OT: SEIV

[PvK]

The Gold edition and the later patches really fix a lot of quibbles and to me really added up to a major improvement. Resource coversion only requires one facility to convert huge amounts of resources, and can be set to repeat orders.

However, like Dominions, the amount of late-game management depends on the map size and your play style.

SEIV has a great automated multiplayer site too at http://seiv.pbw.cc .

PvK

[The_Tauren13]

I was kind of turned off by the insanely high ship upkeep, actually. It seemed to me that you were always far better off sacking a ship when its injured or runs out of supplies and building a new one, rather than trying to resupply or repair it, which seemed just plain silly. IIRC, the upkeep was 1/4 the initial cost! Thats insane.

[bone_daddy]

Personally, I think it's a great little space conquest game. Iused to play MOO II a long time ago, but when I started playing SEIV I put it out to pasture.

It's one of the few conquest games I've seen in which you can actually force an AI to surrender.

It's a great game, but like Dominions, you have to play it multi-player to realise how great a game it is.

I think the key feature is the research-ship designe-ship tactics cycle. Choose which technology to research, design your ships and create ship and fleet tactics to exploit your technological strength and minimise your weaknesses (and counter-act what your opponent has), and test the result in combat with fleets of dozens (or occassionally hundreds) of ships.

In some ways there is more micro than Dom2, because SEIV has much more economic infrastructure to build and manage. On the other hand, SEIV has some basic features like build queues and multi-turn move orders that make life rather easier.

Mark

[Alneyan]

The_Tauren13 said:
It seemed to me that you were always far better off sacking a ship when its injured or runs out of supplies and building a new one, rather than trying to resupply or repair it, which seemed just plain silly. IIRC, the upkeep was 1/4 the initial cost! Thats insane.

Maintenance is usually equal to 15% of the total price of the vessel for most Empires (it is a bargain to get from 25% to 15%), and you can lower it to something like 10% or 5%. Upkeep is usually not a problem for most Empires, unless fighting a losing war, and it allows to set a limit to how many ships you can send in a single war (a very high limit, however).

I agree with the previous posters about the game being about multiplayer and mods. I would definitively not recommand playing the vanilla game in singleplayer, but mods make it much better. Mods and multiplayer, and it is much better all of a sudden. Odd game setups can also increase the interest of the game: a 200-ship game proved to be very interesting, as fighting a three-front war with limited resources is not the easiest thing in the world.

[Combat Wombat]

Space Empires IV is easily one of the greatest games ever created. I recommend everyone purchase it. Also Space Empires V is coming out this summer and will have a 3d engine for combat and system view. And PBW.cc(se4s multiplayer site) is very well designed and maintained. Also SE4 has the most deticated and friendly online communitys I have ever seen.

Also I maintain a very excellent mod for SE4 which can be obtained in my siggy(yes I know I am shameless everyone tells me)

[Arralen]

Tell me but one thing: Will the right click of power be restored in SE5?

If not, I'll stick with SE3 !

[Beorne]

I agree with the previous posters about the game being about multiplayer and mods. I would definitively not recommand playing the vanilla game in singleplayer, but mods make it much better.

Wich mods are most widely used? Which mods do you recommend? I have played vanilla, but when I had to install some mods I was overhelmed by the huge amount so I didn't know which one (or which serie) to install to improve the game.

[Oversway]

I liked the devnull mod.

[sachmo]

Play SEIV.