New to S.E. IV & problems patching

[MarkL]

Hi,
I have purchased this title and are in the process of getting started. I have purchased the Delux edition that installs as v 1.93

When I try to patch the game with patch1 that is supposed to be from 1.93 to 1.94 I get an error message saying wrong version and to reinstall. I did anther reinstall and received the same message. I did try the 1.94 to 1.95 patch and it installed and the game appears to run ok and shows 1.95.

I downloaded the patches from the home page for the game.
Is there a problem with my installation, or possibly the patches. I do not want to start playing till I get this sorted out. I would hate to get part way through only to find out I have an incorrectly patch game.

Any help would be appeciated.

Cheers MarkL

[Suicide Junkie]

The newest patch should be good. Public patches are typically happy with any older version, although in the past, daylight savings time has been known to confuse it.

You will probably want to get the Imagepacks while you're installing.
http://bt.spaceempires.net/download.php?id=1&name=imagemod8_7_2007.torrent
They're fully backwards-compatible addons to the stock graphics; includes new weapon animations, components, facilities and space objects.

Note: This does not change the stock game, but the majority of mods out there have the imagepacks as a dependency.
(Downloading and installing them once saves lots of time and space)

[MarkL]

Thanks for the reply.

Will download the image packs as well. I have noticed there are a lot of mods for this game. It will be very hard to know where to start. Looks like it could end up like my flight simulator installation with many mods in the future. But I will have to work out which ones to start with.

Cheers MarkL

[MarkL]

I just noticed the above mod is being distributed by torrent. Is there a link or something that I can use to see what ever other mods are being distributed by torrents?

I am not very familiar with torrent downloads

Cheers MarkL

[Suicide Junkie]

http://bt.spaceempires.net/index.php

Most of the stuff isn't available as torrents, but the SE torrent index is here: http://bt.spaceempires.net/index.php

The other good place to look is on PBW (http://seiv.pbw.cc/)
All the mods that people play multiplayer are available up there (since the PBW server processes the turns for you, they need to be http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif)

[Fyron]

The best mod list is on the Wiki... PBW doesn't necessarily have every mod it supports available in the download library (especially larger mods).

http://wiki.spaceempires.net/index.php/Mods_(SEIV)

[capnq]

If you plan to play solo games, the TDM-ModPack is highly recommended.

For the purposes of the PBW site, v1.94 and v1.95 are functionally equivalent; any game listed as using v1.94 can be played with v1.95.

Even if PBW doesn't directly support a mod, it can still be used to automate turn collection and distribution.

[dogscoff]

Allow me to plug some of my stuff too:

The neoexpansion pack and proportional response pack will add prettiness to your modded games without changing gameplay or default files at all:

http://www.dogscoff.plus.com/files/Neoexpansion1_40.zip
http://www.dogscoff.plus.com/files/ProportionalResponse.zip

[PsychoTechFreak]

dogscoff said:
Allow me to plug some of my stuff too:

The neoexpansion pack and proportional response pack will add prettiness to your modded games without changing gameplay or default files at all:

http://www.dogscoff.plus.com/files/Neoexpansion1_40.zip
http://www.dogscoff.plus.com/files/ProportionalResponse.zip


That's news to me also... thank you!

I'd recommend to start with TDM too, it is like stock game with improved AI. After that:
DevNull 1.80
AST (StarTrek)
Proportions (very different) or AICampaign
... the list goes on and on.

[MarkL]

dogscoff said:
Allow me to plug some of my stuff too:

The neoexpansion pack and proportional response pack will add prettiness to your modded games without changing gameplay or default files at all:

http://www.dogscoff.plus.com/files/Neoexpansion1_40.zip
http://www.dogscoff.plus.com/files/ProportionalResponse.zip



Thanks for the links for these, they sound good mods to begin with.

Cheers MarkL

PS.
I have noticed that different sites all seem to have different patches. To avoid the patch compatability problems I noticed that the Armchair General site has a very big V 1.4 patch to patch any version up to that level, but oddly no V 1.5

[Fyron]

1.4? 1.5? Did you mean 1.94 and 1.95? The latest version of SE4 is 1.95, available on the main SE sites: Malfador.com, SEnet, spaceempires5.com, etc.

You can check the version of your SE4 install by opening the History.txt file in your SE4 folder. The latest version in this change log is the version of the game you have.

If you bought SEIV Deluxe, it will already be at 1.93 or 1.94, and you will not need the gigantic 1.94 patch. You just need to apply the 1.95 patch:

Patch 1.95 (http://home.spaceempires.net/downloads-file-539.html)

If, on the other hand, you have SE4 classic (1.02 was the release version, IIRC), or SE4 Gold (1.60), you will need to first apply patch 1.94, which brings those up to spec with the new MP3 based music system introduced in Deluxe:

Patch 1.94 (http://home.spaceempires.net/downloads-file-528.html)

Once you have such an installation patched to 1.94, you can apply the 1.95 patch from above.

[MarkL]

Thanks for the reply Fyron,

I have not logged in for a few days, away with work.
I have checked the history file o a fresh installation and it is 1.93. for some reason it will note accept the 1.94 patch only the 1.95 patch, but it seems to run ok so I guess I do not have to worry. I have the SEIV Deluxe version box. Even has a nice little manual, rare these days.

Cheers MarkL.

[Parasite]

I would do the tutorial and start with the basic game (maybe with TDM or Expansion packs added) Later, after it gets boring you can switch to the mods. It has not gotten boring to me yet, so I am still on the basic game, but there are a lot of interesting mod and shipsets out there.

Also there are a few "Mod Selectors" that will allow you to choose which mod to run for a game and load the appropreate files. It saves a lot of moving and manual switching.

[MarkL]

I started to try to play without doing the tutorial because I thought it was too long. My error.

I have now started and are learning more than when I trying by trial and error.

Cheers MarkL

[capnq]

The tutorial is good for learning the interface, but less good for basic strategy. (For one example, you will never start a normal game with any empty facility slots on your homeworld, the way you do in the tutorial.) Once you've finished the tutorial, I personally recommend dropping that game and starting a fresh one.

I once thought about writing a "better" tutorial myself, but never got around to it.

[Possum]

Mark,

Yeah, what everybody is implying and nobody has said bluntly is that you can patch from v1.93 directly to v1.95 in your situation.

Welcome to the community! I support the above calls for TDM Modpack. It's needed to make the AI more challenging once you learn the game a bit, but it might cause the AI to kick your butt if you install it right away!

I'd suggest you play the game box stock until you're comfortable with the mechanics, and you start finding the stock AI too easy. Then install the TDM modpack, which really just adds a bunch of new AI empires, and makes all the AI empires play in a more challenging fashion. TDM Modpack does not change the game mechanics in any way.

If you find you like stock SE4, or rather stock SE4 with TDM Modpack, you're invited to come play with us at PBW. We have a regular group there that plays stock or near-stock SE4.

And watch out for the RAGE!

[Possum]

Heh, I'm a moron. I didn't notice this thread was 60 days old.