[Blueentity]

Brand new to posting on this forum, but since all I have played is against the computer (AI); I have a few things to add:

You are going along, colonizing a planet or two, clicking screens and all of a sudden, your planets are under attack, your economy is tanking and your ships are facing weapons you’ve never even heard of. Welcome to Space Empire IV (SEIV). Unlike most of what is available from the gaming industry, one can and often does lose in the start of the learning curve of this game. The best advice is to get up and try again. Eventually, you’ll figure out some strategies on your own by learning what doesn’t work. SEIV does not start you with some simple scenarios, then slowly add technologies as you can handle them. You can (as did I did many times) get blasted out of the galaxy very quickly as you learn about this game.

All the suggestions so far assume that you are colonizing every planet you can as fast as you can, building facilities to keep your economy in the black and pumping research as much as you can. My guess is that you may be having trouble holding onto those planets?

Weapon platforms (and satellites if playing with mods)

A. If you are playing against the nominal AI from any of the demos or Gold, use weapon platforms (WP) with capital ship missiles (CSM) and large mounted Depleted Uranium Cannons (DUC) to keep your colonies safe for quite a while. If you keep the construction costs of the WP less than 2k, you don’t even need to start building these until you actually see another AI player, and then only where you need them. In the default game, one of these WP will stand up to quite a bit of punishment in the beginning of the game, giving you breathing room to grow. Suggested research? Ship Construction II, Projectile weapons II-V, Propulsion II-III, Military Science I, Point Defense I-V, Construction.

B. If you are playing any of the mods (especially TDM, which restored my faith in SEIV AI – thank you, thank you, thank you for a wonderful mod), before you research construction for mines and fighters and Military Science for point defense guns (PD), you may need a mix of WP and DUC and CSM satellites for the first few turns to defend your planets. PD becomes more invaluable, since many of the modified AI use them and use them correctly.

C. Never needed min-max to stomp the AI in the regular Gold version, but really look at that if you are playing any of the mods.

Sorry for a long winded intro, but being a fairly new player myself, I can still remember getting the “You Lose” screen