Sins of a Solar Empire (PC, 2008)

Once upon a time there were "4X" turn-based strategy games and real-time strategy games and the two philosophies behind them couldn't have been more different. A "4X" game is all about the big-picture: building an empire, sacking enemy cities (or planets) and controlling the movements of millions of soldiers to conquer the known universe. An RTS, on the other hand, is all about moment-to-moment decision making -- move your forces, attack targets, bring up reinforcements and make decisions quickly as the tactical situation changes in a heartbeat. Then along comes the team at Vancouver-based Ironclad Games who see in these two styles not incompatibility, but opportunity. The result is Sins of a Solar Empire, a simply brilliant hybrid of 4X and RTS gameplay that draws from both sides to make a wildly innovative and enjoyable game that's much more than the sum of its parts.

The story of Sins of a Solar Empire is interesting, though hardly original. The Trader's Emergency Coalition, a rigid capitalist oligarchy that comprises most of the human race, is locked in a death struggle with the alien Vasari. The Vasari -- a remnant of a much greater empire that once ruled the galaxy -- are on the run from a self-created enemy stalking them from the Galactic core. Into this mix come the Advent, descendents of an "aberrant" human culture exiled by the TEC a millennium ago and now looking for revenge. Each brings a specific strategic bias to warfare (the Vasari are tough-but expensive, the TEC cheaper and weaker and the Advent reliant on special psionic abilities) that make for three fun and well-balanced militaries for players to use.

Sins of a Solar Empire's basic gameplay won't be unfamiliar to anyone who's spent time in Sid Meier's Civilization series, Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations of any of the genre's "4X" brethren. Players begin with one little planet, a few construction ships and a burning ambition to bring the rest of the universe under their steel-toed boot. From such humble beginnings players expand out into a universe consisting of as many planets as the player wishes to set using the highly customizable map creator. These planets generate tax revenue and act as bases and resource and production facilities. Each world also has a "gravity well" surrounding it where building and eventually space combat takes place. The only way to travel from world to world is via a series of pre-defined "jump paths" that offer a variety of strategic challenges by creating a sort of "space terrain" that players need to consider when moving fleets of starships around.


The difference between SoaSE and other "4X" titles is that all of a player's decisions are carried out in the manner of a real-time strategy title. Click on the capital ship factory and it takes approximately 30 seconds for the ship to be produced. Put together a fleet of a dozen or so ships and send them on a three-jump trip to an enemy world and it'll take them eight or so minutes to get there. Once in combat, battle is decided by spaceship strengths and weaknesses, proper positioning and the use of player-controlled special abilities in the manner of a classic RTS -- all of it rendered in stunning graphical splendor.

The final result of this unlikely blending of styles is an elegant and stately ballet in which players use the mouse wheel to zoom from an overarching view of their empire down to the local level where they can tweak the placement of ship factories, defensive empla

Sins of a Solar Empire is a highly addicting and wonderfully complex game. Not only is it an excellent example of a real-time space/strategy sim, it's system requirements are highly reasonable for a game of it's caliber.

First of all, let me just say that the night I received this game I stayed up until 5 a.m. playing it. It took me 7 hours straight to finish ONE medium size random map game. I enjoyed it the whole time, though. Some people might think that this game moves too slowly, even with game speed turned all the way up, so this game isn't for everyone. But if you're a fan of virtually ANY real-time strategy game, you'll most likely love this game. The graphics aren't stellar (no pun intended),so it doesn't really take full advantage of a powerful computer. That can be a good thing, though, if you have a less powerful computer, as this game has relatively low system requirements and scales well to the lower-end of the gaming PC spectrum. One bad thing gameplay wise is the space pirates that are perpetually annoying you. Every 12 minutes or so in the game, pirates will attack the player with the highest bounty on their head. You have about 30 seconds after the initial warning of a pirate attack to place money on other players' heads. It gets annoying when a computer player places the highest amount on your head with a second left before the pirates launch. You would think that there would be an option to play a game without these pestering marauders, but surprisingly, there is no such option in version 1.0 of the game. You can create a custom map and choose to not put pirates on it, but that takes time and patience. I discovered a couple days after buying it that there is a version 1.02 patch for the game that adds the ability to play a random with no pirates. After installing the patch, however, I realized that my saved games from the version 1.0 application were no longer compatible. I had already put about 5 hours into one of the games, so I had to uninstall and reinstall the game to get it back to version 1.0. Hopefully someone will save some of their time by reading this if they're thinking about downloading the patch. The future of modding this game also looks promising, as it has built in support for mods, and the developer, Ironclad Games, has modding tools for download on their website. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, so I can't give a review on that portion of the game.
Overall, this is a deep and fantastic game that has a few minor problems which are being addressed by the developer, so they shouldn't pose much of a problem in the near future.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a great 4X (four primary goals: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) game that was just released in the spring of 2008. The game is made by Ironclad games out of Vancouver, BC.

The game is a great seller according to Ironclad. "Sins of a Solar Empire has now passed 100,000 copies sold in just under 23 days since its release."

The gameplay follows three main races and each have a great back story. The Advent, The TEC (Trade Emergency Coalition), and the Vasari.

Each race, as in all 4x games, have advantages and disadvantages to them. However so far I have not found any really overpowered race to play.

The graphics are really nice. The experience on the map and with controlling your empire are great. The experience of "Being in Space" is excellent. The details are really nice also. You can customize your ship/race colours and even name the starships that you produce. These little details are what make a 4x game for me. To build up a fleet that you have personally named and send them into combat is awesome!

Game specs:
* Windows XP, Windows Vista

* 1.8 GHz Single-Core Processor
* 512 MiB RAM / 1 GiB for Vista
* 128 MiB DirectX 9 3D Video Card (Radeon 9600 / GeForce FX 6600 and above)
* DirectX 9.0c Compatible Sound Card
* DVD-ROM Drive
* 3 GB Hard Drive Space
* Keyboard and Mouse
* DirectX 9.0c

Recommended Requirements:

* 2.2 GHz Dual- or Quad-Core Processor
* 1 GiB RAM / 2 GiB for Vista
* 256 MiB DirectX 9 3D Video Card (Radeon X1600 / GeForce 7600 and above)

A perfect game. If you love the 4X genera you should really grab this game!

5/5

Latsyrhc
Tamarack Collectibles

Huge disappointment

I barely escaped wasting fifty bucks on “Spore” because rather than getting caught up in the media frenzy around that electronic version of the Edsel, I waited to see what the reactions of the gaming community were. Glad I waited.

I did the same thing with Sins of a Solar Empire, which just goes to prove the old saw about the bear. (Sometimes he gets you and sometimes you crap in the woods … no, wait. Sometimes you crap in the woods and the bear gets you. Yeah, that’s it).

Do not buy this game. It is the mutant offspring of a tactical turn based simulation and a fast-twitch real time simulation. Galactic Civilization meets StarCraft meets Homeworld. The results are ugly. You cannot pause. You cannot offer the same diplomatic options to your rivals as they can offer to you. Fleet control is horrendous. Resources are unlimited, so that the game always devolves into one great big zerg-pit battle. The tech tree is stunted and painfully familiar to anyone who has played just a few space-based games. The graphics are adequate, but it is hard to enjoy what little you can of the space battles as you must hover at a far enough distance to make sure your repair ships haven’t decided to play hero and charge the enemy dreadnaught for reasons unknown.

This game is awful. I enjoyed Galactic Civ and its progeny, so had good feelings toward StarDock, but this one has torpedoed the trust I had in them.

This is the only game I ever bought that I was mad enough to write the company and ask for a refund. Naturally, I didn’t hear back from them. Since I downloaded it directly from Stardock, I can’t even sell the thing on E-bay.