Sins of a Solar Empire. So I want to get into 4X.

[WolfThomas]

That game had me at naming capital ships, any game that lets me name my ships rocks and gives me an enormous amount of attachment to this itty bitty units.

I played TEC. I named by battleships after soliders and generals, Julius Caesar, Roger Young, Horatio, Swamp Fox etc. Named my support ships and carriers after battlegrounds and military locations Ypres, Galipoli, Tobruk, Valley Forge. Named my planet wreakers after biblical characters, Samsom, Goliath.

Naming planets became harder (once I started I felt I couldn't stop), So I had trends terran worlds were named Peace/utopia/heaven/paradise. Fiery planets ember/pyre/vulcan. Small galaxies I'd theme, like one named with nordic gods.

 

[thiosk]

I suggest buying it just because its made by stardock, and they are fervently against DRM.

I bought it, but was more interested in single player, which was rather nonexistant. Oh well, i might pick it up and play with my brother down the road.

Im also interested in Demigod when that comes out,
looks sick

 

[Veylon]

A good game for beginners, certainly. It's fairly shallow, so you don't have so many tricks and counter-counters to try and figure out, there's effectively no terrain, your ships more or less take care of themselves. The tech tree is simple and more-or-less explains itself.

On the downside, there's no campaign mode, for some reason, so you'll have to learn by jumping right into the main game, it's hard to tell what's going on both when zoomed in and zoomed out, mostly because neither the symbols nor the 3D models tell you what a particular ship is for. Also, the AI seems to be very passive aggressive, sending ships into your system, noting the defenses, turning around, leaving, turning around again, and coming back. Over and over again.

 

[Jandau]

Snip.

I don't have that great of a graphics card so I'll be playing on low graphic quality anyway.

I am looking to get into 4X games but I also want to play SoaSE, I'll look into those games.

The lack of a campaign does sound kind of lame. Are there any mods that add one?

I don't mind games taking a long time. You can walk away and come back at any time. Playing a huge skirmish sounds rather fun in my opinion.

I have to wait a few days until I have enough money to get this game. I should be picking it up on Friday. If anyone knows of any good mods or maps that would be great.

While I can understand you're not too worried about the graphics, I'm still afraid you might get a bit disappointed. I've taken a look at the screenshots around Gamespot to see if I can find a good example, but everything there is false advertising. You might see one such sequence in an hour or two of gameplay. The rest of the time you'll be looking at 8-bit monocolour icons of slightly varying shapes. And when you do zoom in, you have to pray your ship catches the light just right, or it'll be a black ship on the black background.

There are no mods to add a campaign. Singleplayer is basically picking a map to Skirmish on. Gets a wee bit dull soon...

As for the duration, it's not so much a problem of time. GalCiv2 games can take me a few days, but they never get boring. There is so much to do every turn: Managing shifting ecenomic trends, military and social production, diplomacy, expansion (militaristic and/or peaceful), etc. In SoaSE the pace tends to drop down dramatically. There are large stretches of game where you're stuck staring at the screen (full of nothing but ugly icons) waiting for anything to happen.

Personally, I think it's too slow for an RTS and lacks options for a 4X game...

 

[zebrin]

I have played it. it is a good way to sink about 6 days of your life. in one skirmish. yeah... going up against 4 opponents, and suddenly realizing. "Oh... shit. None of them have contacted me in a while." and you start building a VERY big fleet.it annoyed me how slow the pacing was at times, and also the limits on planets and asteroids was somewhat constricting. (It did however, make you attached to your planets, as losing one means losing a good chunk of your production.)

 

[keithburgun]

Sins is kinda crap I hate to say it. I am a big fan of the genre. Make sure you have played Master of Magic and X-Com: UFO Defense, and also to a lesser extent, Civilization. Those are the good 4x games.

You're better off with Master of Orion than the Stardock game. Although Stardock's new game Elemental looks pretty cool.