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Product Description

In Space Empires V, an entire galaxy is yours to manage! You control every aspect of amassive empire -- and it's up to you to keep it running. Create the politics systems required to keep whole worlds running, design technology, encourage commerce and create a space empire unlike anything the univrse has ever seen before! Detailed Race Creation - Unique ship models, race picture, racial traits, technology, history, and more Completely customizable game graphics - Create your own planets, stars, vehicles, etc.

Customer Reviews:

• Space Empires V
  Personally I got hooked on the Space Empires series through the demo for SE IV. Shortly thereafter, SEV came out. When I noticed the games price had dropped from the last time I checked, I decided it was time to purchase the full game. The game itself has a few balance issues which can be corrected by utilizing player created add-ons. All player created add-ons (there are many) are easy to find over the web, and have great support with them for troubleshooting. There is a very active and good online community for this game, both for getting solo play tips, as well as to find players for multiplayer games....more info
• Just Ok
  The game itself is good except in several areas. First is that I could not figure out how to redesign colonies by demolishing buildings. Second is that the tech-tree is very poor. Third is that the ship design is very time intensive due to poorly designed interface. Fourth is that the game slows down quickly. Fifth is an unhelpful manual.
  
  1. The demolition of buildings is negative in my mind because if you build research colonies and then you complete the tech-tree, you are stuck with colonies that make no real contribution to your empire.
  
  2. Their is no real assitance in helping you to assess what tech discovery will lead to what future development. The biggest annoyance of this to me was that when playing with NO WARP POINTS, their was no assistance in figuring out what technology would allow me to create them to escape my home system.
  
  3. I found the ship design to be a little bloated, everything is there together. Guns, missiles, colony bases etc. are all in the same queue. Their is a filter button, but having to constantly go across the screen to get to it, scroll and select is kind of a pain and is time consuming when you could be spending time playing the game.
  
  4. Despite that I have plenty of RAM, a good graphics card and a fast processor, based on the game elements it seemed to slow down very quickly and overall went much more slowly than expected. For any potential buyer whose played Pax Imperia Eminent Domain, this game goes much slower.
  
  5. I consulted the manual to try to figure out how to demolish buildings, and to try and find out what line of technologies I needed to discover for warp point creation to allow expansion. After a very long time of looking through what is a large manual, I could find no answer to these two questions.
  
  
  Aside for these five problems, the game is a good game. If those elements were overcome I would say a great game, but those five things brought down the enjoyment of the game for myself. I am neutral on this game and would just say buy it at your own risk, I'd say you have a 50/50 chance of loving it or hating it....more info
• Does everything you might want, most of it poorly
  First off, I played it for several days, so it's good enough to buy and play. So the following complaints are more along the lines of "what to do better next time".
  
  The interface leaves much to be desired. I had to play a few games before I even knew what effects initial set-up would result in.
  
  There's annoying things like tiny gas giants with no atmosphere - uhhh... tiny giants with a gas non-atmosphere. Okeedokie.
  
  The AI is mostly not there. I put it on the hardest setting with the most bonuses to the AI players, and still wipe them out by just doing tons of research first. Declare war on the entire galaxy, and its mostly the same as if I hadn't.
  
  Micromanaging is fun for a few instances per turn. Unfortunately, after you have 100 colonies, it gets very un-fun. To save your sanity you'll probably need to turn on the global AI manager, but it will still interrupt you with stupid things that it should be doing, and worse it will ruin your empire by doing things like building ships like mad, until you have a massive resource deficit and it has to start abandoning tons of ships and stopping production on all planets.
  
  The graphics could be a lot cooler. Mostly what you see is not your ships, or your beautiful planets, but instead a bunch of flag icons over an ugly hex grid. And if you turn planet names on, it turns into a giant mess. Yes you can turn names off, and icons, and the hex grid, but you lose progressively more functionality. Things could have been made to coexist better.
  
  Space battles can be very annoying - you can speed them up, but only so much. Frequently, both parties are non-fighters who just try to escape the other, so it's a complete non-battle, but you have to sit there and watch as they slowly flee each other and the counter slowly counts. There's no option to skip the battle.
  
  It's easier to adapt to a completely different planet type, such as gas giant vs rocky, than it is to adapt to a different atmosphere, such as hydrogen vs oxygen.
  
  The AI ship control seems to be completely random. I was in a war when I turned it on, and had several ships near enemy planets. When I checked back later, they were all gone. I cycled through "fleets", and found most of them empty of all ships, making me wonder what exactly a fleet was. Troop transports were made, never invaded any planets (I still don't know how, and the annoyance factor of creating troops, loading them, and experimenting to determine how to not decimate the planet before invading, led to me abandoning that aspect of the game).
  
  The other AI players rarely initiate any hostilities, although according to the game anyone without a peace treaty automatically tries to murder any ships encountered, but that doesn't seem to keep the two races from feeling happy with each other.
  
  Turn ending eats up major amounts of time. First all of the other civilizations do their thing, and then you have to watch all of your ship flag icons fly around. You can increase the speed via one of the several confusing speed settings, but it still takes a long time.
  
  If you research more than one level of a technology per turn, instead of it telling you the final result, it gives a status report for each increase. Go up 10 levels, and you might have 40+ things to scroll through as each weapon or whatever improves a level.
  
  Most researched weapons are useless, as things seem to be more about absolute power and not about balanced strengths and weaknesses. There's no easy way to pick things to research more to bring them up to equivalent strength.
  
  Etc.
  
  Basically, it needs huge amounts of playtesting, vastly improved AI, more balance all over the place, dramatic interface improvements, scalability, and a more interesting visual experience....more info
• Not ready for the bright lights just yet
  I'm a long time SE4 player and have been waiting for this to come out for a year now. I should have kept waiting. Like previous releases in the series the game has some show-stopping bugs, some of which were addressed in the first post-release patch (though the patch seemed to introduce AI bugs), but these shouldn't be a problem in a few months time (by which time the price will have dropped anyway!)
  
  Unfortunately the game has gone in directions that I no longer enjoy so despite my confidence that the game will eventually be playable, it won't be playable in a way I'm going to get a kick out of.
  
  The realtime 3D combat is nasty. I understand that shuffling 2D tiles around a board is very 20th century and everyone is moving to 3D but 2D tiles can look pretty darn good whereas one guy (Aaron Hall, the man behind the Space Empires games) coding a game on his own is doing a great job to turn out a 3D system at all but it's not something you're going to show off to anyone. The 3D extends to the map screens so now you can't even see your ships or planets anymore because everything is obscured with floating flags. The UI is pretty customizable and you can even go for a 2D only view but none of it is as clear as the plain old 2D view from SE4. There's word this may be put back into the game so reserve judgement on that.
  
  Six months or a year from now there will probably be half a dozen mods out and most of the problems will have been sorted out. Hopefully....more info
• Space Empires Continues to Impress
  I've played several of the previous generations of SE, and this one still has the same elements that made the others fun.
  The obviously more updated graphics and play options make the game look more sophisticated than it has ever looked before.
  I love playing this....more info
• Space empires four
  The amount of choices is astounding. I really love the tech tree and the ship design elements of the game. I' m torn between the SE4 and SE5 fighting styles. Wish there was a way to combine the best of both.That being said the game bogs down by the sheer number of planets and ships you have and it can become very difficult to keep track of everything.Especially after saving the game and not playing in awhile.
  
  Another problem to me any way, is it takes a long time to initially get enough techs to build ships that are worth while to upgrade. I.E. Bigger hulls. I don't mind that so much but the problem I have is when the bigger hulls start coming they now come to fast. By the time I have actually built my first bigger hull, I am able to build 1 or 2 levels higher tech wise than the hulls that are now being built,making the new ships instantly obsolete. I would like to get a little use out of the hulls before I'm replacing them....more info
• One of the best 4x games ever
  The wait has been long but finally it is here. Space Empires V has been in development for over two years and finally Aaron Hall, the sole developer for this game, and SFI have released it.
  
  While version 1.0 does have many bugs, the game overall has continued, via support and updates, to improve dramatically since it release. One thing is for certain; Aaron Hall loves to support his games.
  
  SE V is an empire building game of epic proportions. As a player you set up your empire and choose racial traits, flag and ship designs, racial portrait, and general game settings. You can choose from a low-tech start to a high tech start depending upon your desires. I have found that the low tech start is perfect for me as I enjoy the time it takes to research new technologies, and man does this game ever deliver on those, over a 1,000 technologies to research. I especially enjoy designing my own ships, fighters, bases, weapons platforms, drones, and satellites. You even get to design carriers, and troops. The 3D combat is a true blessing as it gives the game a depth that hasn't been present before. The ground tactical combat is a bit dated looking but still loads of fun. Remember people play these kinds of games not for the eye candy but for the depth of game play and boy does SE V ever deliver in that regard.
  
  While there is too much to go into as far as this game is concerned, know one thing for certain, this is on highly addictive master peace and it will suck up your free time like a black hole does light and matter.
  
  The game is also extremely moddable. One of the best features of the game in my opinion is that any one with note pad can edit, modify, and alter the settings of this game. It is no surprise that the modding community for SE IV kept that game alive for over six years and it is to be expected that the same will be true for SE V.
  
  Remember this game is not for people who are out to play games like Empires At War or GalCiv. This game is for a much more serious gamer who enjoys game play well over eye candy. A player who wants depth in their games and a real sense of role-play. This game will above all else delivers in the sense that it makes you truly feel as if you are actually an emperor controlling your own expansive galactic empire. A true gem in the rough that just keeps getting better and better.
  
  For the price this game is a steal given the amount of time one will spend playing it over the years. SE IV has been played for over six years and is still a top-notch game. The same will be true for Space Empires V. Enjoy....more info