What game settings do YOU use?

I also play Balance Mod and play it with the AI set to hardest difficulty and high bonus which DOES make for a pretty brutal game. Ultimately, this is the most enjoyable setting to play, given the right conditions. I think putting the AI on hard with low/medium bonuses gives a nice, fairly challenging experience overall until you want to take it at full blast.

I play Balance Mod, about 100 systems, paradise quadrant, high AI difficulty, no or low AI bonus but AI team Mod, about 10 full AI empires but no neutrals, no intel.
All games I had this way were very interesting and fun.

The difficulty system does just deactivate some ministers (which are nothing more than the AI functions).
The Bonus modificator multiples their resource income by 2, 3, 5 and increases their build rate by 1.5, 2 , 3
This means if you played with the bonus setting to the best option they got 5 times the resources and would build 3 times faster. It is clear that with such a setting you would quickly lose. (You would have to get 5 times of research points - means 5 times building research factories - than the computer empires to get the same available RP to spend.)
Unless you are a veteran player who can build optimal ship designs and make optimal planet layouts you surely will destroyed in no time.

So my settings are usually a large paradise galaxy, with random computer players and no neutrals
Difficulty the hardest but no boni.

PS: If you take over the computer AI with the master password it will have huge deficits after one turn. And when using the runturns cheats the boni will apply aswell, so after when after X turns you want to play further, you will have the same situation.

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At the moment you can't stop the AI building these useless intel facilities. But if you give them a low bonus that would compensate that. Another possibility is that you mod the intel facilities to produce research points instead of intel points or you remove the intel tech completely from the tech area file.
The 10+ minutes for the game turn is not problem for me. I have 1000+ things to do in this time! In SE IV (with my old PII 233Mhz computer) I had turns of over 2 hours.

I play on Paradise Settings, small galaxy, high difficulty, but just low bonus, with low number of AIs. I'm not good enough yet to actually defeat the AI (which almost always starts at a system right next to me) with high bonuses... but if I don't give them any bonus it gets boring really fast.. by that I mean within the first 100 turns. I got lucky in one game with HIGH bonus wherein I was able to hold off the AI that declared war on me for about several hundred turns using lots and lots of frigates and destroyers (with just minor upgrades every now and then)... until he SWARMED my system with cruisers and annihilated my fleet... great game!

LOW bonus makes the games interesting enough for me without being too difficult. MEDIUM bonus, well it's still pretty rough for my skill level. As for intel, I usually just try to do my best to catch up with the AI in terms of this. I mostly spend my intel on defense so the really crippling intel projects rarely hit me. I like the games to get interesting early so I play on small galaxies usually. I don't want games to last weeks so I play small.

I use the IRM mod. With a standard mid-life galaxy of 200 systems or so. I give the AI a low bonus.

I play with medium bonus, hard AI, and the 3-homeworld start. I don't use neutrals. This keeps most AI's from failing to expand - a problem I got tired of seeing.

If I take any 'racial' bonuses, I take bad stuff too so my points balance back and I have the same amount I started with.

Other than that, I'm still mixing things up. My last game I tried the small universe. It was too small to suit me, but I wouldn't have known if I didn't try it.

I guess I could be in trouble if I got into an early war with these handicaps, but so far I've been lucky. The AI in unnamed's mod and BM is fairly friendly, and even stock isn't as hostile as it used to be.

I usually check the standings from time to time, and it's amazing how fast the AI builds, even with the bonus. I suspect they may be getting bogged down with maintenance, and I know supply has been a major obstacle for them as well.

Balance Mod is supposed to have a new intel system that gives you some chance to avoid Intel projects even when you have no defense. But for a while there was a bug in it that meant all intel projects succeeded no matter what. You might want to try downloading
http://www.captainkwok.net/files/script_main_intelligence.zip
and rerunning that turn.

This thread is a nice change from all the ones where people are like, "Please make it more difficult, team mode isn't hard enough for me any more!"

Iron Giant, I'm playing a PBW game at the moment with 3 starting planets, the furthest two planets were 5 systems apart if I remember correctly.

I've had them together, and spaced apart, each with a warp line to a 'hub' system. I prefer together, but a little spread has advantages too.

You could always save your starting options & empire, and just restart 'til you get what you're after. Shouldn't take too many tries.

There's a bigger start (I forget if it's 5 or 10) I'm tempted to try one of these days. Orientation could take me a few turns, but there'd be less chance of anyone getting bullied early in the game. Might need to reduce the AI bonus for that one.

I used to start with the lowest amount of tech, but I bumped it up a notch. I still play with slow tech, and it's not slow enough to suit me. BM > stock for tech costs.

In Galactic Civ tech came by so fast I turned it all the way down to the lowest speed. I wanted to be able to design a ship and have it be my main go-to ship for about a year, not have it be obsolete in two turns. But since Space Empires turns take like an hour each, tech can't come too fast. I like how you don't have to wait more than a turn or two for most techs or most ships. It makes up for the week it takes to actually get those ships to the front.

I usually like to play a tech heavy race in a tech expensive universe. Specifically...

Tech cost is high
Computer player difficulty is Medium
Computer Players number is high
Starting Technology points to zero
Starting resources is low
Starting planets is always one (for multiple start planets the computer usually picks the worst planets to colonize and give to me - so, gave up on multi-planet starts).

Number of systems is 170-255 (had to add names to SystemNames file and increase number of systems in Settings file); all warp points connected

Random events number set to high
Random event severity set to high (not catastrophic)
Vision in home system limited to homeworld
Cheat codes are OFF
Usually push number of ships and units up a bit.

I once tried a no-warp-point game (with the high tech cost). It took forever to get out of home system, but when I did...I just walked all over them.

Have yet to complete a game - part of that is the game is time intensive, another part is the game progresses so far and then crashes. (Some times I just give up for a while, go back to SE IV and wait for next patch release for SE V.)

i also play a low tech game with a high tech race. I haven't tried to use the no warp points yet though. Will have to try that.

Brian

If you're playing against AI just barrel across the galaxy. The AI doesn't comprehend roleplay.

I prefer large galaxy, many player, high tech cost, no intel games. I also prefer stock but Balance Mod is good.