Introduction
Some of you may have noticed me playing this rather a lot this weekend, so I thought I'd chuck a review together. SEIV is a turn based strategy game in the same vein as Civlisation. Starting on your little homeworld in a corner of the galaxy, and expanding across systems in order to gather more resources for your empire. New technologies are researched along the way and other races will interact in trade and war. This isn't a new game - in fact there's a Space Empires V - but apparently it's the best in the series and it's only a fiver off Steam. Better still, it's very customisable and there are player created mods for popular sci-fi settings like Star Wars, Star Trek and Babylon 5.
Gameplay
The game is played out on maps of the various solar systems. These are linked together by warp points (like wormholes) which allow ships to travel between systems. Within the sytems are planets that need to be colonised and exploited to provide space for the facilities that support your empire and the resources with which to build them. There aren't a massive amount of facilities to choose from, but that's no bad thing as planets can be earmarked for set roles and once all the facility slots are full they pretty much run themselves.
The variety comes in the way spacecraft work. Every ship is built to a design created by the player using modules that have been researched. There's a large variety of these modules to do various things, but not so large that it's overwhelming. Ships can then be built in the spaceyards and formed into fleets. Most ships will inevitably be warships, but others can colonise planets and later in the game create or destroy them.
The early stages of a typical game will involve designing a simple ship with which to explore, while colonising the nearby planets in your starting system. Early on you'll only be able to colonise one (of three) types of planets, so most will remain empty. As your exploration of the galaxy continues other races will be met. Generally they're friendly and will want to trade (a simple mechanism that's automated), but they still seem to destroy your explorers given chance.
Colonisation of nearby worlds isn't too taxing and expansion happens pretty quickly - it's rare to be sat waiting for resources to be generated before something can be built.
Eventually the borders between empires will become narrow enough for tension to build, and other races begin to get tetchy. By this point enough research has usually been done to enable some half decent combat ships to be built, although hostilities seem to be mostly restricted to espionage and sabotage with only a few skirmishes and lots of rattling of sabres. By this point different colony types should be available and all planets will be supporting the war machine. Even so, every ship costs to maintain and they're quite a drain on the economy. Hostile planets can be put under siege or bombed in a variety of unpleasant ways so that you can recolonise them with your own people.
Towards the end of a game technology advances will allow ships to be designed that pull asteroid fields together to create new (and usually very rich) planets. After this new stars can be created, warp points opened and closed and other stellar terrain features adjusted. Combat will by now include dreadnaughts and carriers launching dozens of fighters in large scale fleet combat.
Sights and Sounds
The graphics and sounds are a little dated, but in a game such as this that's not such a big deal. What's more, all of it can be modified either by non-official mods or, if you're feeling brave, by the player. It's functional and clear though.
Stuff that sucks
Well, it's pretty ugly. That's not a big deal and it can be fixed with mods, but it might put some off. The AI isn't brilliant and tends to contradict itself, but again this can be remedied with mods. The only real complaint I've had is that there's no consistency with how many slots for facilities each planets have, so siting your colonies is a bit hit and miss.
Conclusion
It really is Civilisation in space. A little bit simpler than Civ, but also more geared to war. Anyone looking for a game that will suck up their time, and games take a very long time, might do well to invest. For the price you can't really go wrong.
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