Should I bother?

You need a mod to get the most out of the AI (Balance Mod is best overall, but Unnamed AI mod is primarily the AI from it ported to the stock tech tree).

Not being interested in mods is kind of missing the boat with gaming these days... thats a very 1980s attitude. The whole point of modern game engines is to be moddable and user-expandable. Its not like this is a game where there are 1000s of poorly done mods floating about, with a select few "professional" ones...

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

I second that. If you don't give at least Balance Mod a fair shake, then you've wasted your money. I'm currently giving GidMod a whirl and find it also enjoyable at the moment; next up will be Devnull's mod. These amount to free additional games for the price of one.. throw in shipsets and whole different concepts, as some mods will ultimately do, and that's even more so the case.

Oh, and FQM + (insert mod of choice here) is the only way to go. Without it is still okay, but the extra character FQM adds.. why not use it?

You didn't mention if you played SE4 or not, but if you did you may recall the most killer AI was done by a modder, and sure kicked my butt without any bonuses, thats for sure.

To jump on the Mod bandwagon: Mods are trivial to install and use, and make no permanent changes to the stock game. If you want to play the stock game with an improved AI, look at Unnamed's AI Mod. Captain Kwok's Balance Mod is also extremely popular, though it changes the gameplay somewhat.

If, for whatever reason, you are adamant about not using mods, then SE:V is probably not for you.

I agree with everything said about using mods with SE5. But the original question was, is it worth playing SE5 SP, and how does it compare with SOTS.
Depends (you're not surprised to get this extremely sophisticated advice, are you?). My personal recommendation is to have a look at both as they are very different, but interesting games - I myself play and like them both, for different reasons. That said, I can't give you a detailed review of both games here - would be too long.

You may be interested in reading this interesting article on 4X space games: http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/pc/history_spaceempire/p2_01.html. It gives a great overview of the genre, but was written a couple of years ago. You'll find a descripton of SE4, but not of SE5 or SOTS, unfortunately.

What's the point in that, when you can have lots of fun in this generation?

Its not as if any previous 4x game has ever had more than barely passable AI anyways... Its just not a game paradigm that lends itself to our very limited ability to write "AIs." Super-simplified game mechanics (eg: most RTS games) can give the illusion of competent AI with very narrowly defined data sets, but what's the point of that? Clearly we want more complex games, since we like 4x.

Since you have SE4, if you want a run for your money, try Carrier Battles 1.5. Its got some really killer AI (for what AI can do), from what I hear.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki

Bluemak, I sympathize with what you are saying, but I don't see what the alternative could look like.

Maybe you should play GalCiv2 (which is said to have the best AI in the genre) in the largest possible galaxy with only one opponent, on a dual core system (the AI is able to use multi-threading to its advantage) and giving the AI a lot of time to think.
Only one opponent in a huge galaxy will give you time to explore at least half of the galaxy without meeting your opponent, time to build up your empire to your liking. You MAY play the colony rush game, but you don't have to.
Sooner or later, you'll meet the other player, and then you can deal with him - or he with you. To make the AI as powerful as possible ensures tough fighting. And I doubt you'll win just by outproducing the AI.

You can do the same with SE5 (huge cluster, only one opponent). The clusters can be made bigger, I believe, than in GalCiv2, but you can't expect too much from the AI.

I guess what you criticize is that quantity counts more than quality, and I tend to agree. If you are too slow, you may have lost the game after 10 moves and before you even encounter an opponent - but you don't know. Maybe you could set up GalCiv2 with a strong AI but with economic and/or research handicaps, slowing its colony rush down?

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

... ever tried Noctis? No micromanagement (well, no management, to be honest), no fighting - but billions of stars to explore, and with the exception of a couple of thousand stars, they still wait for the first Human (pardon: Felysian) visitor, the first explorer to stand or their planet's soil (or whatever the surface is made of), to see the odd fauna and flora living on those planets ...

What? and you are to lazy to play this one?

Most of the games from the mid 80s gave huge bonuses to the AI every time you upped the level, even SSI games. Why should SEV be any different?

Your loss!

Anyone who has played thousands of hours of strategy games should have learnt that multiplayer is the way to go...single player ego trips aside.

You're welcome

----------------------------------------------------------------
Join PBW Emperor Of The Universe League Today. Follow the Link to EOTU
http://thewelloftakahlah.spaces.live.com/blog/

Check the Mods page at the SEwiki.

just a side note, he doesnt really play the game or view this website too much so lets stay away from using abbreviations, or better yet, use them and then say what they mean =p

and I have played a few stock games and after a while you just surpass the AI in research, I even limited myself to like 3 systems and it just got to the point where my ships were a match of 3-1 and they never sent more then a few ships at once

I think there is a way to turn the reproduction of the people down if the problem is having so many people at once. And i think there's also a way to turn down the production speed, but i think if you have few people, production will slow as well. But, i dont really know for a fact. Worth a shot though. that might help.

Well, i hope you like the game.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
If you want peace, then prepare for war.

Just a note on my recommendation that players use medium galaxies for my mod. I did that out of consideration for processing time. You can certainly use larger but it would be slower for the AI to process the turns.

For an example on time considerations: Currently running a test game of the next version of Unnamed AIs. Turn 190. The whole medium galaxy has been filled up by colonies as much as possible (besides the ones destroyed recently by fighting). So counting all races there are about 300 colonies, 550 ships, 3000 units. Using the programmers command, 'runturns 10', took about 10 - 12 minutes to run those 10 turns. So about a minute a turn. Though it did take about 3 minutes to watch the AI move all its ships and perform about 5 fleet attacks for a single turn. This of course would take longer on a larger map and other peoples computer may not run as fast as mine.

Whatever you decide to do, have fun and good luck.

-Unnamed

Unnamed Mod

Also, have you factored in emigration (between your own breathable colonies)? This is likely the largest factor in 'fast' growth.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go to this Wiki if interested. No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE

Yes was abit hostile with you, wasn't I? Guess it just comes from you original post and the attitude of I've been playing games since the 80s and then asking a kind of dumb question about the AI and huge bonuses...or maybe it was just wishful thinking! Bonuses make up for what the AI lacks...intelligence. At least that happens in complex strat games. But that can of worms has been opened lots of times before...so lets not go there now!...at least I am not going to, you guys can do what you like.

And one last question though, doesn't the question you asked " Should I bother?" imply laziness or is that just me?...probably just me.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Join PBW Emperor Of The Universe League Today. Follow the Link to EOTU
http://thewelloftakahlah.spaces.live.com/blog/

Yes, the game is worth getting and playing if you love strategy and tactics games with alot of details and options in a game. After all, the more options, the more variety, and the more variety the more strategies and tactics available to increase the playablility of the game. I've been playing S&T games since the mid 70's (Avalon Hill mostly, starfleet battles, federation and empire in 80's, etc, and yes i'm that old lol). The game is great as a stand alone, especially if you are learning it for the first time, but eventually you will see that the A.I. is weak at best, but by then you will have learned enough of the game to play it well. Once you reach the point of being bored with the A.I., then thats a good time to get some mods. As far as needing the mods you don't til you get bored, unfortunately, not much effort was put into the A.I. as i feel they should have, but thats just my opinion. There are some great mods out there to improve the game when you're ready to use them, so no worries. Hope this helps. good hunting and kill well.

Don't wait for 1.64; its just an incremental weekly beta build (after a suspicious delay, at any rate...). Chances are the next patch won't come out for a few months.

SpaceEmpires.net | Space Empires Wiki