how do turns play out?

[Daehawk]

hey does SE4 play more like Stars! or more like MOO1/2?..I ask cause i really hated how in Stars! that you had to do stuff every turn..I much prefer the way in the MOO games I could click 5 or 6 times in a row and then check my research or have a new ship built..then click a few more to get something else....so what Im asking really is it *click* plot course,do research *click* build something *click*...or more *clickclickclickclick* do something ?

[Nitram Draw]

While there are ministers to do a lot of things there is a lot of clicking.

[pathfinder]

depends on how you play Daehawk. You can plaay the MOO way (ministers on) but it has its drawbacks...

[Suicide Junkie]

I just go and fill up the build queues on the turn I colonize. The planet is then OK on its own for a few years until it finishes, at which time, repeat build of units is started.

Fleets of ships helps to reduce clicking, but I usually don't give multi-turn orders, since I want to be able to react quickly to enemy movement. "Repair at nearest" is a wonderful order, you can then ignore the ship until it gets to the pile at home.

A series of orders is possible, just clickclickclick and smack the repeat orders button if you want.

quote:

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i really hated how in Stars! that you had to do stuff every turn

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How so? I always had huge chains of queues and orders built up, so only new ships needed to be worked on.
Patrol orders while in a minefield would cut down most ships passing through automatically.

When you say *click* are those 'end turn' clicks?

In Stars, you could easily get caught flipping through those 100-200 news Messages. Se4 tends to have 10 Messages per turn, but tiny empires can average as low as 1, and special events like tech trade can really flood the log (new tech level! new tech area! another new tech level! etc.)

Overall I'd say SE4 has lots of events like Stars!, with less clutter. That's probably because you get to watch as everything happens, so there is less that has to be logged.
I haven't played MOO much, (technically two games, really about 1/4 of a game) so I can't really comment on how it relates.

The detail is the best feature. Try the demo if you're not sure.

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Looks like my rambling may have drifted off topic for a bit there, oh well.

[Windborne]

You can use ministers in seiv to do almost anything, including play the whole game for you, but to my way of thinking that defeats the purpose, except perhaps when your testing a new ai file.

Better to roleplay everything in your empire yourself, especially if your playing against other human players, the computer is stupid enough that it gets kind of boring kicking it's behind game after game with the same old tactics, but my friends/rivals learn with me, especially when I feel compelled to brag about some new idea. LOL

[Taqwus]

To reduce micromanagement I tend to leave colonization (after the first few), transports, and minelaying (if I bother) to the Ministers. I find planet creation and nebula destruction likewise tedious enough to automate occasionally; and I'd add black hole destruction to the list, if I weren't concerned that the SM ships probably would go through a damaging warp point when on autopilot.

Is that optimal? No. But I'm the sort of chap who hates to have to pull out a calculator (or spreadsheet) for a game to find optimal values... calculating troop morale in _Empires in Arms_ is annoying enough.

Then, I also tend to have a fairly busy research queue -- often a full one during the early/mid-game, when I'm going full-bore for infrastructure, so I don't have to check that one often. Intelligence, once in place, usually is given a repeating queue involving intel sabotage, crew insurrection, and counterintel, so that's low maintenance as well.

I'm with suicide_junkie when it comes to filling up build queues on new colonies. I'll pack 'em with facilities first; they don't have the pop to spawn off new colony ships (well, unless I'm Organic and there's a replicant center in the system, and I'm feeling particularly Hive-like), and I really normally don't have that much other ship production near frontiers; rather, more towards interior systems closer to mustering points where I can assemble/train fleets (when, say, you're going up against Temporal ships, which possibly have Event Predictor III's in their home systems [+30% combat bonus], take every bonus you can get...).

So I don't end up clicking *that* much... and if Aaron ever adds a 'Skip Minister-Controlled Ships', I'll be clicking even less.

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night