To play or not to play?

There are links to the two best mods about on this forum which are Balence Mod 1.04 and IRM 0.8e

IRM 8e http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/2745

BM 1.04 http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/2678

Both of which are full game Mods and include the grafics Mod FQM 7 and feature a much improved game AI

I would also mention the

Ground combat Mod http://www.spaceempires5.com/en-US/node/2723

which is a partial mod which just adresses the ground combat part of the game and is aimed at the stock game in particular

All of the above will be updated shortly after the release of the next game patch 1.3x which should be quite soon

there are other Mods but I think those are a good start.

Are there any mods that just improve the AI without messing with anything else?

The Balance Mod is essentially regular SE5 only... balanced, but aside from the balancing and improved AI, you're pretty much getting the standard SE5 experience. Only better.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

Both the BM and the IRM make a lot of changes to the stock tech tree as well as greatly improving the AI and there are no current full mods which only adress the AI and leave every thing else alone Marrans used to but he apears to have stoped working on it and the existing version does not work with 1.25

To the question:
"Play or not play!"

I still wait for my SEV, and kill the time so long with playing the demo.
I knew about the bugs and still can't wait to play the full version!

I bought the game five months ago and gave up after just a few turns due to the myriad bugs. I'm still waiting for a patch to make the game worth playing.

Its pretty well debugged (not completly) Really the only problem you are going to face is the memory leak (I havent experienced it and it might be fixed in the next patch) and the crappy AI. But you would probably enjoy the game at 1.31 or 1.32 witch is due out march 26.

Set system number to 250 for large galaxies and then play a game with 20 AI empires in such a game - and watch SEV crawl on its knees after a few turns

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Frankly the game is very playable now at 1.25 with Balance Mod and IRM.... And with the release of 1.33 (crossing fingers) it will be excellent. Over the course of the last 7 beta changelogs I have watched in excitement as one after another major issue has been corrected....

Wonderful

Certainly the memory leak is still around, but saving will save the day...

Crossing my fingers for the Emissive armor bug...

However, damn it all for a release the week of a major exam....

ack

Javaslinger

IRM 0.9a is out (and fixed, darn last minute bug tradition). It fix a lot of the issues that was plaguing the mod so far and have improved the AI by a lot, even fixed a few problems of the base code of the game.

I do that to!! Cept my race is aggressive and doesn't tolerate lesser races...

Personally, I'd wait a few days before installing 1.33. It seems to have introduced some new rather aggravating bugs, and you'd be best off waiting a bit to see the full extent of it before you decide whether or not to apply the patch.

Suction feet are not to be trifled with!

Not that far in to a IRM 9C/1.33 game but not seen any bugs as yet will see what happens from here though