These fiends also can be bribed early in the game to attack other empires, providing incentive for a strong early economy – or a strong early military to thwart them. Pirates occupy the space above colonizable planets and must be driven out. There are other tweaks that help to keep the game fresh from beginning to end. You can’t auto-pilot your economy – but your fleet is more effective when you take charge. This helps to keep a game of Sins exciting because the player is always provided an important task.
Yet Sins also includes engaging and challenging combat. Sins offers the depth of a proper 4X game – there’s exploration, research, construction and diplomacy. These two variations of the strategy genre seem to be polar opposites, but it turns out that combining them helps to solve the problems of each. Real-time strategy games tend to have a fast pace that encourages short play sessions while 4X games usually use a turn-based system that encourages exploration of gameplay mechanics and epic sessions. These are two genres that look similar on the surface but rarely blend.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is a real-time 4X strategy game.
