SEV - to buy, or not to buy?

[Captain Kwok]

Uncle_Joe, fortunately the upcoming patch will address a number of concerns including that silly 1-move early order bug and long processing times with combat execution much faster. For gameplay, I'd recommend you don't do small maps with more than 5 or 6 players. Having more than that means they start much closer together and won't have time to establish any of their own territory - this leads to short tempers between the AIs and more frequent combats - reducing their strength and making them less threatening versus the human player.