Space Empires IV Deluxe (SE4D for short) is a turn-based strategy 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate), it's all about managing resources to achieve the victory conditions of each game. This conditions range from reaching a set score, reaching a set numbers of turns, be at peace for a certain number of turns, have a percentage of the tech tree researched, or having the other players annihilated.

Whatever the conditions are, you must manage your resources in order to expand your empire, get new technology and grow an army.

This game can be daunting at first, there are a lot of commands, a lot of information and a lot to do within the game that it can be challenging the first couple of games, but knowing where is the info you need, or how to do certain tasks makes the game very simple to play.

This guide covers the basics, it will let you play your first couple of games but wont make you an expert, it doesn't cover advanced topics or tactics, it doesn't even cover all the commands available in the game, but it will let you get the grasp of the game, so the guide is intended for those new to the game.

There is a nasty, nasty bug I encountered in the current version of the game (v1.95). The game relies a lot in pop-up windows, you can right-click in almost anything in the main window and it will bring a pop-up window with detail of whatever you clicked on (a planet, a facility on a planet, a ship, a ship component, etc) or even some windows like the Designs window when you are designing a new ship, if you click outside the window other than clicking Ok, Save, Cancel or Close, the pop-up window will go away and the game's interface sometimes can become locked, it will not respond to any mouse click or keyboard command other than ALT+ F4, which is a good thing because the only thing you can do about it is restart the game, so remember to save your game frequently, I recommend enabling the autosave every turn, because this happens more frequently than you can imagine. You have been warned!

When you start the game, you can Quick Start a new game, this mode will let you pick on of the predesigned empires and start the game right away. I definitely recommend playing your first games this way, but eventually you will want to modify the game's parameters so these are the options you can change:

Quadrant
Here you can modify the map, the part of the galaxy where the game is played, type and size, as well as other options like warp points or visibility.

Events
If you activate events, from time to time the game will throw you events like natural disasters, planets or stars can explode, meteorites can hit planets, etc. Just to keep the game interesting.

Technology
Here you can modify the cost to research new technology, as well as enable/disable technology areas, you can disable cloaking, for instance, so no player can ever have ships with cloaking devices!

Player Settings
Starting resources, Home Planet value, number of starting planets, score display and more can be modified here.

Players
Here you can choose your empire as well as any other empire meant to be played by human players, you can also edit any empire created before or add a completely new empire. There is also an option to add computer controlled empires, but you don't have to add them one by one.
Quantity of computer players and difficulty can be set here too.

Victory Conditions
If you don't set any conditions here, the game will end until only one empire survives. In really big maps this can be a hassle, because you will have to hunt down to the last ship, satellite or mine of every other empire. In one game I went crazy looking for the last ship, unit or planet of the last remaining empire, it turned out to be a little minefield in a warp point I was missing, but luckily there is one little trick for this situation: In the Game Menu (F2 key) there is the Players window, and you can select what players are under the computer control or deselect them if you want them to be under human player control, only with control of the other empire I was able to see what was left and where, otherwise it would have took me so much more time to figure out it was that little minefield that I was missing.
The six remaining victory conditions are pretty self explanatory.

Game Settings
Game password, maximum number of ships and units, types of colonizable planets, among other options can be set here.

Mechanics
Play style, turn style, multiplayer options and the very, very, very important autosave option can be set here. Autosave frequency is the option I always modify, I set it to every turn, because of the bug I explain in the previous section of the guide.

One of the most atractive aspects of the game is its customization. Empires and ships can be created at the player wants and needs.
Here you can customize your empire in the following areas:

General Details
Mostly cosmetic options like empire name and type, emperor title and name, race portrait, ship style among other options can be set here.
One particular option I used to change here was the Design Name File, this is a text file with a bunch of names on it the game uses to suggest names whenever you build a new design for a ship, unit or base.

You can create a plain text file with any number of names (one name per line) and place it in the Dsgnname folder of the game (like C:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Space Empires IV Deluxe\se4\Dsgnname) so every time you design a new ship the name is already there and you don't have to spend time writing Sovereign Class, Galaxy Class or Excelsior Class in every game you play!

Enviroment
Here you set the type of planet and atmosphere you race can live in.

Culture
You can set a type of culture for your empire, like Warriors or Sientists, every type will give your empire modifiers, for instance, at your production rate or research rate.

Characteristics
Here every new empire has 2000 racial points you can assign to a set of Physical characteristics like Intelligence, Reproduction or Vocational aptitudes like Mining aptitude or Repair aptitude, so your empire can be better at it. You can also decrease any characteristic or aptitud to gain more racial points and assign them elsewhere!

Advanced Traits
Here you can purchase Racial traits with the same Racial points used in the previous section, this traits are expensive but can give some nice bonuses to your empire like access to technologies that no other races has (unless of course that race has the same trait).

Description
If you like to write a background for your empire this is the place! Also you can set its demeanor and happiness type.

The game has 5 resources:

- Minerals
- Organics
- Radioactives
- Research Points
- Intelligence Points

If you want to beat the game, you will want to have A LOT of these.
Because building a unit, ship or facility on a planet cost resources, and not only that, but maintaining a spaceship you already built also cost (a 30% of its cost actually) so you will want to build an army as long as you have resources to pay for it.

Resarch points are very important, because if you have the technological edge, your chances to have the pointiest stick in the galaxy are great, also with new technology comes better ways to get more resources.
Make one of your goals to produce 200 000 points of research each turn as a minimum, the more points you have the faster the research will go.

Intelligence points will let you spy, steal technologies, conduct sabotage, steal maps, among other things, to other empires. Don't subestimate the power of sabotage.

When you colonize a new planet take into consideration the resource value (mineral, organic and radioactive), so you can benefit efectively from building the correct resource extractor on the planet, even more when the planet has limited space and the number of facilities gets limited to 5 or less. There is no point in building a mineral extractor in a planet with a value of 100% radioactives, unless the mineral value is also high or your radioactives need are fully covered.

The interface

In order to enjoy the game you will have to know where the commands and info are. In the upper side of the screen is the icon bar, you don't have to learn all those commands the first time you play, some are very intuitive and simple like Move to or Warp to, other are more complex and give more options like the Scrap/Analyze/Mothball command.

The more useful commands and most frequently used are the ones in the left of the icon bar, all the commands with the function keys, F1 (Help) thru F12 (End Turn).

Here are those commands.

• Game Menu (F2)
  
• Designs (F3)
  
• Planets (F4)
  
• Colonies(F5)
  
• Ships/Units (F6)
  
• Construction Queues (F7)
  
• Research (F8)
  
• Empires (F9)
  
• Log (F10)
  
• Empire Status (F11)
  
• Help (F1)
  
• End Turn (F12)

This is a very straightforward menu, you can start a new game, save, load and delete a game, but there are 2 important options, Players, this window let you assign the control for very empire in the current game, human control or computer control, it comes in handy for the reason I explained in the subsection Victory Condtions in the Setting up a new game section. And the Options window, which let you enable the autosave for the current game for th reason I explained in the Before we begin! section.

The Design window is perhaps one of the most used in the game, because here is where you put all that new tech to work, new engines, new weapons, new armor, new components for your ships or units. As a matter of fact, it's on of the two first windows you should open before you finish your first turn, the other one is Research, we will get to that later.

The first design you have to do is a basic scout ship, we need to check our neighbourhood ASAP, because this will let us know what planets are going to be colonized in the next turns.

The second design is, you guessed right, a colony ship. The eXplore and eXpand part of the game start very early in the game.

Remember, once in a while when you get new technology, come to the Designs window and upgrade your ships designs, just click the Upgrade button and assign a new name for the upgraded design, maybe you discovered a new engine or a new version of a weapon your ships are already using, after this you can use Scrap/Analyze/Mothball command (G key) to retrofit any existing ship using the old design you upgraded as long as your ships are located in the same sector as a shipyard, and of course, you have the resources to cover thee cost of the retrofit, but this is always cheaper and faster than scraping the whole ship and start building a new one.

So remember, retrofitting is KEY in this game.

Maybe the third design you want to do is a weapons platform, these units are stored in the planet and they will be used in the event of an attack, they can't move, but will attack any enemy within range, try using long range weapons such a Capital Ship Missile, you may want to create one with Point Defense once the technology is discovered to prevent missile attacks to your planet.

You will want to colonize planets almost all the time, and here you will find candidates for doing so. Using the right filters you will find very quick those planets right for your eXpansion and even send a colony ship from the very same window! (Providing you have one available).

Try using the list created by the buttons Coloniz\Empty and Coloniz\Breathe along with the No Sys To Avoid option activated, just remember to set the Systems To Avoid in the Empire Status (F11) window. These lists of posible colonies will show planets in the systems of your choosing, and you can sort those lists by Mineral, Organic or Radioactive Value, clicking in the head of the column, colonize whatever resource you need the most first!

Another window you will be spneding a lot of time on. Here you can see what are your colonies building, how much of each resource are producing, what facilities are built on them, what cargo is stored on them, and much more information. You can even scrap a single type of facility in all your colonies with just one click!

This window is also of frequent use. From here you can overview your army, and in games with dozens of ships, this window will be your best friend!

You can see what are the orders for your ships, how much it cost you to maintain them, what they are carrying and more.

Another window of frequent use. Most of your colonies will be building something all the time, facilities, units or ships, if you have the resources spend them, and here are all your constructions queues in one convenient location! Do you want to build ten destoyers at the same time? No problem! Just press shift and click on the ten shipyards and then click in the Multi-Add button and select your destroyer!

You can also upgrade facilities once you discovered new versions of them by just clicking in the Upgrade Facilities button, this will upgrade across all your colonies!

The Research window is very simple, it ill display all the areas of technology available for research, their level and the cost in research points to complet them. You can queue up to 12 technologies, you can also divide all your points in any number of technologies you have queued up, you know, parallel research, just be careful what you queue because if its cost is high, it will take longer to research.

The first research you do in your first turn of any game, will have a 20 000 research points bonus, Choose your first tech wisely, I usually go for Ship Construction, but can be anything that suits your play style or particular strategy.

This window has information about every empire you have met, diplomacy status, scores, Victory Conditions, data comparisons but two buttons are particularly important, Intelligence and Borders.

Once you have discovered the Applied Intelligence technology, you can build Intelligence centers and begin producing Intelligence Points, the Intelligence window resembles much like the Research window, here you can choose projects to spy, steal, sabotage or counter the attacks of other empires. Use this because your enemies will be using it.

The Borders button will display a map with the borders of any empires you have met and your own, you can also claim systems for your empire, if you build a colony, the system will be claimed automatically. Pay attention to the contested systems, these are systems claimed by you and another empire, those systems will particularly have a lot of incursions by the other empires that claim them and your colonies will have high probabilities to be under attack.

The Log will present any news at the start of each turn, unless the turn was uneventful, any news will be here, finished constructions, contacts with other empires, combat results, and other activities and events.

Another window with frequent use, the main information here is your resource balance, how much are you getting, how much are you spending, and how much are you storing. This is key, I tend to look at this balance almost very turn, if i am going red in my numbers I want to know ASAP, so I can put construction queues on hold, or mothball non-essential ships or bases to save resources.

There are three important buttons you will want to kep an eye on. Ministers, Systems To Avoid, and Waypoints, these will help you a lot to automate task.

Waypoints. You can set a total of ten waypoints, and you can use them with two commands, the Move To Waypoints (control + W), this command is available when a ship or a fleet is selected, you can quickly dispatch it to a waypoint. Also, when you have a queue window open you can set a rally point, all ships constructed by this queue will move automatically to a waypoint if you use the Set Move To button on said queue.

Systems to Avoid, It will hellp you a lot in the filter of posible colony candidates if you add enemy systems or far away systems to the list of Systems To Avoid.

Ministers. With a dozens of colonies, units or/and fleets in a game, letting the computer handle some of them is always a big help, so you can focus on the ones that really matter. Here you can automate tasks like colonize, building facilities or retrofiting old ships.

Contains help of various topics, including recent acquired technology. Also offers access to the manual.

Finish the current turn. Just that.

These are the status icons you will find in some colonies or ships. You can see this in the game manual.

To see the game manual, right click on your SEIV game in your Library, click on "Properties", go to the "Local Files" tab and click on "Browse Local Files", a window will pop up, double click on the "se4" folder, double click on the "manual" folder, and double click on the "SE4Manual" html file.

* In your first turn don't forget to create at least 3 new designs, a scout, a colony ship, and a weapons platform. I prefer the use of a Capital Ship Missile instead of the Depleted Uranium Cannon, the first available weapons, even when the CSM has a fire rate of 3, has a greater range and damage than the DUC.

* In your first turn don't forget to add a research project, I usually go for a new ship size with the Ship construction area of research, but maybe going for Construction to get the mines first it's not a bad idea.

* Colonize ASAP, even the planets with the wrong atmosphere (the ones with a red asterisk), having 3 planets with 5 mines each will make a diference at the early game.

* Get 3-5 good planets (the ones with the green asterisk) at the early game. And make one a research colony, the biggest one if posible. or even two of them. Research is key to have an edge in your army.

* Protect your systems by placing minefields in the warpoints, or satellites or if you can, a big badass space station, you can setup a minefield while building a space station. do this just in your borders, don't do this in every warpoint in your space.

* Have in mind the mines and fighters areas of research, they are very powerful. So don't forget to get the Point Defense weapons to counter enemy fighters and missiles.

* There is a technology that can change the atmosphere of your colonies to a one that is breathable for your race, keep researching the Planet Utilization area for this.

* You can build Dysons Spheres! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere) They can take a couple of years but will give you a colonizable "planet" with 150% value on each resource and space for 200 facilities! Ringworlds are cheaper and offer space for 100 facilities. Keep researching Stellar Manipulation. These are better achieved in the late game.

* Even if you protect your Warp Points you may want to protect yor planets with Weapons Platforms (remember the cloacking technology), keep upgrading your designs with new technologies, and build new ones. These cannot be retrofited.

* Keep upgrading your designs with new components, ships, bases and units. Don't neglect your fleet of the new technology.

* Keep upgrading your colonies facilities too. Research Mineerals, Organics and Radioactive Extraction before you run on negative numbers in your resource production.

* Use a couple of planets as a Resource Storage colonies.

* Research the Applied Political Science area for the Urban Pacification Center, keeping your people happy can yield bonus to production on a planet!

* Keep some population transports at hand, sometimes planets need to be evacuated.

* Make one of your goals to produce at least 200 000 research points (300k or 400k if posible), new technologies will be available faster.

* Make a couple of Intelligence compound colonies, stablish a counter-intelligence project as soon as you can. Keep the same goal as the research points if posible.

* Keep updating your Systems To Avoid list (Empire Status window or F11) so filtering the data for new colonies includes only the systems you want.

* You can increase the resource value on your planets, keep an eye on the Planet Utilization Area.

* You may want to disable the animation of ships and enable fast tactical combat in the Options in the Game Menu (F2), with a lot of ships it helps to speed up the game.

* Don't forget to create Fleets and stablish a formation and strategy to them.

* Explore the Empire Options in the Empire Status window.

* Design and add to your fleets repair ships, and in the early stages of the game, supply ships, supply ships are nothing more than ships with a lot of supply storage modules, in a fleet the supply will be pooled, early on the game, the range of your ships is limited before they run out of supplies (fuel), adding a couple of this supply ships to any fleet, will extend greatly its range, even if it is just a scout, it could prove worth the investment. The repair ships with one or two repair modules will speed up the time your damaged fleet can become ready for battle. This types of ships doesn't need to have weapons on them, maybe a shield or some armor, but use the space for repair o supply modules.