Old thread is dead.

tl;dr - it's a good game, but I suck at it because I don't expand nearly quickly enough.

I acutally bought this last Christmas (as a present to myself ), but only now have I really been playing it. I can attest that it's addictively fun. I'll agree that it's hard for you to lose after you conquer an entire solar system because you're basically a juggernaut by then, but I love getting to that level of strength and then taking my sweet time with wiping out the remaining factions, planet by planet, then seizing their planets and resources for myself.

I got my ass kicked the first few times, but I think I've finally figured out what I was doing wrong. I'm very much a turtle, so what I like to do is grab any planets that are protected by a choke point; that way I have only one location that I have to defend. After that I'll be content to let my resources slowly build up so that I can research all of the best shit, then I can head out with all of the most advanced stuff. The problem is that while I'm sitting still in one place, the other factions are grabbing more and more territory. I also tend to focus more on better weapons instead of larger fleet size (mainly in part because I have so little income because I have so few planets), so I can't build a huge fleet to attack and defend. Even though I've got better technology, the other factions can afford to field huge armies at me.

So instead I've been experimenting with a strategy of early and aggressive expansion. Even though I'm more exposed to attacks (pirates aren't a problem, as long as I can bribe them better than everyone else), I'm denying the other factions resources. I've also been trying to balance out how much fleet research I do with how many planets I've captured, not so that I can have ships in more places at once so much as it makes future assaults progressively easier. I think this approach is working a lot better, though granted I set the ai to easy. I'll have to try it with harder settings.

5/14/2009 6:50:54 PM

I got a while back. Havent been playing it much though but i like it.

Capital ships suck. hands down. game is won with small frigs, and normally just who as more. Agreed on the expansion I cant top the computer normally but i can normally hold my own. Normally I expand slowly and hit a critical point eventually where within 5 mins i can win the game. hurts me also as im a turtle player that likes to upgrade everything. you are right with the early aggressive expansion. i just cant get it right yet. AI needs some improvement, as my allie keeps working with the computers closest to us (which i normally want to take out first.)

5/15/2009 8:43:48 AM

Great game, but we got bored with the computer AI.

1 computer is not a challenge for me, ever, and adding mroe computers doesn't really help much. They never attack in concert, or aid each other in the least. You basically just steamroll one then steamroll the other.

Every game seems the same, regardless of map. My strategy is almost always the same, and the outcome is always the same....

5/15/2009 10:18:32 AM

I have a copy though I haven't played it in a long time. Have any of you tried the recent expansion packs? Supposedly the space station makes a real difference in the way the defensive game is played...

5/15/2009 12:07:29 PM

I can totally buy this now that people gave me $ for graduating. I've been wanting it since it came out.

5/15/2009 1:21:43 PM

I'm sure that it was supremely obvious to everyone else, but I didn't really think about why the game is called "Sins of a Solar Empire" until I had played it some. And it's not because of the pirates/black market stuff.

I remember one game where I had entered into a peace treaty with my nearest neighbor, primarily so that I didn't have to be worried about being attacked from that side. But the trouble was that none of the other factions liked them and would constantly offer me missions to take them out. I didn't really want to go that route, I wanted to see if there was a way to befriend everyone, or at least not be forced to choose sides. That didn't work out so well, and my "ally" seemed to constantly get pissed off at me because he kept asking me to do attack missions that I wouldn't/couldn't do. In the end I wound up attacking and conquering them. There's also been quite a few times when I was on peaceful terms with two factions who were enemies with one another, and I'd refuse to do either of their missions because I didn't feel like going to war with either of them, so they'd both keep getting progressively annoyed with me. Some sort of neutrality option is one thing that I wish the diplomacy in this game had.

In my tinkering with early expansion, I'd found that I couldn't effectively defend every planet that I felt was exposed to attack. Typically I'm only left with two options; have fleets parked at each of those systems, or leave them to fend for themselves. Option 1 doesn't really work because of the caps on fleet size, so the best you can do is have relatively small-sized fleets. Even if those fleets don't get steam-rolled over, you still won't be left with enough forces to lead successful attacks. So what I've found so far is that I don't have any better options beyond allowing one of my colonies to get destroyed so that I can swoop in and finish off the enemy.

There's not really any way to get along with everybody, and you have to choose between defending everything and attacking with little or attacking with everything and defending nothing. Unless I'm playing it wrong, this game seems designed such that betrayal is inevitable and truces are made to be broken. And even though I HATE letting the enemy get away with destroying my stuff, it keeps his main attack force from engaging mine. No matter what happens, I'm going to get my hands dirty.

5/15/2009 2:48:58 PM