[Tomgs]

I would recomend to buy it if you like this type of game at all. I have posted my share of Posts that may look critical about the AI but I have gotten many hours of enjoyment learning this game. The AI may seem a bit weak if you use all the shortcuts and prefered strategies that are posted here and elsewhere but if you play the game to learn it it would take a while to find some of these limitations. Also the game is patched with new abilities and enhancements often and people post mods to the game to lengthen the enjoyment. So this is a game that will Last a long while in my opinion.

As to the game being not finished I think the great thing is it may never be "finished" there will alway be another possible mod out there and the next patch may change the "best" strategy to win. Also if all the problems this board has mentioned about the AI were fixed a new player may be a bit surprised how hard an AI can be. Of course an AI will never be able to be as flexable as a human player and in a game this complex a scripted AI will probably always have a problem adapting to all the possible combinations of ways to play this game. Right now the AI seems to be working better in the smaller galaxies. I love the largest galaxies I can have so I complain about it not expanding enough or not being agressive enough. But If it were tweaked to large galaxies maybe it would not work correctly in the smaller areas where it has to spend more time defending its starting area from encroachment.

The learning curve is maybe a bit high without a detailed manual but the reason for this I think is that the visualized market for this game at first in my opinion was the players of SEIII and their friends. The word of mouth about this game (because there was no advertisement that I know about) caused a lot of sales that were not anticipated to newcomers to the series. For those of us that have played at least one of the previous games in the series the learning curve was the interface and a bit of a new flavor and flow of the game but a lot of the tech tree was carried over with some new additions.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 01 January 2001).]