Space Empires IV was great, in my opinion, but Space Empires V is awful. The research pretty much ruins the game; every technology has 100 levels which take at least one turn to research each, and increase the effectiveness of a component by something like 0.1% each time. I guess it's meant to simulate gradual improvement over time but I just didn't feel like my research projects were going anywhere at any time...
See, I have the opposite opinion. I've been playing Space Empires since I found SE3 on a shareware disc at a family member's house. I like it as a series more than probably any other series, even Civilization (!!).
In SE4 they really changed up the research model in a way I didn't like. Five took it back to the original model which I think is much better as it gives the player more control. I guess I like micromanagement when it makes sense.
For those who don't know/haven't played the games, in Space Empires you build research centers amongst all your planets, each center generating so many research points. Now, in Space Empires 2, 3, and 5 when you enter the research screen you are given the choice of spreading your total research capacity amongst all the available topics (and there's a lot of topics). This means you can research several things at the same time, putting a few points into a tech you'll want in the future and many points towards the techs you want sooner. Or all points into one tech if you need it as fast as you can get it.
In 4, however, the research method was changed. Now you just put your techs in a queue and it puts all the possible points into the first tech on the list. If the tech can be finished the next turn the extra points spill over into the next tech.
Can somebody reccomend me a game with a large but still meaningful techtree(ie: no lasers v1(100 dps) lasers v2(200 dps) lasers v3(300 dps) .... lasers v48(4800 dps) and that kind of stuff)? Doesn't matter if it's space or not.
Hmm, well in GalCiv 2 there's three types of weapons and consequently three weapon defense types. While amongst each type it does suffer from the treadmill dps thing, it also influences how you build your ships. Since one civ's ships could use lasers and another uses missiles you can't pump all your research into one defense because you'd be left pretty open to destruction.
The non-weapon tech's also have a bit o' that problem, but you have to choose where to focus your development early on, I guess (do you rush trade or focus on research, etc).
In Space Empires V there's a hell of a lot of techs, but those techs are also "leveled" so quantum laser VI vs. quantum laser V is just a dmg boost. But you've got a lot to choose from (beams, lasers, missiles, gravity weapons, black hole guns, warp guns, component damaging weapons, shield depletion, even a wave motion gun!). In the non-weapon side there's a huge field to work with, even unique tech branches that you can choose as a racial trait (temporal tech, religious tech, organic tech, etc).
I'm not sure if any game has a truly unique tech tree in which there is no "lvl 2 is stronger than lvl 1", because how else do you represent better techs. After all, even in real life the only tactical difference between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb is the size of the explosion (dps if you'd like).
And as a final note for anyone looking into getting SE5: there's a Steam version available which I guess makes multiplayer mode better as you can use Steam for mutiplayer & play against non-Steam people.
Here is the Steam page for it. It's only $15 there, or you can get both IV and V for $25!
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Topic: Galactic Conquest (Read 6750 times)