Which was advertised as being that way for a long time. Actually one of the selling points in my opinion.

Honestly, do you play GC2 for the campaigns? I don't. Sandbox / Metaverse exclusively, and that Ironclad forewent putting in the time for a campaign and chose to include a very good sandbox mode is a big plus for the game.

Why would you take perfectly decent 4X gameplay and force people to play it in real-time instead of thinking about their actions? Saying "It combines 4X depth with real-time gameplay" is like saying "It combines chess with Whack-A-Mole".

Read my post again , I addressed GalCiv point.
I also find very hard to define why something that good in GalCiv (or Civ or MoO or MoM ...) bad in "Sins" and similar games.
May be it's the number of variants, after all in GalCiv you have huge number of techs, in "Sins" limited number.
May be it's a difference between turn based and real-time ? May be it's the "education" we got from prev. games but bottom line when playing GalCiv I enjoy going further and further, with "Sins" it was , OK so I built this and that, conquered map , so what ?


Bottom line, the game is not for me , GalCiv is , and I did missed part about this "selling point".

Whack-A-Mole chess sounds AWESOME.

I'm going to try that.

"Saying "It combines 4X depth with real-time gameplay" is like saying "It combines chess with Whack-A-Mole"."

There are games that combined a turned based campaign map with real time battles, and they are good. If you dont know about them then you need to play more games instead of acting like you know what your talking about when you really don't.

You could make an awesome MOO2 style campaign map combined with great homeworld style real time battles and get away with probably one of the best games ever made. Is that "chess with whack-a-mole?" if you think so then you obviously dont know what you are talking about.

Plus Pax Imperia wasn't a bad 4x FULL real-time game. It was buggy but the gameplay was good. Then again you probably never heard of it as your obviously new to gaming.

"If you like Galactic Civilizations you will probably like Sins of a Solar Empire."

It looks interesting.

If you can pause it and still control things, like in Rise of Nations, I'd give it a shot, but I can't stand classic/typical RTS twitch gameplay with no pause, because I like to think about things, review things, and do it at my leisure. This is the main reason I prefer GalCiv and Civ over any RTS (although Rise of Nations is an awesome game - kind of a blend of RTS and Civ).

You can pause and issue orders while paused.

I wasn't sure about Sins as I don't normally like RTS games. I don't like "click happy" games like that. Civ 4 and Gal Civ 2 are my staple with some Oblivion tossed in to take a break.

But Sins just looked too good to pass up so I took a chance and got it.

Wow have I not been disappointed. I am blown away how good this game is and how much fun I'm having playing it. It's heart pounding. I'm playing on normal and it's slow enough for me to keep up (you can play it on slow if you want) and now that I'm getting the UI down I may actually crank it up to fast for my next game.

It really is amazing to watch my 3 huge capital ship charge up their lasers and fire on the enemy. Brad noted once it's like watching Babylon 5 and it really is. I think to have fun I'm going to train up my 4th capital ship and go assult the main pirate base. In the meantime I can easily via the empire tree upgrade my labs and planetary improvements.

Once the demo comes out try this game. Honestly I'm not sure how I can plan GalCiv 2 again after this.

I just picked this game up from best buy today. Let me say, guys you have a huge winner here. This game is as good as civ4 and galciv2. It really is! Excuse my language but damn this game is good! No doubt, no doubt this one is going to win reviewers hands over fists.  

Speaking as a huge fan of GalCiv 2, I wish I'd waited for the demo on this one. I want to love it, I really do, but so far I just don't have any fun playing it. The zoomed in visuals are lovely, but I find it impossibly clunky to play anywhere near that level. In practice I have to play all the way zoomed out to stand any chance of keeping track of what's going on, and the icon view is neither as attractive nor as well designed and clear as that in GC2. Without the eye candy, it just seems bare bones and unengrossing compared to a full fledged strategy game. I'm going to keep trying, maybe I'll find something to love after awhile, but if you have any doubts I really recommend waiting for the demo. I feel like I misspent $50 and, unfortunately, I can't even sell the game because of the registration system.

I'm sure it's great for some folks, I guess it's just not the game for me. I guess there are worse things that giving an extra $50 to Stardock, though. It's not like I haven't gotten many times my money's worth out of GC2, DA, and TA after all.

Is there going to be a demo?

They've said there will be, yes.

For 25€, it's one of the best RTS out there - or more likely, the only one with the 'one more turn' syndrome.

I'm usually very wary of RTS games, but this feels more like a different take on GC2 than a traditional RTS. The upcoming patches should fix the pirate problem, so I wouldn't dismiss it entirely yet.

Yeah, I give up. I dislike the mission system, after extended play the interface is still hopelessly awkward, and above all there's just nothing here that holds my interest or brings me into the game. I guess I'll uninstall and come back sometime down the road once lots of patching has been done to see if its any better. Again, no complaints about quality here, it's just very much not my game.

I'm very suspicious about this game after watching the trailer. An RTS without a minimap?!? Zooming as compensation?!? So far I've never seen any RTS where this worked.

Unlike GC2, SOSE is playing in a genre with extremely high competition. Games like Companies of Heroes, Dawn of War, C&C3, etc. offer excellent graphics combined with excellent overview at the same time through the mini map.
Honestly, if the game can't be played without zooming then you didn't even reach the basics of an 'average' RTS.

The RTS crowd is not very forgiving. If the interface isn't good nobody will like the game even if the gameplay would be in principle good.

Maybe you should consider to turn SOSE in a TBS game if you can't handle the RTS basics. Better a good TBS game than a bad RTS.

Companies of Heroes, Dawn of War, C&C3 ... aren't comparable to SoaSE. It's more 4X than traditional RTS. As such, I haven't had any need for a minimap yet. The Empire bar usually is a very good substitute.

Think more of what MoO3 should have been, only realtime instead of turnbased. (Gross oversimplification, but the only way to describe the gameplay I can come up with.)

Note - Sins is flagged not to install on windows 2000

But that's the thing. Sins *isn't* a "twitch" RTS. The person that can click the mouse the fastest *doesn't* win. The person with the best *strategy* will win. You have longer games, build up your empire, research technoligies and so forth. You can't think of this game as a traditional RTS because it's not. It's RT4X as they advertise it.

And the game doesn't need a mini-map. Just doesn't. The empire tree on the left is awesome and very easy to keep track of your entire empire. And I'm a turn based guy. The UI took a couple games for me to figure it out but I've gotten it now and as I posted above, I don't know if I could play Galciv again after being spoiled with the empire tree. One example: Had 2 huge battles going on in border planets. While I was keeping an eye on that I used the empire tree to queue up production on all my planets and set more ships to get built at my shipyard planet and as they get built they automatically would warp on in to the battle I was watching and join up with the fleet. And I never had to leave the battle to do all that. Fantastic.

Basically if you are on the fence I'd wait for the demo which they have said will be up in March.

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Well, that's a bad sign. A good RTS interface shouldn't take a few games to figure it out. At least not for a veteran of RTS and TBS games.



I understood the empire tree as a 'building' instrument and it's definitely possible that it's good. BUT, I'm speaking about an 'information' instrument. In an RTS I need to know in a fraction of a second where all my units and buildings are, where my allies are and most important, if there are any enemies invading my territory. Further it's necessary to reach every point on the whole map with one mouse click. A mini map offers all that and even more. And since good information management is an essential part of strategy, this has nothing to do with click spam.
We'll see if Sins can offer all that too with their empire tree. I haven't forgotten Peter Molyneux 'we know everything better' approach with the digital desaster game Black & White.

Anyway, if the game gets at least an 8+ rating at gamespot, I consider it 'worth a look'.

Just wait for a demo Arkhan, and you'll have a chance to see. I have to admit, I don't think I understand how best to use the tree. I see how it functions as a building instrument, but it doesn't supplant the need for a mini map to determine the relative positions of different planets. Absent a large scale view somewhere in the HUD, I'm forced to keep zooming all the way out to see what's going on, which is distracting, awkward, and ultimately my biggest gripe. If I'm missing some component of how the interface works and there's a way around that, then that would be marvelous.

Ultimately I was expecting a game more like EU2 in space, and what I got is more like Homeworld on a large, 2D plane and without a good map tool.

I agree that SoaSE won't be for everyone, but as an ex-RTS addict it really is the best of both worlds.

The empire tree does a great job of giving you both the info you need(Health, Shields, and location of every ship and improvement)plus the ability to issue commands through it without losing focus on where your at. Your also always a double click away from going to any planet that you have forces at. Why didn't somebody think of this sooner?

Actually, that pretty much hits the nail on the head as to what I was expecting. Ah well, live and learn. :NOTSURE:

The lesson is, just because you love and adore the games of one genre that a company puts out, that doesn't mean you should blindly buy any game they publish (especially when its of a different genre and made by a different developer). In retrospect, that seems kind of stupidly obvious, but here we are. Like I said earlier, I'm inclined to consider it an additional $50 paid towards Gal Civ 2 and leave it at that.

For what it's worth, now that I've abandoned all of my expectations, I think it's slowly starting to grow on me. It helps to stop looking at screen shots. The fact is all those pretty graphics aren't visible at the zoom level you realistically have to play at.