It seems a bit easy

[douglas]

Staying within the limits of the stock game, high difficulty high bonus TDM Modpack is the hardest AI you can get for single player. If that's not enough, you could try turning on team mode (all AIs vs you) and not using all of your racial points in designing your empire. Also, don't use tactical combat if you don't have to - the AI is predictable enough that any half-decent human player can defeat much larger AI controlled fleets in tactical combat. This would be suicidal in multiplayer, but don't use training facilities - the AI will never train its ships and fleets except by accident. Finally, try playing in simultaneous movement mode - that's what the AI was designed for, and it's very difficult to run a multiplayer game any other way.

If you're willing to play a mod, the AI Campaign mod available at Spaceempires.net was specifically designed to make the AI as hard as possible, but it uses some very unfair tactics to do so.

Finally, for a real challenge, head on over to PBW to play against some human opponents. BTW, there's a fun game of everybody vs the space monsters still waiting for players (using Adamant Mod) called The Galactic Invasion 2.

Edit: Apparently editing a post seriously screws up the links stuff. I'll try posting the links in a new post.

[douglas]

Links that should have worked in my previous post:

Spaceempires.net
PBW
Adamant Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

Play By Web is the way to get challenging opponents.

One that nobody seems to have mentioned yet is Pirates & Nomads mod.

Especially if you like fighting tactical combats, or focussing on a small group of named ships.

Play as a pirate or nomad against regular AIs, and you will almost certainly not win
Struggling to stay alive with a tiny fleet, building secret bases in nebulae and storms, raiding enemy ships for tech and resources.
You can do quite a lot with a single-digit number of ships

PS:
Most mods will require parts of the imagemod to be installed.
http://imagemodserver.mine.nu/other/MM/SE4/imagemod/
Download the imagemod packs, and install them over top of your stock pictures.
- They do not change any stock images, but simply extend the list of available images and animations available for use.
- Installing it to your stock folder means you only need one copy, and it will work for all mods instantly.

[Matius]

Lol thanks douglas

I'm going to restart following all this advice.
I'm checking out Proportions and Fyrons Quadrant mods today, along with the settings Grandpa Kim suggested.

PBW does interest me, and I'll probably try it at least once, but I haven't yet read up on how it works.

I didn't know about the image mods, they look pretty cool. Do many mods use them? Downloading now, anyway.

I'll probably check back in a few hours... being a nomad sounds like a totally different game so now I just need a ten-day week so I can check out the possibilities