Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment
Verdict: my new favorite RTS
In a Nutshell: This is an upgrade/expansion to a very large space RTS.
“In Sins of a Solar Empire, you are the leader of a civilization embroiled in a galactic war, fighting for the survival of your entire race against relentless foes. Your success will depend entirely on your ability to manage your empire and command your vast fleets of starships to victory. Sins of a Solar Empire is a “RT4X” game, blending the epic strategy and empire management of the 4x genre with the fast-paced and tactical elements of a real-time strategy title. “
- Fun Rating: Really Fun
- ESRB: T
- Players/Mode: single-player / campaign, multiplayer/pvp
- Game Duration: a single player level against one AI opponent takes less than an hour
- System: PC
- Developer: http://www.ironcladgames.com
- Website: http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/
- Cost: $9.95 through Stardock’s Impulse platform (requires full version of Sins of a Solar Empire)
- Demo: available through the Impulse platform
| Would I play this again? | yes |
| Would I recommend this game? | yes |
| Was the story good? | the bit of backstory is good |
| Was the music good? | yes |
| Were the graphics good? | beautiful |
| Was this game difficult? | yes |
| Was this game frustrating? | no |
| Was this game offensive? | no |
| Was this game worth your time/money? | absolutely |
Playing the game
In Entrenchment, you have the choice of one of three races with the goal of eliminating your opponents’ bases from the map. This is done by building up your fleet and defending your own bases. By selecting any one of the planets that you control, you have access to all construction options. Moving your fleet to a different area is done by simply selecting the ships you want to move, then right clicking where you want them to go or what you want them to attack.
You’ll need credits and resources in order to build your fleet or research upgrades. Credits are acquired from taxes on and trade with controlled planets. Resources are gathered from asteroids in the controlled region around a planet. In addition to the gathering the resources, there is a black market which allows you to buy or sell resources that you either can’t get enough of or have in ample surplus.
Other standards of this genre that you’ll find here in a more advanced form are research and diplomacy. Research, or the tech tree, is broken up into ship upgrades and development, planetary defenses, and planet development and exploration. In addition, you can upgrade the number of smaller ships or capital ships that can be supported. Diplomacy with another player can come in various form from a complete cease-fire to simply allowing the other player(s) to see what you see.
And, if you think there’s not enough going on already, you have the options of pirates actively seeking out the player with the highest bounty on their head. Even with the pirates set to “inactive” you’ll find them controlling at least one planet and laying in wait around other planets, just to keep things interesting.
What the game gets right
(Opening note: This is my first experience with Sins of a Solar Empire so my notes do not draw a distinction between the game proper and the expansion.)
Not only do the AI opponents have the standard race and difficulty options in Entrenchment, AI opponents have four different strategy options for you to pit your wits against. The strategy option can also be set to random which will keep you on your toes and help fine tune your tactics.
The graphics for this game are spectacular. Every planet, star, asteroid, ship and structure are beautiful and can be zoomed right up for a close view. Most of the time, however, I rarely got closer than seeing the region around a planet so being able to see all the wonderful detail is less for strategical purposes and really there simply for the wicked sweetness. Additionally, with the different levels of zoom, I found using the track ball a little difficult so you’ll probably want a wheeled mouse for this one.
The tutorials were done well and prevented the complexity of the game from scaring me off. I did have to run through the tutorials a couple of times. But that was made even easier as the tutorial is broken up into manageable chunks so that you don’t have to wade through the basic movement to get to the more complex elements.
What the game gets wrong
Multi-player, unless I’m missing something, seems to be limited to LANs and your Impulse friends list. I can see how this is probably preferred but is very limiting if, as in my case, you are the only person you know playing this game.
UPDATE – July 24, 2009: I was missing something. The Ironclad Online log in screen has a place to “Add Player”. Here is where you can add up to five different online user names for yourself, not where you add your friends as I had incorrectly understood.
Sum it up
There’s an incredible amount going on in this game, especially compared to most of the “standard” strategy games out there. This complexity may be discouraging at first and I felt lost the first few times. Hang in there because there is a lot of fun to be had once you get the hang of how the game and interface work.
I started off, as I do with other real-time strategy games, trying to turtle; build up a huge army and climb the tech tree before wiping out the AI. That strategy doesn’t work at all in this game. For me, this is a good thing as it might actually teach me how to play real time strategies.
However, it might have only taught me a different strategy for the “normal” AI difficutly level for this game. I’ll have to try against a real person to find out. If you want an easy prey, add “dufflehead” to your Impulse friend list and let me cower in awe-struck terror at the effulgence of your strategery.
All of this said, I’ve just barely scratched the surface of this game. Time to go play some more.
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July 24th, 2009 at 10:53 am
How does Sins compare to Starcraft? It seems like it would be fun, but I’ve never been very good at being able to keep up with all of the resource collecting & construction aspects of RTS’s like Starcraft…
Is it micro-manage or larger scale?
July 24th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Sins is more macromanagement, really.
Resources are gathered by building a mine on an asteroid and that’s really all there is to that aspect.
The ship ai handles all of the micro stuff for the most part. You build them, research enhancements, then point them at a planet and spend the rest of your time exploring and planning. Sometimes you’ll need to redirect them to a new target or tell them to defend a particular ship if that’s part of your plan.
Unlike starcraft, you don’t have to get your construction timed down to the second. You need to figure out the build order, but that’s all queued up just by selecting what you want to build without any extra keys.