Rant: Things that sucked about...

[Artaud]

AngleWyrm said:
One of the main probs with 4x is their economic explosion. There's some initial struggle to survive, a critical mass, and then an exponential growth that trivializes all money.

I think it is mostly because the currency is magically centralized.

If all resources were restricted to their locale, the game wouldn't explode. Freighters would have to be used to ship minerals to a factory. Shipyards could only produce with what's on hand. And the result would be a lot less explosion.

I agree with you on all points, but for many players such a degree of micromanagement would be intolerable.

I myself enjoy micromanagement, but I also like to have a rudimentary AI to automate certain things if I decide to use it.

I like micromanagement, but when my SEIV empires reach a certain size I'm a crappy micromanager. I forget systems for turns and turns, I forget to add stuff to the R&D queue, etc.

So, I don't complain about the SEIV AI. My own sloppiness in the later stages of the game I call "the friction of government," and in my eyes its effects are balanced out by weaknesses in the AI.

So I always have fun.