No, this community has its peaks and troughs, but it is by no means dying. It has been around for a lot longer than many of us realise, and will continue to be here. The faces and the websites will change, but the community will remain for as long as the game does, and longer. IMHO the only things that could conceivably kill the community are:

a> se5 turns out to be a complete MOO3, and MOO4 happens to come out at the same time and provide everything promised by se5. That scenario is very unlikely and a year or two away anyway.

b> Malfador is either unwilling or unable to continue developping the se series for whatever reason and it comes to an abrupt end.

c> 4X games suddenly come into mainstream fashion and Se5 is a massive, global success on the scale of a big-budget game like Halo or The Sims. We are then drowned under a sea of clueless "strategy tourists" and script kiddies, all trying to hack pbw and start flamewars with the RTS communities.

d> We make first contact with the EEE in real life, making space-conquest games politically sensitive so that strategy gamers are persecuted worldwide and driven out of society by torch-wielding mobs.

But in any of these cases, we'd just adapt and survive. In (a) and (b) we'd move on to another game as an almost-intact sub-community, and/or continue as we are modding and playing the current Version of se4.
In (c) we'd survive as an elite subset of the larger fanbase and in (d) we'd live in caves with our families, secretly playing Risk with sets made of rocks and animal hides.

[ June 17, 2003, 10:26: Message edited by: dogscoff ]