#6 – Sins of a Solar Empire (PC)
I got this one during the deployment. It's a 4X-ish, in that you research stuff, you colonize planets, you find other planets, and you kill the other races, except unlike all other 4X games I've played, this one occurs in real time. There are three races; one whose units are cheap (the Advent), one whose units are hardy (the TEC), and one whose units are destructive (the Vasari).
It plays a lot like other 4X games that I love except that everything seems a little more tied into itself. For example, if you want to research trade ports, you need to build enough research facilities to get up to that level. In order to build research facilities, you need logistical slots on your planet. If you're all out of log slots, you need to colonize another planet. Once you get up to the level of research needed, then you can research trade ports. Once you've got that researched, you need the required amount of materials to make them. This is just one item.
It makes for some interesting strategies. When I play Advent, I take advantage of the cheap units. I'll crap out a ton of the cheapest frigates they have and zerg rush every planet until I have more than the other guys, which will drain my credits but give me a pretty big resource advantage. You can station your fleet in the way of trade lanes and just blow up enemy traders to disrupt their credit flow. The same goes for refinery ships. If you raid an enemies research facilities, they lose the ability to use what they've already researched.
The one main detractor this game has is that one game can last a long time, even in real time. My longest game so far has been five and half hours; a medium size map playing 2 v 2 against easy AI. You can selectively choose to increase the speed of research and travel and whatnot though.
In February Iron Clad released a micro-expansion called Entrenchment and that name is no joke. It added star bases (huge structures you can build for defense that can't leave a planet's gravity well), mines, and anti-structure frigates. The star bases are ridiculous. You can upgrade them with bigger guns, more armor, hanger bays, frigate construction bays, and other such things. Mines are also rather nuts. You can drop as many mines as you like, so I littered my heavy traffic areas with them and they were well worth it. Nothing got past a heavy minefield.
I'm definitely looking forward to the upcoming two micro-expansions for this one. It's a ton of fun to send my enormous fleet of death into an enemy colony only to find they've snuck some planet-bombers beyond my frontlines and scramble to stop them.