It seems a bit easy

[Matius]

Hi

I've been a big fan of 4x games since MoO and somehow, never managed to get my head around SEIV until this last week or two. Now I've taken the time to overcome the initial learning curve, I realise what I've been missing and would rate this game above even Master of Orion 2 itself!

The only problem is I've restarted a few times, and I seem to be able to crush any opposition. They occasionally throw a largish fleet at my border, but nothing powerful enough to get past my satellite-infested warp-points. In my most recent game I've also installed a battlestation at each of my empires entry points, and the enemy empires are nowhere near advanced enough to threaten them.


How can the difficulty be increased? You guys have been playing this for years and must be much better at it than me, so how do you deal with it?

I don't want to modify the game too much but I do like the idea of more realism. Do any of the realism mods have a significant impact on difficulty?

I tend to be biased toward research and militarism if this matters at all.

thanks for listening

ps. I'm currently using TDM Modpack

[General Woundwort]

For more "realism" there's always Proportions. Colony-building is a *lot* slower, and taking an enemy homeworld is a cast-iron bear.

Of course, for the ultimate in difficulty, there's nothing like going over to SEIV-PBW and matching wits with real sentient opponents. (Sadly, something I no longer have the time to do...)

(Edit - added link)

[douglas]

Staying within the limits of the stock game, high difficulty high bonus TDM Modpack is the hardest AI you can get for single player. If that's not enough, you could try turning on team mode (all AIs vs you) and not using all of your racial points in designing your empire. Also, don't use tactical combat if you don't have to - the AI is predictable enough that any half-decent human player can defeat much larger AI controlled fleets in tactical combat. This would be suicidal in multiplayer, but don't use training facilities - the AI will never train its ships and fleets except by accident. Finally, try playing in simultaneous movement mode - that's what the AI was designed for, and it's very difficult to run a multiplayer game any other way.

If you're willing to play a mod, the AI Campaign mod available at Spaceempires.net was specifically designed to make the AI as hard as possible, but it uses some very unfair tactics to do so.

Finally, for a real challenge, head on over to PBW to play against some human opponents. BTW, there's a fun game of everybody vs the space monsters still waiting for players (using Adamant Mod) called The Galactic Invasion 2.

Edit: Apparently editing a post seriously screws up the links stuff. I'll try posting the links in a new post.

[douglas]

Links that should have worked in my previous post:

Spaceempires.net
PBW
Adamant Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Play By Web is the way to get challenging opponents.

One that nobody seems to have mentioned yet is Pirates & Nomads mod.

Especially if you like fighting tactical combats, or focussing on a small group of named ships.

Play as a pirate or nomad against regular AIs, and you will almost certainly not win
Struggling to stay alive with a tiny fleet, building secret bases in nebulae and storms, raiding enemy ships for tech and resources.
You can do quite a lot with a single-digit number of ships

PS:
Most mods will require parts of the imagemod to be installed.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/imagemod/
Download the imagemod packs, and install them over top of your stock pictures.
- They do not change any stock images, but simply extend the list of available images and animations available for use.
- Installing it to your stock folder means you only need one copy, and it will work for all mods instantly.

[Matius]

Lol thanks douglas

I'm going to restart following all this advice.
I'm checking out Proportions and Fyrons Quadrant mods today, along with the settings Grandpa Kim suggested.

PBW does interest me, and I'll probably try it at least once, but I haven't yet read up on how it works.

I didn't know about the image mods, they look pretty cool. Do many mods use them? Downloading now, anyway.

I'll probably check back in a few hours... being a nomad sounds like a totally different game so now I just need a ten-day week so I can check out the possibilities

[Grandpa Kim]

Great as the game is, the AI is notoriously poor. Even at its best (and TDM is the best in the stock game) it is easy to beat. Only in exceptional circumstances will you get the challenge you desire.

Some things you can do:

• Use a small map
• Move all computer player settings to high
• Select the best empires rather than random selection -- United Flora and Space Monsters are two I know of
• Let the AI use 2000, 3000 or 5000 points while you use none.
• Play PBW http://seiv.pbw.cc/text/

You will eventually play PBW against other people; the only true competition you will find. It can be very humbling.

As for mods, I'll have to let others answer.

[AngleWyrm]

Grandpa Kim said:
Great as the game is, the AI is notoriously poor.

Unfortunately very few people have had any experience designing AI algorithms; most modders are used to scripting languages, and can even write code, but AI design is the Great Unknown Frontier to many, which scares 'experts'. Thus the subject is hard to work on in the forums, primarily for lack of interest.

[Fyron]

There are no AI algorithms to mod in SEIV, so having experience with such would not help modders any, unfortunately. Modding SEIV AI is more of an exercise in tedium than anything. I don't know how the TDM folks found the patience to work with it.

For a bigger Nomadic challenge, use the AI patcher program SJ wrote and patch the TDM AIs to work in P&N mod.

[douglas]

Fortunately, modding SEV AI should be a much more rewarding task, as the actual AI algorithms will be exposed in moddable script files.