Stardock is pleased to announce that it has teamed up with Ironclad Games to publish a new real-time space strategy game called Sins of a Solar Empire.

Sins of a Solar Empire puts the player in command of an interstellar civilization. That part no doubt sounds familiar to Galactic Civilizations fans. But unlike Galactic Civilizations, Sins is real-time.  Players colonize planets, create trade routes, negotiate treaties and build up their military might to send out epic fleets that do battle across many planets.  The game is being designed such that players do no have to baby-sit their units. The unit AI can more than take care of itself allowing players, if they wish, to focus on running their empire.

In terms of what the game play is like, probably the best analogy would be that it plays quite a bit like Homeworld meets Galactic Civilizations meets Total Annihilation. It has a truly epic feel like Galactic Civilizations, has a visual and game play feel like Homeworld but allows the player to queue up commands and build a strong strategy ala Total Annihilation. It's not about how fast you can click, it's about how good of a strategy you can put together.

Players will be able to see this for themselves this Winter in a public beta program.  In a couple weeks, players will be able to start pre-ordering the game. Users who pre-order will be able to participate in the beta.  The release date of the game was intentionally pushed all the way back to August of 2007 so that beta testers could give feedback not just about bugs and such but provide game play suggestions and feedback as well so that there is ample time to incorporate user feedback into the final game.  The goal is to create something truly special that will stand the test of time.

To learn more about the game, you can visit www.sinsofasolarempire.com (or http://sins.stardock.com). Your UserID and Password from GalCiv2.com will work there as well.