Sins of a Solar Empire may seem daunting, but its core premise is easy to grasp: colonize worlds, defend them, and conquer the entire star system.
These last few days, in between my bouts with Conan I’ve been playing a different game I had in my backlog: Sins of a Solar Empire. Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the few PC games to be released last year to rave reviews, as it’s a game that’s like Civilization, but in real time and in space. I’m not the biggest fan of space/sci-fi type games, and when I first started playing it, I wasn’t too impressed. But after only a couple of hours, my wife was already calling me to bed and I realized that perhaps there is some sort of addictive quality to this game if I don’t even realize two hours have already gone by without my knowing! Read on for my impressions of the game some are calling the 2008 PC game of the year.
First off, let me explain that I’m not that big of a sci-fi strategy game fan. I was perhaps too young and never played games like Master of Orion or Alpha Centauri. They seemed crazily complex, and while I’m more interested in them nowadays since I’m older, a part of me is still a bit worried I’d be biting off more than I can chew. Perhaps that’s why I’ve yet to buy Galactic Civilizations II, even though I hear it’s great. But when I heard that Sins of a Solar Empire was real-time based, I figured I’d give this game a look since things would move along quite faster so I wouldn’t be bogged down with all sorts of details right?
Gameplay
The easiest way for me to explain the gameplay in Sins of a Solar Empire is to compare it to Civilization. If you haven’t played the game yet, that’s a travesty! Civilization games pretty much have competing empires trying to expand their land over a fictional playing field through turn-based gameplay. As you try to grow your empire, you have many things to worry about: gathering income and resources, creating military units to attack/defend locations, developing culture and religion to keep your citizens supportive, and you can even bargain and ally with other nations. There’s also a huge tech tree that you can research towards that allows you to upgrade parts of your nation based on any way you want to play. Ultimately, you are trying to conquer the entire field of play and wipe out all opposing empires.
Sins of a Solar Empire is generally no different than Civilization from a core gaming persective. Instead of tiles and cities that competiting empires go to war over, we take it one step further out in Sins so you’re fighting over planets now. At the same time, each player has to worry about gathering income and resources, creating military units, developing their citizens, and a lengthy tech tree to continue progressing forward. The big difference, besides the switch to the space motif, is that Sins of a Solare Empire is real-time based so you don’t have to hit “End Turn” and wait for the AI to finish making its moves – instead everyone just keeps playing. Of course, resources are the limiting constraint in this game, so even though it’s real-time, the game can’t be played as fast as you can click – you still have to wait until you amass enough resources to create units, research tech trees, colonize worlds, etc.
At first it may be hard to take in that you’re fighting at a space level and we’re talking entire planets here instead of simple grids on land (like in Civilization). But honestly, each planet is pretty much a grid in and of itself if you were to compare it to Civilization. There are only certain ways to travel from one planet to another, so if you were to look at a system from far away, it’d be a like a connected constellation where these connection paths are the only way to get from one planet to another. These paths are what the ships use to hyperdrive (or whatever it’s called) to get from one planet to another, and in a sense they also make up choke points since you know there’s only a certain number of paths the enemy can get to your planet’s orbiting system.
Like Civilization’s barbarians, Sins of a Solar Empire also has a neutral enemy type: pirates. Pirates will send out attacks every 15 minutes or so and if there’s no player influence, they will attack the most valuable target. Researching tech allows you to create new structures that orbit your planet, from defense turrets to factories to repair stations. Sins of a Solar Empire also has something called Capital ships, which are almost like hero units from RTS games such as Warcraft III. These Capital ships are huge, generally have excellent firepower, take reduced damage from regular units, and can even level up to learn new abilities.
That’s pretty much a quick recap of gameplay notes I have for now. Next is a recap from my first two games.
My First Game
Having only gone through the short and simple tutorials, I decided to fire up a game on a randomized small map with me and the AI (set to Easy) both going random. You can go up to large 10 player maps, but I opted for the small map, which consists of about 16 planets or so. There are three races in the game with their own units and tech trees, but I have no idea what the differences are among them as I just started playing. Also something to note is that there’s no real campaign or story mode. It’s pretty much playing scenarios, not unlike Civilization games.
When the game started I didn’t really know what was going on so I started focusing on my home planet, upgrading and creating whatever structures I could. I then pumped out a couple of scout frigates, and had them explore neighboring planets. It looked like I was on one extreme end of the system, as the planet directly to the west of my home planet had no other “warp lines” going into it, which meant the only way for any ship to get to it would be through the warp line between my home planet and the new one I was about to colonize. Both planets I explored were uninhabited except for patrolling pirates. To deal with the pirates, I created my first capital warship and some low class offensive units so that I could kill off the pirates and colonize the planets (making them mine). Unfortunately for me, I discovered that I needed to have researched the tech to colonize lava-based planets, so I hung out for some time until I had the tech researched. Once researched, I colonized the planet and began to develop it. I next set my two scouts on auto-explore, so they kept traveling all over the entire star system to see what was out there and where my AI opponent was.
Having secured another planet, I was alerted that pirates were going to invade my home planet, so I sent my fleet back there to protect it while I continue to upgrade the two planets I just colonized. My ships were pretty weak, and some were taken out by the pirate ships but my capital ship was ridiculously strong and fought them back with ease. I continued to push out more, colonizing planets and harvesting more resources. It seemed very difficult for me to find crystal resources though, the third resource in the game (that is apparently the rarest). I had to end up trading a lot of my metal on the black market just so I could buy more crystal. In any case, there was so much on the tech tree and I figured that since I was playing on easy, I wouldn’t have to put too much tech into military upgrades so I spent most of my resources on civilization/culture upgrades such as getting trade routes set up between my planets.
I soon discovered that the pirates were relentless. They seemed to keep attacking, but with more and more units every fifteen minutes. I was holding one asteroid that seemed to be a major chokepoint that they continued to attack, and started constructing defensive turrets there but I needed ships there to actually hold the choke. How would I go colonize other planets when pirates were putting me on defense every fifteen minutes? I couldn’t get my fleet back there in time. It was then that I was able to figure out that I could spend resources to upgrade my fleet unit cap, as well as create an additional capital warship (hero type unit). That pretty much solved my problem, as I was able to bring in a second capital warship and accompanying fleet to defend against the pirates, while my other fleet was out colonizing. And boy do those pirates give some good exp. I think I can keep going out even further, with more capital warships and fleets, so what I’m going to do next is expand enough but station each of my fleets at strategic chokepoints throughout the system. Then my wife called me to bed. It’s been two hours already? Dang it! I haven’t even gone to war with my AI opponent yet!
I resumed this game the next evening and while I was able to fend off pirates, they started attacking a different planet as I continued to expand. Then the AI attacked at the same time, and I wasn’t too happy with how things turned out so I decided to just start a new game since I figured I’d be a lot more prepared now that I had sort of played a game already.
My Second Game
Instead of choosing a randomized “small map” for my second game like I did on the first, I decided to pick one of the existing maps. It was tiny, at only 7 planets it was less than half the size of my first game so it was a lot more manageable. I actually ended up winning the game in a little less than an hour, so it wasn’t bad.
I still kept the AI on the easiest, just to familiarize myself more with what I wanted to try and it flowed very well. The map was symmetric, with each side having three planets, split by a pirate base in the middle as well as a star. I quickly took over my three planets, started setting up defenses, and upgrading my planets. What surprised me was that on such a small map, I was really struggling for resources, unlike the first game where I jumped to owning 6-7 planets pretty quickly. On this map I was just working off of three planets, so to get a second capital ship was pretty daunting.
I also learned that when the pirates decide to attack, the players can put bounties on each other, so the one with the highest bounty gets attacked. Some of the waves I decided to put the bounty on the AI so they would attack the AI, but then other times I would let the bounty remain highest on me so I would get attacked and level up my capital ships. After setting up my defenses on my three bases and amassing two fleets each led by their own capital ship, I decided to start heading towards one of the AI player’s two expansion planets. I caught the AI by surprise, as it was attacking the pirates in the area and when I engaged and attacked the AI, it pulled out and retreated. I easily took over the planet, then pursued the AI to its other expansion. The AI put up its final fight there, as I started attacking his planet but my two fleets easily overpowered his. With his fleet gone, I mopped up and took over his second expansion and then his home planet and the game was over.
Parting Thoughts
Hopefully you found these recounts useful. While I’m a little disappointed that there’s no campaign, there’s actually Achievements in the game so at least I have particular goals I can try to fulfill while playing it such as taking on multiple AI opponents at the same time, not using a particular unit type, tech, etc. Plus, I haven’t even gotten to larger maps with FFAs, teams, etc. yet. Some say that the 5v5 online multiplayer is the best part of the game! Right now though I am definitely enjoying it – it has certain similarities to Civilization, but in a way, it’s both simpler and more complicated. Simpler in that the movement is really just traveling along single lines that connect from one planet to another, but more complicated in that the tech trees and all that are more sci-fi oriented and not as intuitive as the tech trees from Civilization. Still, I’m sticking with it though for now and if I play it enough maybe I’ll be able to get out a full review in the future.
i heard good things about this game too, but i haven’t really been committing to any rts games. i feel a need to commit heavily into multiplayer, since that’s where the fun really is. but multiplayer is only fun when a lot of other people play it- no one wants to wait a long time to find a game, and it’s more fun to play with friends.
that being said, i’ve been having a lot of fun replaying dune 2 using dosbox. that game still plays well, even though it has no multiplayer and the ai is retarded. i also remember the introduction being really cool when i was younger, but it’s really cheesy now haha.
i also just finished the campaign in advanced wars dual strike. it’s not an rts, but it’s such an awesome, awesome series.
agreed, starcraft 2 will eat up many, many hours. there seems to be some hate over blizzard releasing it over 3 games, but the way i see it is a main game, with 2 expansion packs. except instead of having 3 racial campaigns, with about 9-10 maps each, it’s just one big racial campaign per game with about 25+ levels.
i still recommend finishing dual strike, though sadly i lost interest after beating the campaign. multiplayer turn-based strategy games are also not my thing (like civ revolutions or master of orion)
also i was playing warcraft 1 on dos box. invisible water elementals are so op lol
The last mission in Dual Strike was so hard! but yes, great series. I have no problem with the episodic Starcraft 2 either. The way I see it, Blizzard has never let us down before so if they think this is what needs to be done I trust them. That being said, when’s the release date gonna be released!? I need a Blizzard countdown to a countdown a la Kojima
sins is in real time, but honestly, it’s more of a 4x strategy game that falls in line more with civilization than say, starcraft. i think with the starcraft 2 beta around the corner and eventually starcraft 2 later this year, we’ll finally have a rts to commit heavily into again – perhaps together!
agreed with advance wars – great game. i beat the original one on the gba, but didn’t get get a chance to play too far into dual strike. i think i got about halfway through the days of ruin though, which i seemed to like more than dual strike. for some reason i found dual strike more confusing than i liked with combat in the sky and ground or something.
haha there’s a few tricks to the last mission in dual strike. you use battle choppers to stop the computer from acquiring all the bottom cities, and then just build a lot of infantry to deal with ooziums. 3 mech infantry can take out an oozium no problem.
it gets even easier if you use sami as your CO, cause she gets better infantry, and her super power lets you capture cities in one turn.
when i mean a lot of infantry, i mean a lot. i bumped into the unit limit (50) playing that mission haha