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Personally I got hooked on the Space Empires series through the demo for SE IV. All player created add-ons (there are many) are easy to find over the web, and have great support with them for troubleshooting. The game itself has a few balance issues which can be corrected by utilizing player created add-ons. Shortly thereafter, SEV came out. When I noticed the games price had dropped from the last time I checked, I decided it was time to purchase the full game. There is a very active and good online community for this game, both for getting solo play tips, as well as to find players for multiplayer games.
I.E. Bigger hulls. The amount of choices is astounding. I really love the tech tree and the ship design elements of the game.
I don't mind that so much but the problem I have is when the bigger hulls start coming they now come to fast. By the time I have actually built my first bigger hull, I am able to build 1 or 2 levels higher tech wise than the hulls that are now being built,making the new ships instantly obsolete. Wish there was a way to combine the best of both.That being said the game bogs down by the sheer number of planets and ships you have and it can become very difficult to keep track of everything.Especially after saving the game and not playing in awhile. I' m torn between the SE4 and SE5 fighting styles.
Another problem to me any way, is it takes a long time to initially get enough techs to build ships that are worth while to upgrade. I would like to get a little use out of the hulls before I'm replacing them.
Guns, missiles, colony bases etc. Their is a filter button, but having to constantly go across the screen to get to it, scroll and select is kind of a pain and is time consuming when you could be spending time playing the game.4. Third is that the ship design is very time intensive due to poorly designed interface. The demolition of buildings is negative in my mind because if you build research colonies and then you complete the tech-tree, you are stuck with colonies that make no real contribution to your empire.2. Their is no real assitance in helping you to assess what tech discovery will lead to what future development. I consulted the manual to try to figure out how to demolish buildings, and to try and find out what line of technologies I needed to discover for warp point creation to allow expansion.
For any potential buyer whose played Pax Imperia Eminent Domain, this game goes much slower.5. First is that I could not figure out how to redesign colonies by demolishing buildings. The game itself is good except in several areas. Fourth is that the game slows down quickly. I am neutral on this game and would just say buy it at your own risk, I'd say you have a 50/50 chance of loving it or hating it. Second is that the tech-tree is very poor.
Despite that I have plenty of RAM, a good graphics card and a fast processor, based on the game elements it seemed to slow down very quickly and overall went much more slowly than expected. After a very long time of looking through what is a large manual, I could find no answer to these two questions.Aside for these five problems, the game is a good game. are all in the same queue. The biggest annoyance of this to me was that when playing with NO WARP POINTS, their was no assistance in figuring out what technology would allow me to create them to escape my home system.3. Fifth is an unhelpful manual.1. I found the ship design to be a little bloated, everything is there together.
If those elements were overcome I would say a great game, but those five things brought down the enjoyment of the game for myself.
The other AI players rarely initiate any hostilities, although according to the game anyone without a peace treaty automatically tries to murder any ships encountered, but that doesn't seem to keep the two races from feeling happy with each other.Turn ending eats up major amounts of time. I had to play a few games before I even knew what effects initial set-up would result in. You can increase the speed via one of the several confusing speed settings, but it still takes a long time.If you research more than one level of a technology per turn, instead of it telling you the final result, it gives a status report for each increase. Yes you can turn names off, and icons, and the hex grid, but you lose progressively more functionality. I cycled through "fleets", and found most of them empty of all ships, making me wonder what exactly a fleet was. There's no option to skip the battle.It's easier to adapt to a completely different planet type, such as gas giant vs rocky, than it is to adapt to a different atmosphere, such as hydrogen vs oxygen. Mostly what you see is not your ships, or your beautiful planets, but instead a bunch of flag icons over an ugly hex grid.
First all of the other civilizations do their thing, and then you have to watch all of your ship flag icons fly around. I was in a war when I turned it on, and had several ships near enemy planets. To save your sanity you'll probably need to turn on the global AI manager, but it will still interrupt you with stupid things that it should be doing, and worse it will ruin your empire by doing things like building ships like mad, until you have a massive resource deficit and it has to start abandoning tons of ships and stopping production on all planets.The graphics could be a lot cooler. There's no easy way to pick things to research more to bring them up to equivalent strength.Etc.Basically, it needs huge amounts of playtesting, vastly improved AI, more balance all over the place, dramatic interface improvements, scalability, and a more interesting visual experience. When I checked back later, they were all gone. First off, I played it for several days, so it's good enough to buy and play. Okeedokie.The AI is mostly not there.
There's annoying things like tiny gas giants with no atmosphere - uhhh. So the following complaints are more along the lines of "what to do better next time".The interface leaves much to be desired. I put it on the hardest setting with the most bonuses to the AI players, and still wipe them out by just doing tons of research first. Frequently, both parties are non-fighters who just try to escape the other, so it's a complete non-battle, but you have to sit there and watch as they slowly flee each other and the counter slowly counts. tiny giants with a gas non-atmosphere. Troop transports were made, never invaded any planets (I still don't know how, and the annoyance factor of creating troops, loading them, and experimenting to determine how to not decimate the planet before invading, led to me abandoning that aspect of the game). Unfortunately, after you have 100 colonies, it gets very un-fun. The AI ship control seems to be completely random.
And if you turn planet names on, it turns into a giant mess. Declare war on the entire galaxy, and its mostly the same as if I hadn't.Micromanaging is fun for a few instances per turn. Things could have been made to coexist better.Space battles can be very annoying - you can speed them up, but only so much. Go up 10 levels, and you might have 40+ things to scroll through as each weapon or whatever improves a level.Most researched weapons are useless, as things seem to be more about absolute power and not about balanced strengths and weaknesses.
You can play for days just trying different paths in the tech tree and figuring out which ones the overpowered ones are. Not only does the Balance Mod level out overpowered weapons and strategies, it also improves the graphics of the warp points and even makes the computer players smarter. I think the game is almost more fun to learn than it is to play.Bottom line: for people who have already played Civilization and Galactic Civilizations I and have copious amounts of free time. Anyway, to get back to my original point, once you've built that colony ship and sent it off into space, don't be surprised if you've founded an empty colony that doesn't produce anything. Sure, fifteen different weapons types means some are overpowered and some the AI can't figure out how to use. But I love the game anyway. But it is.
I haven't given up on tractor and repulsor beams yet. Sure it adds complexity to have ice planets and rock planets and gas giants, oxygen atmospheres and methane atmospheres. way more clicking than feels worth it. But those people, like me, should love it. but it also adds realism and a fun little mini-game of getting the right kind of populations on the right planets. Even if you don't finish the rest of this review, make sure you find and download "Captain Kwok's Balance Mod" before playing this game. It also means Space Empires V doesn't follow the market-research-driven philosophy of games like Civilization IV.
Also check www.pbw.cc for a fan-created site that helps you play multiplayer online.The Space Empires series, which began as shareware, is mostly programmed by a single individual. The basic game has fundamental problems like two fighters outclassing a full-size ship. There's tons of complication and micro-managing everywhere. That's the sort of pitfall that a mass-market game like Civilization IV would never allow to happen. That's why there's so much room for modders to improve the game. But I can build one civilization that defends itself with orbiting satellites that shoot missiles, and another that uses shield-depleting weapons so it can board enemy ships and steal their technology. You have to go to the design screen, add a bridge, add crew quarters, add life support, add engines, add a colony module. After I got through my initial period of frustration (and the twenty-minute tutorial), I came to love all the micro-managing and needless detail.
Eventually designing your ships becomes a little mini-game and a good time. Your very first turn, you can't just explore or build a colony ship -- you start with nothing, not even ship designs. You have to remember to manually move population into the colony ship before you launch it. And who are willing to figure out how to give the AI an advantage over them instead of expecting it to do a good job on its own.
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