A few decidedly newbie-ish questions

[Tronno]

Ummm... hi. I ran across the SE4 demo a few days ago and I'm hooked. It's awesome. Great variety in the things one can do, custom ships, huge tech tree, political relations... nifty stuff. I'm definetly going to end up buying this.

However, this is the first empire-building game I've ever looked into (I'm an RTS fan, myself), and naturally I'm not completely aware of some of its inner workings. So, then - my questions:

1. How does one board ships? The option is clearly there (combat - orders), but apparently, none of my designs have the capability to board vessels. Do I fill 'em up with troops or what? Help.

2. I'm currently playing a quick game with the preset Terran race. I'm at turn 60 of 100 with 4 systems (+2 uncolonized ones that are backed in a corner and unreachable by anyone but me) and 10 or so planets, level 5 in ship construction (highest allowable in the demo), level 4 in missile weapons, rock and ice colonization (traded with a dying ice race), three sizeable fleets of cruisers + destroyers and some misc. technology I picked up from various ruins.

I've also made contact with three races: the Amon'Krie Continuum, a xenophobic/honorable/moderate race whom I've stayed away from (they have an unfortunate tendency to declare war without provocation and are superior fleetwise), the Zynarra Holdings - the ice race I mentioned earlier - xenophobic/neutral/receptive, 1 system, 2 planets, pathetic resource operation, laughable fleet; I have a partnership set up with these guys. Unfortunately, they are at war with a third race, the Jraenar Imperium - an aggressive warrior species ranking just below me (I'm 2nd, they're 3rd).

I've had a profitable trade & research treaty going with the warriors for a while, until they started going from a receptive mood to warm, then moderate, then cool without displaying an obvious reason. They eventually declared war. I've tried loading a previous saved game and breaking my alliance with the Zynarra (ice people), but this only accelerated their mood swing. I've tried attacking the Zynarra without breaking the treaty (clever sneak attack, hehe) - same result. What's really weird is that the xenophobes I've avoided so far change their attitude at the same time as the Jraenar (for the worse, of course). I keep thinking that never having seen the warriors' systems is a cause of all this, but my ships are nowhere near those warp points, so that will have to wait.

So, then, knowing my plight, how can I establish peace between these empires? I'm not prepared to go to war and frankly, I'd prefer to keep up this uneasy peace anyway.

3. My empire's borders are composed of 4 warp points located near space yards and resupply depots. What is an effective way of defending them?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[ June 02, 2002, 04:19: Message edited by: Tronno ]

[Fyron]

1. You have to use Boarding Party components. They can be gotten by researching level 2 in Military Science.

2. I don't know if it is possible to get the AI races to establish peace with each other. Of course, I don't play much against the AI, prefering human opponents.

3. Mines. The AI isn't too good at getting past large mine fields.

[oleg]

#1 - as Emp. Fyron answered, you must research Mil.Science II.

#2 - Currently, there are very limited AI responces to diplomatic actions. Playing against humans is of course best, but you still can get a lot of fun playing against fun' custimized AI in full SEIV.

#3 - Indeed, mines work very nice against stock AI. However, some TDM' AI can sweep your minefields faster than you make them (assuming hugh AI bonus). I advise to build fighters group and deploy several over warp points.

[Taz-in-Space]

Satellites are also good for warp point defence.
Their advantages: they can be built on any planet
they use no maintance
they can be picked up again and reused

[capnq]

The most common thing that upsets an AI is seeing that you've colonized a world that they could, especially in a system they've claimed (see [F9] Empires/Borders).

However, the Mood listing doesn't reliably correlate to your current treaty status; "Murderous" allies and "Brotherly" enemies appear fairly regularly.