I would suggest that you play a few games with somebody who is ok but not great, somebody like.......ME. Also I suggest that you join the SE Battle Arena(which can be found at
http://pub48.ezboard.com/seba78591 ) where you can play SE4 to your hearts content without having any egos flung around or territory lost or any other Barbara Streisand. You can just PLAY for the fun of it there, I am in SEBA and enjoy it immensly. If you want to do a more RP-based SE4 game go join Galactic Enmpires which can be found at
http://se4galaxy.cjb.net under the Galactic Empires Section.
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Telek R'tal