[Commander G]

I think the game is great for multi-player email play, which is why I bought it. I can play one turn a day at my own leasure, I don't have to connect the same time as all the other players. The simultaneous play mode beats turn based games where players send the game file around in a circle with several days between turns.

What I would like to see is more information in simultaneous mode so I can figure out why I lost or won a battle. I have to run a simulation and guess the enemies strategy to figure out what may have gone wrong. CNN news reports on wars give the public more information than SEIV gives to a race's emperor.

As far as the AI goes, I really don't care that they are rather poor. They are basically there to help me test race designs before I employ them against human players. I suppose they could make the AIs tougher if they cheated like they do in Stars (even there, it is boring to play the AIs once you play the game a few times).

Where this game excells over Stars is in the simplification of managing ones economy and the political interface for treatings, trade and the like. Stars Genesis Supernova (or whatever they currently call it), sounds like it will compete with SEIV, if they ever stop adding functionality and just get it down and leave the ideas as future patch enhancements.

I give Malfador Machinations this to their credit: They finished the game so it could be released while leaving the door open to add some really need stuff in an on going fashion. They now have a user base who will help them(or should I say him - one designer/programmer in the credits) come up with new ideas.