Sins of a Solar Empire was released to a great deal of critical acclaim. As a huge RTS fan myself, I could not have been more disappointed by Sins of a Solar Empire. While a game with high production value and from a company that is absolutely fantastic, I could not find the content for me to keep coming back to this game.
It plays as any other RTS does, but in this case on a galactic scale. Its comparable to Twilight Imperium the board game (one I loved so much). You start with one planet and by collection 3 unique resources you expand to conquer your enemies. However, such a scale brings incredibly long slow paced games. This is a game for Civilization fans more than Command and Conquer or Starcraft fans. Games can take hours, and not always end favorably. Devoting 3 hours of the day to a game you end up losing is not very satisfying.
There's also the issue of the combat itself. It always degrades itself to targeting capital ships with all your units until either you or your opponent runs out of capital ships. Add this to the fact certain units can be spammed and the combat has little room for tactical micromanagement. Battles can take tens of minutes to conclude with large fleet battles for one planet. Units take too long to be destroyed and the units themselves do not seem varied enough.
With these problems, the multiplayer scene is non existent. There's a forum on Stardock's website for multiplayer match organizing that makes it all too apparent. LAN and single player games are where the fun will be had. LAN as in you're going to need dedicated people to both start and finish a game.
While Stardock is a fantastic company with great ideology, I could not find reasons to keep coming back to this game from a multiplayer perspective. AI cannot replicate battling a human opponent. Here's to hoping Demigod will provide a better paced and tweaked multiplayer experience.
