Re: The Race to 1k Posts thread.. BYOP!
I have been asked to write a review of any mod for Space Empires IV, not that I am any where near qualified to write such a review, never the less I have been asked, and will attempt to do so. Given that I have been working pretty much non-stop on the Star Trek Mod, it can be said, and quite truthfully, that I have lost some interest in the game. Oh don’t be shocked or depressed by this revelation, accept it for what it is, a true acknowledgement of how wonderful this game truly is.
Now to pick the mod that I would like to review….. well by picking I mean one that I have played. Since I have only played a few mods, and by a few I mean four or five, two of which were my own, my choices are very limited.
You see, I have invested all of my free time over the last six months in one mod, the Star Trek Mod, and have had little time to play any other mod. I in fact gave up playing many of my PBW games in order to focus more openly on the Star Trek Mod. So when I was asked to write a review of a mod it occurred to me that I have not played any other mod for Space Empires IV other than the one I was working on so I honestly could not write a review.
Well that wasn’t a problem; I’ll just choose a mod and start up a game. So I sat down in front of my computer, browsed the forums for a bit, drank some tea, and click on the mod launcher. I looked through the list of available mods, and opted to load the Adamant Mod.
The mods splash screen loaded displaying its impressive artwork, by David Gervais, and I clicked New Game. As I sat, staring at the choices before me, something happened. Without even knowing it, I realized that I had lost my interest in actually playing Space Empires. I was shocked and dismayed by this and a little bit depressed by it as well. I realized that I have literally spent more time on this game than I have on any other game that I have ever owned. I paused in mid thought and actually asked myself, “What in the hell am I doing?” My God the duplicity of this game defies sinister and literally boggles the mind when trying to comprehend its scope. I mean how insidious is the mind of Aaron Hall that he can create a game so addictive that it literally consumes ones life much like a super massive black hole sucks in matter! Oh please don’t miss-read me on this, I love the game and would not trade away the time I have spent on it for any thing less than I have already spent on it, but I cannot help but wonder how I became so overwhelmingly addicted to this game.
I honestly had to sit back and think about what it was I was doing. Here I am, at 2:00 am in the morning, looking blankly at the Player Set up menu for a game that I have played over a 2,000 times. By now I should be horribly bored with this game and should have long since tossed it into the toaster pile, but here I am, sitting here staring at the game options before me, already anticipating how I will crush my opponents and defile their remains. I think it was at this point that I realized that I had been playing this game for so long that it had become second nature to me. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and for the first time in a long time, I questioned it. It was at that point that I paused and began to realize that I was no longer interested in what it was that I was interested in. A paradoxal catch 22 enigma to be sure and one that faced me with both barrels.
It was as if a bell had gone off in my mind and a new sense of reality over took me. I simply sat there, looking at the screen, wondering what in the hell I was doing. I should be in bed I thought, or at least out looking for a nice women to take home, but no, here I am sitting in front of my computer, holding a cup of tea and slowly realizing that this was what I preferred to be doing. When did this happen? When did I become so hopelessly addicted to this game that it became a daily part of my life? The sad part is, I actually know when, it was the very day that my disk arrived at my home in its weathered envelope and I called in sick so I could play it.
The moment I installed the game and clicked the ICON was when my life changed forever. It was the game that I had always been looking for yet could never find like living in some horrible dream. But my dream had come true, for I looked upon the face of delight and saw in its reflection the calling of my sole; Overseer of the known galaxy. All I had to do was choose my settings and launch the game. Oh the wonders of that first time, the day that I knew I could play past the 100 turn limit and actually build battleships. The pleasure it gave me was like no other I had experienced before. Gratification on an epic level as I glassed world after world into oblivion. I would rename the natural races after people I hated, and then hunt them down and obliterate them without mercy. Hours of game play turned into days, weeks, then months, and then I discovered the true calling of the game, its moddability. First I started making ship sets, a lot of ship sets, and not so crappy ones too, then everything evolved, Gold was announced and for the first time in a long time I whipped out the credit card and pre-ordered without so much as thinking twice. (A decision that I have never regretted.)
But now, four years later, here I sit blankly staring at my monitor realizing for the first time that the emotion that Space Empires IV brought to my life had dimmed. It was like loosing a good friend, a sad depressing, even sickening feeling began to overwhelm me. So I did what I always do when depression comes, I sat quietly and pondered my life.
If only I were an evil dictator and had a battle fleet of war ships. Oh the things I would do to my enemies. How I would make them suffer before tossing them out of an airlock into the empty coldness of space. The thought of conquering planets and colonizing the known galaxy began to sooth me. My depression began to lift, and the feeling of eagerness to do something creative began to burn within me. So I existed out of the game set up screen and shut down Space Empires and then opened up my mod folder. I knew what I wanted to, and I set to doing it. I love many things about this game; the fact that even if your board stiff with it, after a few hours you cannot wait to play it.
In fact, the one thing I have to say that I really enjoy about Space Empires IV is the moddability of the game. I mean it was pure genus to make a game with the modding community in mind. Aaron Hall’s foresight in this matter clearly cannot be questioned. To think that a game like Space Empires IV has endured strongly now for four years in the light of such monsterly anticipated games like Masters Of Orion 3, and Galactic Civilizations is a true testament to Aaron’s brilliance.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not merely sucking up to Aaron on the slim hopes of getting into the Space Empires V beta, I am also doing it because it is true. Look at how much money was dumped into making Masters Of Orion 3 and how many man-hours had been invested in that game. A game that was so horrible that it earned the not so honorable awards for “WTF Where They Thinking,” and “POS Game Of the Decade.”
Space Empires IV is by no means a mainstream game. When it was released in November 2000, it was laughed at as being to DOS like, but despite this it earned very favorable reviews by many game sites including PC Gamer Magazine.
When Space Empires IV Gold was released many people felt they were given the shaft and refused to buy the new version. Those of us who knew better jumped on the chance to buy the Gold edition, much like we would for any expansion pack. It was money well spent and if factored out, the $90.00 dollars I spent on the game divided by the amount of time I have spent playing it over the years would equal .00000023 cents per hour of play. That is a bargain of epic proportions no matter how you cut it.
With the release of the Gold Edition of Space Empires IV, there was surge in the number of mods, ship sets, and add-ons for the game. During this time such mods as the updated TDM, Devullan, and Proportions were released to mention a few. The TDM mod was, and is, by far the best AI mod for the game.
Many people went to great lengths to tweak the AI’s for each of the stock races in order to make them more human like in the decision and game play process. To many the mod was a Godsend as the stock AI sucked horribly after the first few games. The TDM mod set the standard for all of the mods to follow. It did not make any game play changes; it merely enhanced the existing AI settings to improve the overall single player stock gaming experience.
I forget what TDM stands for, but it was a co-op made mod involving Tampa Gamer, Mephisto, and many others. In retrospect, I would have to say that the TDM mod, although not reviewed here, really set the standard that is now the minimum for any mod.
Of all the mods currently available for Space Empires IV, I would have to say that the Adamant Mod is by far the most involved mod to date. The mods creator, Imperator Fyron, has literally spent years developing this hybrid mod of Dungeon and Dragons meets and marries 4x Space Conquest. The mod is so massive in its scope that to even attempt to review it would take many weeks of game play and a severe bout of “one more turn” syndrome to even come close to understanding the depth of this mod.
The best way to sum up the Adamant mod would be to say simply, play it for your self and be amazed. I have yet to play more than a few hours of the Adamant mod before falling back into my own little world and abandoning my game to go mod the STM. I am weak in this regard since I lost all interest in the game, say for ship set making, and to some minor degree modding the STM.
I do regret not having the interest to play a solid long-term game of Adamant, as it is one of the most encompassing mods for Space Empires IV. In fact, the depth of the Adamant mod is so great that I theorize that if one started to play Adamant mod, they would loose themselves in its tangled web of role-playing and fantasy. Ok a bit silly to say that, but truth be told, the mod is truly a monumental achievement.
Granted I have not played it in any great depth in some time, and have missed out on a mind-boggling array of new features and changes, but I do realize that greatness of the mod.
The tell tail signs of a great mod, like the TDM, Pirates, Devullan, Proportions, Adamant, and a few others is that they are all unique to each other and provide the player with options that they would not otherwise have. From simple AI improvement to long term RPG type game play no one can argue that the mods for Space Empires IV are nothing if not shier brilliance.
Again this simply goes back to the root, to the vision Aaron had and made a reality. Without his innovation and attention to fan desires, we would simply have just another game that we would play for a month or two then toss into the yard sale bin. Of all the games that I have had the pleasure to play, Space Empires IV has to be the best. Unquestionably it is the one game that has given me more than I have given for it, and that is above all else what is important in ones fantasy life, to get more than you pay for, and to really enjoy it.
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Creator of the Star Trek Mod - AST Mod - 78 Ship Sets - Conquest Mod - Atrocities Star Wars Mod - Galaxy Reborn Mod - and Subterfuge Mod.
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