One of the advantages of buying the box here in Australia is the 7 day return policy.

It allows you to try it first, especially ensure that it will run on your computer and that the game is 'playable'.

I work on the basis that if I'm playing it 2 days later, and enjoying it, then its worth the money and it doesnt go back. But if the first 2 days are nothing but aggro and inability to do anything, or it keeps crashing with no patch available to fix it, it goes back.

Sins was one I waited until it dropped in price before buying, and was a definite keep. But in longevity terms, will fall very short of quite a few other games, simply because of its limited depth.

With real time games, the best was X3. Which I found could be played many different ways, and I ended up modding to enable it to be played ways it wasnt designed for. Sins just doesnt stack up against X3 in terms of playability options. While both are combat based, X3 can be played as a pacifist if you really want to, as a mercenary, a Trade Mogol, a pirate, an alien invader, or a combination of all of them. Next version will allow playing as Earthling as well apparently. The other main difference is that Sins is overview based, while X3 you are in the cockpit of a ship all the time. Point and click verses joystick and click. Sins gives you planet control, but X3 gives you infinite station building and ship ownership. Sins limits you to a specific size of fleet, while X3 is limited by how much money you have and your standing with the various races. Sins is designed for a game to last a day or 2 (or the small maps a few hours) while X3 takes 6 months just to build a basic empire. In terms of scale, Sins is tiny in comparison. Combat wise, Sins will give you overview combat for a few hours in a small game, but in X3, you jump into a Xenon sector and spend hours trying to clear 1 sector in fast paced real time in the cockpit combat that has your heart pumping wildly the whole time. Sins just doesnt have the same rush. X3 allowed long term strategic play mixed in with rapid first person combat.

One of my benchmarks for how good a game is is how long each game plays for, and I prefer a game that lasts at least a couple of weeks before you start a new one. Sins just cant last that long.

Now THERE is a sentiment I can agree with.  I, like a GREAT many other people spent a lot of time looking forward to MOO3.  When it came out, I looked at the box, looked at the details, and saw something that felt like it had missed the mark... however... it was discounted, and I could not rightfully NOT try MOO3 after the first two were so incredibly good.  What I saw was a game that was overly complicated in unnecessary ways that did not add depth with the details of what each function actually DOES hidden from the user.  The computer tries to run things for you, whether you like it or not which only makes a bigger mess of it.  It took something that had a simple interface and let you know what everything did, but still created a good strategy game, and turned it into a menace of battling your OWN manditory AI to let you do what you want.  Much of it's difficulty was not from your enemy, but from grappling with almost intentional overcomplication and manditory AI.

Sins has a fairly simple interface.  Your options are easy to understand.  Your ships are easy to understand.  Your planets are easy to understand.  The tech tree is IMHO short for a large game... but ... yes you guessed it, easy to understand.  Everyone has all of the pieces if they want them.  Beyond this, I will give first the bad.

The AI is less than inspired(and does not cheat to compensate for this as far as i'm aware).  Diplomacy options are minimal.  There is no campaign.  In the absence of said campaign (or maybe faction specific events or artifacts) the great backstory becomes random blurb excuse for race stats and no more.

Now the good.

The graphics are solid.  The gameplay and the number of options you have is fairly wide. While the diplomacy system is limited, it is also difficult to abuse and lacks certain issues *cough* *darloks* *cough*.  Multiplayer is EXCELLENT.  The real time element ensures games happen in a timely fashion.  While the options are simple, units are different enough by enough that you do not know what the enemy will throw at you.  There is a balance between economy and combat that is solid.

It is, at it's core, a multiplayer game.  I would like to see better AI (though SD have been trying to adjust the AI based on multiplayer tactics somewhat) and a campaign (to get us to want to pick a faction for it's feel and history rather than based on based on 'what tier the missile frigate is at'.  In Starcraft, I went to Zerg, not because they were strongest (though they are certainly no slouches that way) but because they had a feel that was totally different to the other factions.  Heck, even the terrans didn't feel 'vanilla'.

Not everyone was LOOKING for a multiplayer game.  This game is biased towards ships, and the cost of defending against an early swarm is often larger than the cost of executing one (depending on the races involved).  This means when you first enter multiplayer, there is a significant chance every fight you will be hit with an early swarm attack (specifically LRM frigate attack, most likely).  Whether you have the breathing room to fight this off, AND get a leg up on the attacker, even knowing EXACTLY what his plan is arguably limits your OWN choice of sides and starting tactics quite severely.  For a while, I stopped playing Dawn of War multiplayer for this very reason.  It got boring and repetative.  Scout rush, disconnect if it failed, wash, rinse, repeat, gag.  Multiplayer is varied and diverse ONLY so far as the factions are balanced and the attack plans are balanced (including penalties if you disconnect if there is a ladder *cough**dawn of war*).

In summary, in single player, it is an interesting engine with possibility but not enough ... teeth ... to take on a hardcore player (except in a several factions to one against fashion perhaps).  Perhaps the AI will evolve as patches show, perhaps not.  Either way, as is, if someone was looking for a single player experience, this game probably showed promise, but did not, arguably, entirely deliver.

In multiplayer, which is where the game should, perhaps, shine most, it is not, shall we say, chess, as far as balance.  An almost immediate military buildup is, let's just say, highly advised, at almost all costs, even if you are not planning on an immediate offensive.  This slices any attempts by the programmers to make this built on infrastructure and combat readiness equally through the heart and takes this, in multiplayer, down to something very close to raw RTS strategies.  Now at the higher levels, once you have gone through an extensive obnoxious repetative swarm attack defense training, there is a small amount of wiggle room, with which you can often weather a lower tech swarm and replace it with a slightly higher tech (and thus also more varied) swarm.  I am not by any means belittling the considerable skill involved with carving out that little bit extra to get a leg up, technologically or militarily after the highly probably swarm (which requires you to build as if you are swarming to defend).  I am simply saying the start can end up for the most part repetative, and the variance only comes if your same start is more tuned than theirs and/or uses travel time to slip some extra ... surprises in.  You can probably guess the type of ship coming, you can probably guess the amount of cap worth that is coming.

Oh, one more thing.  Those who feel they are spectators in combat are probably not doing enough.  Break up your fleet assignments into fire teams.  Hit those abilities that create collateral damage when things are hit or die.  Focus on the types of ships that rip things apart.  Use your phase missiles against their guardians.  Pick your targets based on damage % levels, or focus fire on a cap ship.  If your cap ship (or your other ships) have guns on more than one side, get them in the MIDDLE of the fight.  The AI will not do this alone, and it can significantly increase your firepower.

In my experience, in multiplayer, it plays VERY much like an RTS from the beginning until you weather (or execute) the first low tech almost inevitable (unless both sides have already built up swarm size fleets to stop it) swarm attack.  From there it plays differently unless someone is on the ropes.  Is this a step forward or a step back?  Only you can answer that based on this one question.

Is this the kind of game YOU like to play?  As a multiplayer game, it is still being heavily developed.  Once it is further balanced, and more defensive structure options are implimented (which I believe are going to probably be in the mini-expansion, not main patches, but ah well), it is my hope that TEC will once again be considered 'playable' at higher level multiplayer and early swarm attack will not be almost a foregone conclusion.  When this happens, I think avenues will open, more people will play multiplayer, and the options and routes for victory this game allows will shine.

Pah! No such luck in the UK. Retailers won't take them back once opened (Game even go to the extent of putting a box ruining sticker on them to make sure) for fear that you've copied it.

That's a good description of how it is in the UK.

I recommend ROTK XI (Romance of three Kingdoms 11). Its about 20 bucks download and you can look at the demo to decide if you like it.

The setting is ancient china and its centered around the Han dynasty and the rise of the Yellow Turbans. To give you an idea for how long KOEI is in this kind of turn based strategy - the first ROTK was monocroem colour only.

They have a brilliant officer (heroes if you want it that way, more appropriate would be nobles) mechanic. Each action has to be assigned to an officer wich is tasked with its completion. So aside of being the factor for actions per turn officers lead your armies and have special abilities, like for an example raise more soldiers if tasked with city government or special tactics with certain army armaments. Some of this abilities can also have a negative effect. Also they have pretty RPG like char stats wich define how good they are at performing the various tasks.

Armies can execute various tactics, including trapping, setting fire, building fortifications. There is a morale factor and also you have to assure your troops get enough provisions. Officers (and their respective cites) can be bribed, Alliances forge, there is also research.

There are Officer duels, debating (kinda in a form of a MTG card game), assasinations and espionage, all disabelable if you do not like it.

Diplomacy is deep and the player may assume the role of any fraction in a scenarion (and there are a lot), also playing multiple fractions is possible up to making the game full human wich is the most natural way of employing a multiplayer mechanic i have ever seen.

There are events wich are historical or can be fictional (random).

Numbers mean nothing in this game. Its all about tactics.

There is even (disableable) sorcery.

Its a pretty deep game and learning its mechanics may take you some time (there are quite extensive tutorials but they really only cover the important basics), but its very rewarding.

Its really showing that decade long experience was at work here.

The MOO3 modders have done wonders with the game.  Google MOO3 Strawberry mod.  It literally fixes everything you just mentioned and makes the game what it was meant to be all along.  I seriously love MOO3 because it is just so different from other strategy games.  If you approach it with an open mind, and can learn to get used to its quirks, I really recommend trying it again.  The authoritative source for MOO3 "born again" as I call it, is here:  http://www.moo3.at/

Also I forgot the exact URL, but there is a very good MOO3 Atari forum you should be able to find.

BTW I'm giving Sins another go round, and trying not to put it in any preconceived frame, and I've had a fun couple of games vs. the computer.  I am still apparently terrible at it because I seem to attract Advent drone frigates like flies on a dungheap.  Oh well...