Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity
Media Guide Available at Retail February 9th 2010
Guide written by Brad Wardell Executive Producer

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Contents
Summary Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy Highlights Review Guide The wonder of Sins of a Solar Empire Contact us

Summary

Title: Developer: Publisher: Price: Requires: Genre: Website: Description: Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity is the compilation of the award-winning Sins of a Solar Empire and its two expansion packs: Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment (February 2009) and Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy (available February 9, 2010 at retail). Sins of a Solar Empire is a real-time space strategy game in which players can choose to play a faction from one of three races as they wage an epic war for dominance. What makes Sins of a Solar Empire special? Sins of a Solar Empire has a level of scale and depth not previously seen in real-time strategy games. A player can zoom in on an individual fighter fighting in a battle in orbit of a particular asteroid and then fluidly zoom out to see multiple stars and the epic strategic war of billions of people. Depending on the scenario chosen, a game can last as little as an hour or as long as several months. As a result, Sins of a Solar Empire is one of the only real-time strategy games that lets players save their online multiplayer games to be continued later. Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity Ironclad Games Stardock Entertainment $39.95 ($9.99 for Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy) Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 Real-Time Strategy www.stardock.com

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What is being reviewed
The retail product being sold is Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity. Existing users of Sins of a Solar Empire and the Entrenchment expansion can purchase the Diplomacy expansion for $9.99 but most users are likely to be interested in the full package. To that end this media guide will focus on Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity but will outline below what is specifically new in the Diplomacy expansion pack for those users who are interested in whats new over the last expansion pack.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy
While most users are likely to pick up Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity at the store or on Impulse, users who already have Sins of a Solar Empire can keep up by picking up Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy. Installing Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy on top of your existing Sins of a Solar Empire + Entrenchment install will bring you up to the latest/greatest version.
Figure 1: Retail users will only see "Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity" but users upgrading from the original Sins of a Solar Empire will see all three chapters together.

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Highlights
Below is the list of features that the Diplomacy expansion pack adds to Sins of a Solar Empire and the Entrenchment expansion pack. Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity = Sins of a Solar Empire + Entrenchment + Diplomacy
Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy (released: February 2010) NEW: Diplomatic Relations screen. See how different players feel about each other. NEW: Negotiation screen. Negotiate treaties, send (or demand) bribes, see how a player feels about you. NEW: Trade Pacts screen NEW: Offer missions to other players NEW: Offer missions to the Pirates NEW: Diplomatic technology Tree NEW: Envoy ships NEW: Diplomatic Victory Condition NEW: Many new maps and scenarios IMPROVED: Significantly improved artificial intelligence for computer players IMPROVED: Additional AI difficulty levels for increased single player challenge IMPROVED: New Game Speed options for production and building to improving pacing IMPROVED: Diplomatic Relations now displays details of how those relations were derived
Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment (released: February 2009) NEW: Starbases NEW: Defense Technology Tree NEW: Mines NEW: Structure destroying ships IMPROVED: Enhanced graphics IMPROVED: Better modding support IMPROVED: New Faster overall game speed option.

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Review Walk thru
Here Ill walk you through a game of Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity. Im going to assume you are an experienced gamer but are not necessarily that familiar with Sins of a Solar Empire.
Figure 2: Make sure you are playing Trinity and choose single player when starting out.
Figure 3: Choose Player Setup to give your side a name, a logo, and a portrait of your liking.

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Figure 4: Unless you're pretty good at the game, don't play at "hard". The idea here is to see how different each race is. In Sins, each race is very very different. I highly recommend playing as the TEC (humans) at first since theyre the most relatable.
Figure 5: For those who like multiplayer, these new "Faster" options are a life saver and a lot harder to do than they appear since the game has to stay "in sync" with other players. But it makes the game move along a lot better for experienced players.

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Figure 6: There's a lot of stuff on the screen when you first get started. Don't worry, the game is really quite simple to play once you know what you're doing.
Figure 7: Once you have sent out a capital ship and some ships to destroy the riff-raff that guards planets and asteroids, send a colony ship there. If it's an ice or volcanic world make sure you research the tech to colonize them.

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Figure 8: Controlling your colony
Figure 9: Building things on your colony

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Figure 10: Nearly everything can be automated if you want. Purists like to control things. Dangerously lazy people like myself will right click on abilities to just have the AI do the work.

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Figure 11: Now you can give missions to the other players.

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The Wonder of Sins of a Solar Empire in 6 screenshots
No game in the history of PC or console gaming has ever had the scope of Sins of a Solar Empire. Ever. From watching a single fighter in a single planet system all the way out to seeing 3 or 4 entire star systems at once, Sins of a Solar Empire lets users experience the true epic nature of an interstellar war.

Figure 12: This single fighter flies its own AI driven mission against an enemy frigate.
Figure 13: We can zoom out and see the fighter as it heads towards the enemy frigate.

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Figure 14: As we continue zooming out, we can see the fighters and the enemy frigates at once.
Figure 15: Zooming further out, now we can see the entire planet system.

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Figure 16: As we zoom out, we realize that this is just one battle going on within this single star system.
Figure 17: Now we can see the entire star system. And remember, Sins of a Solar Empire supports up to FOUR star systems at once.

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Getting in touch
Have a question? Need help! Contact me. Im very lonely! Email: Phone: brad@stardock.com 734-956-0397
This media guide is also available in a digital version from www.stardock.com/press.

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29 October 2009
By: Andrei Dumitrescu, Games Editor
Sins of a Solar Empire Gets Game of the Year Edition

Complete package

Stardock and Ironclad Games have announced that they are set to release a Game of the Year Edition version of Sins of a Solar Empire, one of the best real time strategy games of 2008. The new pack should arrive on October 30, just in time for Christmas and will be integrating all of the patches launched for the game, addressing bugs, fixing errors and introducing new gameplay balances. The Game of the Year Edition is also set to include a soundtrack CD and a double sided poster that details the tech tree for all the three factions included in Sins of a Solar Empire. The space-based strategy title, which combines huge fleet battles with planetary management, research and diplomacy, has sold more than 100,000 units in the United States and received Editors Choice Awards from a variety of gaming outlets, like PC Zone, PC Gamer and GameSpy. The new edition is set to offer the complete experience in one easy to install package that can serve as a base for further releases. Sins of a Solar Empire is not being abandoned by Ironclad and Stardock. A mini expansion pack, called Entrenchment, has already been outed, offering more options related to the defense of planetary system and introducing changes to tactics used in the big fleet battles. Now, the developers are working on a new add on, called Diplomacy. As the name implies, the new content is set to expand the possibilities of influencing the distant solar system through diplomacy and more techs to be researched by the three factions. Those interested can pre-order Diplomacy and they will be getting access to the beta for the new content, which will probably come out during the winter. Until then, players can pick up the Game of the Year Edition of Sins of a Solar Empire.
Game of the year Ironclad
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