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www.apezone.com for a demo( http://www.apezone.com/install/stundemo.exe 2.8mbs) download it while you read this! 
part homm, part civ sudg is a very fun game. while it is real time it has a one more turn feel. something is always happening but usually you are ordering starships around, building, or choosing your next research item. it is a simple game and well balanced with strong ai.
as the name implies the game revolves around starships. there are numerous special abilities they can get(found on planets by exploring ala homm), and many different ways to equip them which leads to deep gameplay. in a way your starships are like heroes in homm but here the emphasis is on choosing what equipment to put on them instead of choosing abilities when they level up. a starship's time is the most valuable resource in the game. so choosing whether to explore, upgrade, defend, or attack can sometimes be a hard choice.
there are various opening moves you can make in the beginning of the game. you could immediately start exploring with your opening scout starship(which is the weakest in the game) or you could upgrade it with more weapons, more sensors, etc. each can be a good choice depending on the galaxy you are in but usually you won't know until you actually start exploring and by then it's better to keep going than turn around and re-equip right away.
research also plays on these opening moves too. do you research laboraties to to further increase your future research speed or do you go for weapons, shields, sensors, starship drives, colonies, freighters, etc for different strategies. all have benefits but they usually depend on the galaxy layout nearby. by no means are games decided in the opening few hundred years but they greatly effect what will happen in the future. the reason for this is simple - artifacts are found by exploration and whoever gets them first usually uses them right away or in the case of wisdom artifacts brings them back to their home world to greatly boost their research.
galaxy overview below from regular version not sudg. each world surrounded by lines connecting to it is a main world where all those trade routes goto. the long blue lines are worm holes which connect two distant systems.
economics are simple and require little micromanagement compared to most games. the vast majority of money is made of freighters running routes between a main world where research, building, repairs, etc take place and the surrounding star systems. the closer the star systems the easiest it is to make money off them since travel time is lessened. the ai automatically builds routes for you but i find it useful to some myself too as the ai can be a bit lazy. of course your opponents ai is much better at it than your automatic ai.
worlds are a important part of the game but colonizing is costly and takes a very long time. usually you won't make but a few colonies and most of them seem to come from the instant colony artifact or made to grow full size easily with the instant population artifact. in a course of a normal game on the biggest galaxy(150 star systems with 8 ai races) you will usually have under worlds 5 counting the one you start with. you can build more and sometimes it is wise to do so but to put things in perspective most games last 500-800 years and building a colony with artifacts takes 50 during which it will usually be losing ~$50 a year which is quite a lot of money. $2500(50x50) is more than for the largest starship, which is a cruiser, (or 2 smaller ones) and many games you won't break 10 shipstars of various sizes. of course you always need a few more worlds but over expanding in colonies is a good way to quick death, as it will destory your economy.
there are 6 different starship sizes in the game and the larger starships are very powerful.
code:
Ship Size Crew Size Component Slots Turn rate (degrees/turn)
Scout 20 8 15
Gunboat 25 9 13
Corvette 30 10 11
Frigate 35 11 9
Destroyer 40 12 7
Cruiser 45 13 5
which isn't to say they aren't vulernable. a scout starship equiped with special abilities, more combat experience, or more advanced technology could take out a cruiser. i've had it happen to me, and i've done it to the ai but usually it's a freak occurance. cruisers can sometimes kill whole worlds by themselves and while it may look like two gunboats would outclass a cruiser that isn't how it works. extra slots for equipment and crew size exponentially increase a cruisers(and all starships) power. the smallest worlds have 15 slots and the largest 20 but each world at full population has 4 cities so they aren't one solid unit like a cruiser nor are they outfitted like one. worlds usually need to worry about production, research, economics, etc than just fighting. good luck using a scout to take out a world though.
most things work on a time basis which is interesting. everything costs money but most of the time it seems as if waiting for your project to get done is more limiting. at the start of the game it can take 20+ seconds(or so) to upgrade one thing on a starship but by the end of the game a perfectly outfitted world with the most advanced technology can do the same work in 4 seconds(or maybe less). so in a way you could say the whole game is about time management more than anything else.
diplomacy screen below. note this is taken from starships unlimited not the divided galaxies version. you can see two federations here.
the game also features diplomacy and spying. while simple they get the job done well. there are two different philosphies in the game and each one likes others of it's type and dislikes others of different types. this is represented by starting out with 50% trust with those of similar type and 0% of those different(this would be like 100, and -100 on the eu2 scale but nothing goes below -100 but you can get to 200). you have the standard options for making war, trading tech, giving gifts, trading star systems, etc and the ai works well unlike most games. you will get as many gifts as you do threats.
one interesting thing about diplomacy is becoming a federation with another player. this happens when you both have 100% trust, have knowledge of federation, are allied, and have built federation laws of the other race(~$800 or so and ~50 seconds). once you get to 90% trust and are allied this is bound to happen unless something catastrophic happens. once you form a federation you get all the ai players worlds/ships/research/etc. watch out for ai federations though because the ai uses them as much as you do. you can even federate again and again but after each federation your trust with all races takes a big hit so it's harder to do.
spying involves purchasing a informant(spy lite)/spy and choosing a mission. you must produce a spy on a world so it takes both money and time to do. spies seem to be more successful the older they are. they are more useful when losing to help even out the odds but you usually want them for basic information about your opponents.
one other thing i should mention are artifacts. they are usually all found within a few hundred years and are probably the most important resource in the game. they range from free colonies, to free research, to free starships, to double shot weapons, to 100% accuracy, to planet killers(if you have them enabled), and maybe the most powerful of all wisdom artifacts. wisdom artifacts help you research and you need them to advanced in ages. there are only so many per game so you must usually fight, or form a federation to get them if you don't find any(though you usually find a few). it takes 2 wisdom artifacts to advanced to fusion age(from atomic age where you start), 3 to anti-matter, and 4 to singularity age. if you can't get wisdom artifacts you at least advanced to fusion age you are usually dead in the long run(unless you can get in a federation who has some more). the way the game works you are usually vying for powerful until anti-matter and singularity age where the major fighting starts with the advanced races picking off the weaker ones.
below is a picture from a recent game on hardest difficulty. this is the last battle at the last world i need to conquer. the reason my fleet has two different kinds of starships is because i formed a federation with an ai opponent you had the same philosphy as me.
below is an end game screenshot. notice how few worlds were built. more starships were built but this was on hardest difficulty and the largest galaxy 150 stars.
http://www.apezone.com/stun.htm? has a few more screenshots and some info if i didn't give you enough. that version is a bit different than sudg but still very similar in the basics.
above is the main review but here are a few complaints. the ai seems a bit conspiratorial in that it will usually declare war just to be a pain in the ass(eg right before you send your whole fleet to attack another player's world). it makes sense in a way but if you send your whole fleet to raiding the surrounding worlds then attack all the other ai's usually don't declare war on you. it's just annoying because it's blatant ai cheating and something i could never do because i lack the information and willingness to monitor the info i have 24/7.
the interface can be annoying at times too. getting your starships to move as you want can be a weird process. sometimes it seems they ignore your commands(you can't move them directly like say in a rts game). it also seems as if the ai's starships are a bit smarter. i can understand this because you can take manual control of your starships but if you've played the game you'll understand why i don't like doing this.(micromanagement crazy, and it takes forever).
there are also some balances problems but i won't mention those(find them yourself!). overall it's a must try the demo and 95% must buy for any civ/homm fan. word of warning about the demo it's the equivilant of playing civ 3 with one race and 20 technologies(along with other limits) so don't be surprised if it's not that entertaining.
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yeah you can pause and by real time i don't mean fast. i usually played at 10x speed but you can set it to 1x or 5x. 1x is very slow. no one could stand to play that way except when they are controlling fights themselves.
urban ranger - have you played starships unlimited? what did you think of it? i'm quite impressed so far especially because i'd never heard of it until i played it.
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gamecube64 - you should buy the game. the demo seriously sucks compared to the full game. the demo has a couple of problems - your economy is screwy because you usually can't research enough to get good freighters/colonies, and you are then so poor that having more than a few starships bankrupts you. when i want a short fun game i'll play the smallest galaxy(75 stars) with 8 opponents so each person gets around 9 stars to himself before having to fight/do diplomacy. by contrast the you are playing in 75 stars with one ai. it's going to be hard even to kill him as you are most likely very far away and can't build bases closer, you have a small economy so only a few starships, and most importantly you are probably in atomic age with gunboat starships or smaller which you'd need probably 6+ of to kill a properly defended world.
urban ranger - you should try it! don't you like civ? then you owe it to yourself to try it. anyhow, i don't care much about the realistic part of why having a few starships makes sense. in the gameplay sense making it so you have a limited amount of starships is great to limit micromanagement and increase fun by a lot.
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07-09-2004 00:57
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