[Captain Kwok]

Shrapnel Games never published SE5 - but they were nice enough to keep the forums up.

Make sure you update your game to v1.77. The UI will take a bit of time to get used to versus SE4, but there are lots of shortcuts that make it much better. It's just a matter of getting to know it for the most part.

Spaceempires5.com and Spaceempires.net have the most active forums.

I recommend avoiding the stock game because it's not very well balanced and the AI is underdeveloped, there's a number of mods available. The Balance Mod is a good place to start because it's close to the stock game in general play and has a decent AI.