Sins of a Solar Empire

If you have ever wished that your favorite turn based/4X strategy game had elements of a real time game or vice versa then Sins of a Solar Empire could be the game you're looking for. Ironclad Games has masterfully built a grand strategy game that has all the depth and empire building elements of a traditional 4X style game which plays out in real time.
Just to set the record straight, Sins of a Solar Empire is not a traditional turn based strategy game. All of the empire building, research, exploration, and combat plays out in real time. However, it is paced in such a way that enables you to manage both your empire building operations and combat that keeps the game moving with out sacrificing the level of detail you would like to micro manage your empire.
In each game of Sins of a Solar Empire you'll start with a single planet, one shipyard and some money which you'll use to construct and expand your empire. Nearby asteroids can be used to harvest resources and act as outpost while scout and colony ships can be sent out in search of new planets to colonize. The size of a particular game depends on the scenario selected at the start. There are nearly two dozen different scenarios to choose from; the selection screen gives some basic information on each such as the number of stars, planets, maximum number of players and what game type the map/scenario is best suited for. It's worth noting that game can get quite long, even the smallest maps can take hours on end to conquer.
Colonizing planets should start as soon as possible after all this is a basic conquest style game and you'll want to expand as much as possible before being drawn into confrontations with an enemy. Colonizing other planets is not always easy though, traveling from one planet to another must be done through specific travel paths. These single lines of travel can cause choke points and ultimately may need to be resolved through combat. Once you've successfully gained control of a planet and the space around it you can begin to colonize or terra form (in the case of an ice or volcanic planet) the planet. Colonization is the main driving force for expanding your resources and empire's reach. Building up a planet's infrastructure includes creating defensive structures, space docks, resource harvesters and much more.
There are three resources that are required for building ships, facilities and researching new technology; credits, metal and crystal. Credits come from tax income of your planet's population, build up more civilian infrastructure to support larger populations and you'll earn more taxes. Metal and crystal are collected by building extractors on asteroids that you have colonized and provide an unlimited amount a particular resource. Metal is the main resource used for constructing ships and facilities and is fairly common. Crystals on the other hand are quire rare making them hot commodities for all factions when discovered. This resource is mostly used for ship upgrades and research. In addition to the standard resources, researching new technology requires you to build research labs and planet infrastructure improvements.
Conducting research is the way you'll be able to advance and expand your civilization. Ship upgrades, new technology and advanced infrastructure are all acquired from doing research. In Sins of a Solar Empire research is broken down into 4 main groups; combat research, civic research, fleet logistics, and artifacts. The combat and civic research trees are unique for each faction and split into three sub-categories, these allow you to research new ships, ship upgrades, weapons, economy and more. Fleet logistics allows you to research advanced training that enables you to support more ships and larger fleets. Finally the artifacts branch of research is for researching rare technologies that can be discovered on expeditions to new planets. Although each of the game's three factions has a unique technology tree, they are all very well balanced so that there's not one superior to another. However, even in some medium length games you may find yourself exhausting the tech tree well before the game is over, this contributes to slowing the game down and making it mostly combat oriented and one dimensional.Sins of a Solar Empire is an epic strategy game that can keep you up late at night. It does a great job of blending different aspects of all strategy game genres.