Even in chess, there's a difference between playing a fast timed game vs. a slow one.

Deep strategy takes *time*. The faster the game, the less time the brain has to process information and less time to think of all the creative possibilities.

RTSes in general are about micro-management. 4X is much more about macro-management - dealing with the big picture. For Sins, you need to do both, so it requires more time to do the number crunching, see the overall trends and get the big picture.

I think Sins is flexible enough that people can play with a focus on RTS or 4X style, but that waters down the game. But I think many people don't like being outside of their comfort zone.

6 hours? Please tell me this is not typical. This is a major problem if true.

Although I wouldn't mind an extra-fast mode, a DefCon-style extra-slow "Office Mode" (a hotkey puts the game in the systems tray as an icon, in case your supervisor comes by) would be awesome.

I really wish the fanboys would stop bashing ppl that complain about game length. It's easy to say "go play another game" and I've seen this said in many previous rts games I've loved, until we had 20-30 ppl left to play with.

In truth, the OP has a point. Who has 6 hours to play a game? Little kids with no supervision? Retirees? Welfare rec? Nerds that have nothing else to do with their life? I mean, come on. An hour long game is NOT a rushy game. It doesn't have to take forever to be a deep game. A good example of this is Rise of Nations, but there are plenty of other great rts games out there as well.

Having played Sins for a bit now, I do feel that "normal" is a bit slow, especially for twitchy RTS players. But I don't think it would be too slow for 4X players.

Ah, RoN a deep game? A fairly good RTS, but nothing more. An hour is about right.

Sins game in only an hour? Man, might as well just strip out research and trade, and just build a fleet and have at it.

It's like saying Empire Strikes Back is too long, and they should cut out all the non-battle "fluff". LOL.

Insulting people isn't the way to influence people. Some people like long games and make the time to play them (there is a save game option after all). In particular, nearly every fan of turn-based 4X games is willing to do a short game like a 6 hour game. A fan of Stardock's GalCiv II can easily spend 5 times that on one game. Bashing fans of 4X games on Stardock's own site just doesn't seem like the right approach to get the developers to do what you want, IMHO.

I find it odd that you complain about people bashing others for their opinions and then you do it in the next paragraph.

First, as if my first post didn't make it clear, I'll state my allegiance. I hate consoles, with a passion. I don't mind Nintendo, as Nintendo generally has their own franchises and doesn't port things to the PC. However, Sony and Microsoft proved it's cost effective to make games, copy-paste them into the Windows OS, and sell them for $50, even if their quality is ass.

I've always been a PC gamer. PC games used to be all about depth. Yes, I'm a high-and-mighty games-are-art aficionado. However, 2002 to me marked the decline of gaming. Since then, games and consoles have tried to grab a market that never used to give a shit about video games, much less games like Deus Ex or System Shock 2. This is the 'mainstream' crowd. They aren't real gamers, and have never been, and if gaming went back to being artistic and quality, they'd be bored and go back to their frat parties.

These are the people complaining about SoaSE's speed. They pretty much never gamed prior to their Xbox. They're the ones who say every game should be about, and here's a quote I see thrown EVERYWHERE: "grabbing a beer with your mates". Honestly, I don't care if they stop playing SoaSE. I don't care if they quit gaming altogether. Hell they could all disappear off the earth and I wouldn't miss them. I'd certainly see less stupidity on the internet.



Who has time to rebuild the engine of a car? 6 hours? Way too long. Who wants to spend thousands of dollars adding aftermarket headers, cams, a turbocharger, or on a lift kit?

(The ironic part is the console retards complain that PC gaming requires you to buy a $4000 PC ever two months, or some stupid bullshit, yet working on cars is more expensive, more time-consuming, AND more popular)

Who has time to draw? 6 hours for a good drawing? I don't have that kind of time.

Who the hell has the time to go fishing? You can spend 6 hours getting ready at the asscrack of dawn and not even be in your BOAT yet.

Christ who has time to read a book? They're so long, a movie is over in like two hours, I don't have time to read a whole book.

Who the crap has time to watch a sports game, or even play one? Christ a football game can last all NIGHT.

Gaming is a hobby. If you don't have the mental stamina to tolerate 6 hours of a game (who the fuck said it had to be all at once you knob), then it's not a hobby for you. Go find something else to do you idiot.

For the record, I'm active duty military, so eat a dick. If I can find time, I'm sure Joe Asshole McRetard who works a part-time shift at McDonalds can find some god damn time to learn to appreciate games that aren't instant gratification of brainless twitch adrenalin.



And here's the flaw in your argument. The Xbox tards want to turn every fucking game into a fast-paced brainless action-fest they can play casually. They aren't content to let us have ONE game that isn't 'for them', whereas they have an entire MARKET of shitty, crappy, lame games. Go look at Halo, Resistance, Killzone, BLACK, Prey - what the fuck is the difference in ANY of those games? They're all effectively the same damn game - hell Prey is the only one that stands out at all. They're linear, straightforward, completely contentless shooters. They have storylines that would get an F in a Sophomore Creative Writing class.

Any idiot can pick them up and play, which is why the 'mainstream' crowd likes them - because the average human is a complete idiot.

If you find anything objectionable in my post, feel free to go to hell.

lol @ the fanboy hostility.

No bashing from me, in fact, I have no problem with ppl that have 6 hours to play video games...just find it hard to believe there are many ppl that can, except perhaps the very old, young kids, people without jobs/families, nerds without any form of real life social life, that sort of thing. What's odd, however, is the anger/rage like seen in the post above this one. Games needn't take hours to be strategically deep and just because a game is enjoyed by the mainstream doesn't automatically make it a shallow, "crappy" game that only xbox tard/idiots can appreciate.


PS...to the question about reading...yes, I love to read and own hundreds of books. Does that mean SOASE games don't last too long? lol, relax. Only a tiny few would enjoy it if the average book were about 5000 pages. Or the average movie was 6 hours long.

I dare you to prove that one. I mean look at what you have going for you: Oblivion, Call of Duty 4, C&C3, God of War, Bioshock - whoops. The closest you can get is Mass Effect which still fell short of being a Baldur's Gate 2.

Oh and fanboyism has nothing to do with me being "angry" (anger is a rather poor word for it). It has more to do with my reaction to stupidity perceived or otherwise.

I haven't read all 8 pages but I've read a few posts...anyway

For this type of game the speed settings before playing, choice of map size and all are more than adequate to fine tune it to your liking/time allotment, and if they are still too restrictive you can make your own mod or find one that probably "fixes" it for you.

For what it is, I find it to be a great game. Sometimes the games even on small maps run for longer than I plan on playing for, so I save my game or just set an autosave number to stop at, say when it reaches autosave X I'll stop, not so terrible to save and continue later on. That doesn't make it any less of a strategy game because you need to save and continue. If you only have one hour to play set all the settings to fast/locked teams and go for it, and unless you have really bad luck or strategy it can be finished in the allotted time.

The only trouble I've found is online games, large maps take too long playing with random people, even when I plan a game out with several of my friends who have it, it can go on too long and we have to save it. I don't have 6 hours to spend all at once most of the time, except weekends or days off work, and when i do have 6 hours I would rather do more than play one game, but sometimes it's exciting to have a huge map to conquer and I have several SP and MP games saved of that kind. On days when I do work, I utilize the great thing called the SAVE feature, imagine that. It allows me to have a social life, work and play long strategy games...amazing.

As for all this bashing, everyone has different ways of playing, enjoy different things about games and how they play them. That's a good thing. Fighting over this is silly; this game has a save feature for a reason and autosave even in MP, so it's all moot.

I would love to have a "faster" option for larger games with people willing to play it. For 2on2 and 1on1 the FAST seems plenty fast enuff (i like my opponents 1 or 2 planets away ) but for larger games having a "faster" option would be great.

If you don't want to use it don't join the game.....that simple and no one gets hurt.

OP, you don't know how to play if it takes you 2 hours just to start fighting. If you want fast games play on small maps, even with normal speed settings you will have the option to start fighting, possibly kill, another player within the first 30 minutes. I've done it. Of course, 30 minutes is a longish game of Starcraft by comparison. You might just need to go back to that.

The speed is too slow. I'm a complete noob who has only played about 6 games, all vs comp, all as vasari, all small maps, only the first game on normal speed. I guess if I max out research speed and resources it would be okay for now, but that's really the problem:

what happens in a month when everybody has memorized the hotkeys, knows all the research possibilities, has found 10 good strats that give them lots of options and maybe 3 good strats that become standard "cheese" for their race. I mean you can only scout so much before you generally know what your opponent has and what you have, and I'm already spending an awful lot of time just watching my guys fly through their hyper lanes and checking the pretty graphics. When I don't have to look at the tooltips on research anymore, what am I going to spend my free time doing? Everybody seems to assume that I should be thinking about my strategy, but once I have intel on my opponent and have chosen my plan, am I supposed to just sit back and sip a latte until my resources start to come in faster than I can handle?

Trust me. I like the speed of the game right now, but in the future there WILL be a faster gameplay mode or there won't be any competitive games. The game is complex, but its not THAT complex that you have to analyze the board 3 out of every 5 minutes. In fact, one of the biggest contributing differences in somebody who knows how to play a game and somebody who doesn't is the speed with which they can execute their strategy, or the speed with which they can analyze the size of their opponent.

Maybe I'll just turn pirates off for awhile. They use up a ton of my resources while I'm expanding the first 45 minutes.

Good post, meorah.

There's a save feature. Lenght of games is irrelevant. Even if a person only has 15 minutes per day to play games, they can still play Sins to the same extent as a person who gets to play 8 consecutive hours. That point of yours is moot.

Your claim that strategic games don't need to take long - prove it. Everything ever released points to the opposite.

As for your "only a tiny few would enjoy it" part: So what? Popular does not equal good. Nor does Quantity in playerbase equal quality in game. Niche Games that are done well win over mainstream boring-soup every day.

i think the big issue is that it is more of a rts than a 4x. Sins simply does not have enogh depth to be a 4x, yet it is too slow and mindless to be a rts.

where does that leave us?

i do a 10 hour civ game on sitting if i have nothing to do that weekend, and love it. however, i cringe at the thought taking a few hours playing Sins. the game is little more than a slow plodding rts. I'd even say C&C3 has more strategy in it than Sins (yes stratagy, not tactics) and we all know what C&C3 is like.

i have to say i was not impressed with Sins.

however, i have not given up on it. so if some of you would kindly explain the great strategys that sins requires please do, i want to enjoy this game.

I think the problem here to some is that every time you play you need to rebuild your economy, military and the works.

Could be nice to start out with pre-built bases for a change.

Think of a scenario: "We have established a foothold in the TEC territory, but they are planning a counter-attack. Purge them in the Unity's name!" And boom you get thrown in to the game in the middle of a planetary assault with the Advent fleet bombarding the bejesus out of the TEC, while the TEC is amassing a fleet in the nearby solar system.

Sorry (okay, I'm not), but this reads like bashing to me. It doesn't take much reading comprehension to read the negative tone you have put into your posts and the people you are "not bashing".

I think those who prefer a really deep 4X game will be a bit disappointed. Those looking for another fast-paced, shallow RTS clone will be disappointed.

The rest of us can enjoy this new RT4X experience.

I don't get it.

Ive read through this entire thread and for the life of me can't understand where all the hostility is coming from.

If theres anything thats going to split up this community its the sort of bitterness shown by some people here. not by adding some extra settings in the game.

I come from a background in Company of Heroes and Dawn of War and have to agree. For this game to hit the Starcraft effect (where people start paying for it instead of pirating it for multiplayer) there needs to be a faster form of gameplay. I'd be all for creating a Quick Game mod that doubles the resource rate and halves the research times.

Adding extra speed settings in fine, and that's what Ironclad said they are considering for v1.03. The crux of the problem is that die-hard RTS players want it to be another click-fest, who-builds-faster RTS game, while the die-hard 4X players want it to be a slow, real-time version of a Civ-type game.

I don't feel this game should be like either. It's something different. It should be accepted for WHAT IT IS. I think the game should play a little faster, but the *feel* of the game is like that of a moving, real-time chess game, not a whack-a-mole RTS.

I think a whole generation of RTS players equate speed to strategy, and have a really hard time understanding deeper game play. Games like chess and go (it's a game) must be totally alien to most younger RTS players. It's really too bad.

It's exactly this unique feel that I love about this game (well, along with nice balance between depth and simplicity, beautiful interface, plus the eye candy ofc) - also love the way it's designed to avoid the usual RTS 'rush, grab and overwhelm' gameplay. Personally if I want some frantic action I can just fire up Sup Commander or DoW. However have no objection to the addition of a 'Turbo' option in map set-up so long as the standard game isn't affected.

Uranium is spot-on. Let the OP head back to the kiddie corner with his Xbox to play Mario Bros.

A game like "Space Empires V" or AGEOD's "American Civil War" might make his head implode.

To follow up my original post:

You really can't compare this game to Chess and Go. In those games, you can execute your strategy as soon as it is your turn and always have to re-examine what you were planning to do at the start of your turn. There is no rule that says, "now it is your turn, but you must wait 500 more milliseconds and 200 more quasiseconds until you are able to do what you were planning on doing." There is too much dead time in SOSE right now. Not time for you to think about a plan, or a counter attack, or a second or third front... just "oh, pirates are attacking me in about 2 minutes, guess I get to stop expanding and send my only fleet to protect the one plant that is closest to the pirate home." When the pirates are done, I'm going to.... go back to doing exactly what I was doing before I got the notification that they are in their phase lanes. Only it will waste about 10 minutes for me to move my fleet from whatever it WAS doing to defend my planet from the pirates, then move back to my old expansion spot that I had to leave. And yes, its the same thing for opponents as soon as you research your early warning ability, which obviously would be a key research for any multiplay game.

Since my last post, I've focused almost entirely on jump-starting my economy as quickly as possible to try and see how long it takes to get to the point where my military production doesn't have to ever stop out of 2 frigate factories. Needless to say, it takes a LONG FREAKIN TIME to reach that, about 30 minutes is my best time so far, and that was using nothing but 1 missionary vessel, 1 cap, and the rest of my supply in disciples after my 2 initial seekers are destroyed doing their auto-scouting. That was sinking my money into nothing except harmony research and expansions. It took up to 6 fully upgraded expansions to reach the point where I could start researching military upgrades and logistics while pumping disciples from 2 factories (then drone carriers and planetary bombers when they are researched).

At that point, the game is basically won, but I have to spend the next 2 hours systematically destroying the computer since it doesn't know when to resign. I just have to go stomp each system one by one while leaving a few hangars (3-ish) in my outlying systems and a few (12-ish) frigates to help keep the bombers alive for any attempted counter attack.

I think its time to step up to the hard AI setting. I can't imagine playing anything bigger than a small map... keeps me up until 5am as is. I must reiterate, if this game is to last as more than a novelty for a niche crowd, it must have a faster speed.