Just a little life history ...
I was in severe withdrawal from my favorate game Galactic Civilizations because I didn't have OS/2 anymore. So I searched CNET and downloaded the demo of SE3.
And was rapidly whipped to a froth by the AI.
Seriously... I couldn't do anything. Oh so many stories. I couldn't understand tactical combat so ship design was random. My best story? I designed a ship with boarding parties... AND IT GOT BOARDED AND CAPTURED BY THE AI
I'm still at a loss for how that happened. Once I won, by turning on all ministers. Neat trick it had -- building spaceyards in the asteroid fields and sending ships everywhere from there.
So I went to the MM website and found out about SE4, waited for the demo to be ready and downloaded it. Lots of eyecandy, good interface, new rules. And I got mysleff royally spanked yet again from the AI.
I paid for and ordered the full game before I ever was able to even survive 100 turns. Boy, wouldn't it have been stupid to own a game you couldn't play well at all?
Soon I figured it out. Pay attention to each planet, adjust ship design to what you see around you, the AI is heartless and wants nothing less than complete galactic domination -- and those are the peaceful ones.
(that is the biggest diffence between SE4 and GalCiv)
Long story short, if the AI is too easy for you MoO geniuses, it's because MM wrote it for people like me.
Perhaps in SE5, there could be different sets of AI files -- low dificultly would use a simpler AI files, high difficulty would use very efficient TDM modpack-like files.
[EDIT] Com'on newbies. 'Fess up. Some people have mentioned that they were losing and needed serious help. Anyone else just pick a race that looked good in the quickstart menu, start playing (just what dificulty does it usewhen you do that), and just fail to build enough of the right facilitys and ships and just lose all planets and ships to a AI assault?
[ July 20, 2002, 14:24: Message edited by: Arkcon ]