SPACE EMPIRES IV GOLD NOTICE - PLEASE READ!

[jim]

I am a newbie, at least when it comes to manipulations of Mods. Now that Gold has been released, I have a few questions - I have been unable to find a clear conclusion in the old Board threads.

SEIV (non-Gold) is a game I truly enjoy and play a lot, single player. I
would like to play it at LAN parties, but the web-based games do not interest
me for various reasons. The game improved greatly when I figured out how to
use some of the TDM ModPack. However, I have not been able to get it all to work. I
am not sophisticated in this area. Things must be very clear and simple to a
non-tech for me to be sure to get it.

I have gotten quite adept at beating the non-Gold AIs. I must exclude Intel
and Mines, and play AIs Allied against me to make a 200 system game any fun.

My Q is, does the Gold Version make it easy enough for me to use the more
clever AIs, with their neat shipsets and texts (that I simply cannot get to
work in non-Gold)? Or would it be up to me to work it out as how to make it
work? Ideally, it would be a menu-based choice system in the game set-up. I
fear the playing around in the "My PC" section of Windows.

I hope so. I'd really buy it, if that was the case. Must I send my CD back
to get a discount? How do I go about that? I'd rather just get some credit
towards a future game of your company, if that would avoid me having to send
pieces in the mail or something like that.