SOASE

Sins of a Solar Empire. Just got it. Has anyone ever heard of it?

It's so... complicated. I'm used to Civ 5. But this is more RTS than a Civ like game. And yet you can play it like Civ. I'm kind of regretting getting this lol. To much to think about. At least in Civ 5. You can just concentrate on one kind of victory. But since this is also an RTS the battles are harder and you always have some way to always defend your planets.

I like RTS. But now with these other considerations: Pirates, losing a planet through culture over take and much more.

And I was hoping this would be a fun space RTS like Homeworld...

Hmm, I might have to look into this, but I'll definitely take your words into consideration. I like RTS games as well and have actually been looking into other ones, like the Total War series. I got Civ 5 a while back, and the first time I played it, I loved it. There would be nights where I would stay up until 5 or 6 am to finish a game, lol. According to Steam, I have 87 hours played on it.

Went a bit off topic, but I'll definitely check this out to see if it's something I'd be into.

It's a nice game once you get the hang of it. But unlike homeworld. You can't enjoy and zoom in on a Ship and watch it twist and turn as it fights. There is just to much going on if your empire is huge. Just like Civ 5 to much cities means to much work. But it IS possible to play it RTS like and just build and take over everything.

Blob your way to victory. First churn out as many capital ships as possible. You'll need them to even capture new planets if they're held by rebels. Advance your resource technology as soon as possible, and also refineries if they're available for your faction.

The key to winning is resources and having more capital ships. It's honestly not that hard or complicated of a game, you just have to make it through the first few steps.

The Total War series and Civilization series aren't even remotely the same game. Personally, I prefer Total War, as it focuses more on tactics to win battles and superior military performance rather than just blobbing, and also has a bit more government and economic management. Civilization is fairly generalized and "pick up and play", though.



You can zoom in on ships and watch them fight. You can even zoom in on the tiny fighters and bombers that normally only look like trails of light or icons on the map. The amount of detail in the game is ridiculous, both graphically and technically. Fighters and bombers will win you a lot of battles, also.

I don't know if you've figured it out yet, but you can pin planets to your bar on the left hand side so you can see their structures and the ships within their orbits. This will help a ton for empire management, since you can see both where your fleets are and where enemies are possibly attacking you.

Build a lot of defensive structures as well, especially if you have the Rebellion expansion. It comes with Entrenchment and the huge defensive battle stations that can singlep-handedly devastate entire enemy fleets of even capital ships.

I know you can zoom in. I mean. You don't have the time to watch the whole fight since you have to much to control lol. That's RTS for you.

Also. While I was just ramming fleets of ships through other planets. I found my other planets getting culturally taken over. Which was just real **** since my fleet was to far from them :/

Yeah, I've played both, and I enjoy both, though I've only played about an hour of the Total War: Shogun demo. The graphics of it and the battles are amazing. They may be very different games, but again, they are RTS games, and I tend to enjoy the entire genre. If you understand one, it's not hard to pick up another unless it's completely out there.

I usually never have problems with having to manage too much, even if I've taken over literally every planet in the system except the ones the last enemy happens to be holding. The key is choke points. Try to cover all the "entrances" to your empire with your heaviest defenses, and make sure there are no backdoors through wormholes or whatever else. If there's one planet with multiple links to other planets at a sort of crossroads, it's a good place to build some heavy defenses too.

If you're having problems with culture overtaking your planets, build a few influence stations around your borders. I can't remember what they're exactly called, but the research for them is typically in the propaganda area of the empire research tree. The reason enemy influence is getting to you is because you're capturing planets far from your capital planet, so you need to create another means of spreading your culture, through either trade ships or propaganda.