Space Empires V | 
| From: Navarre (Software)
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $12.90
You Save: $7.09 (35%)
New (5) from $12.90
Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 3921
Format: Cd
Platforms: Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows Xp, Windows 98
Genre: Role Playing Games
ESRB: Everyone
Media: CD-ROM
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.4 x 1.8
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
MPN: 627006902109
Model: 6-27006-90210-9
UPC: 627006902109
EAN: 0627006902109
ASIN: B000G1G9ZS
Release Date: October 17, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | Detailed Empire management - Research, Intelligence, Politics, Construction Queues, Vehicle Design, and more | | • | Explore a large galaxy with 100 solar systems - 15 planets each | | • | Randomly generated map for every game (or load an existing map) | | • | Discover black holes, nebulae, binary stars, trinary stars, asteroid belts, gas giants, cosmic storms, and more | | • | Huge Technology Tree - Over 6000 tech levels, 500+ components and facilities |
|
| Editorial Reviews:
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: Read 9 more reviews...
 Space empires four June 22, 2008
Glenn Corbett (e. rockaway, ny United States)
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.
Does everything you might want, most of it poorly December 29, 2007
Jodawi (Seattle, WA USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
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.
 Don't play the base game -- download the Balance Mod! June 28, 2007
Karl Kovaciny (rural USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Even if you don't finish the rest of this review, make sure you find and download "Captain Kwok's Balance Mod" before playing this game. The basic game has fundamental problems like two fighters outclassing a full-size ship. Not only does the Balance Mod level out overpowered weapons and strategies, it also improves the graphics of the warp points and even makes the computer players smarter! Also check www.pbw.cc for a fan-created site that helps you play multiplayer online.
The Space Empires series, which began as shareware, is mostly programmed by a single individual. That's why there's so much room for modders to improve the game. It also means Space Empires V doesn't follow the market-research-driven philosophy of games like Civilization IV. There's tons of complication and micro-managing everywhere.
Your very first turn, you can't just explore or build a colony ship -- you start with nothing, not even ship designs. You have to go to the design screen, add a bridge, add crew quarters, add life support, add engines, add a colony module... way more clicking than feels worth it. But it is! Eventually designing your ships becomes a little mini-game and a good time. Anyway, to get back to my original point, once you've built that colony ship and sent it off into space, don't be surprised if you've founded an empty colony that doesn't produce anything. You have to remember to manually move population into the colony ship before you launch it. That's the sort of pitfall that a mass-market game like Civilization IV would never allow to happen.
But I love the game anyway. After I got through my initial period of frustration (and the twenty-minute tutorial), I came to love all the micro-managing and needless detail. Sure it adds complexity to have ice planets and rock planets and gas giants, oxygen atmospheres and methane atmospheres... but it also adds realism and a fun little mini-game of getting the right kind of populations on the right planets. Sure, fifteen different weapons types means some are overpowered and some the AI can't figure out how to use. But I can build one civilization that defends itself with orbiting satellites that shoot missiles, and another that uses shield-depleting weapons so it can board enemy ships and steal their technology. You can play for days just trying different paths in the tech tree and figuring out which ones the overpowered ones are. I haven't given up on tractor and repulsor beams yet. I think the game is almost more fun to learn than it is to play.
Bottom line: for people who have already played Civilization and Galactic Civilizations I and have copious amounts of free time. And who are willing to figure out how to give the AI an advantage over them instead of expecting it to do a good job on its own. But those people, like me, should love it.
 What a breath of fresh air Space Empires V is March 9, 2007
Martin Waterhouse (San Ramon, Ca)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
SE V is one of those rare games where once you have grasped the basics then you start to peel back the layers before you know it's 3 am!! Think of it as Civilization in space. Except that it uses a tech-tree that's an order of magnitude larger, much more devious AI (that doesn't cheat) and a phenominal socio-political model that really challenges the player.
The graphics and menus are not as polished as current uber-titles like Company of Heroes, Supreme Commander or Battlefield 2042 so an uber graphics card is not required, however this game can really use a fast CPU to manage all the AI player resolution activity.
Thus if you are only looking for eye-candy and a short quick action-packed visual game - give SE V a miss. But if you really want the ultimate thinking grand space-opera strategy game - this is the only one you'll ever need!!!
Boring February 26, 2007
N. Perz (St. Louis)
6 out of 11 found this review helpful
While the overall design is nice, the game moves much too slowly to be enjoyable. The micro-management is considerable and the fleet/ground combats are disappointing. Combat is, ultimatly, the driving force of the game but the player mostly just watches. You get more input in designing the ships than you do using them.
The technology and diplomacy aspects seem to work fairly well.
It's a decent design but just not very much fun.
Not recommended.
|
|
|
