willthegreat's Sins of a Solar Empire – Entrenchment review

Very interesting. Until now, the only other review I'd read for Entrenchment was Game Revolution's, which was aggressively negative. They argued (and this was my biggest fear) that the Starbases introduce a much higher emphasis on defensive play, essentially morphing the game into TurtleFest 3000. This always seemed like a pretty radical change to me, since the original Sins practically forced players to expand and punished them for sitting around twiddling their thumbs. It's already a slow game anyway, so Entrenchment's additions seemed ill-suited.

They're clearly in the minority, but I'm still not entirely convinced these changes are for the better. You say that the best way to take down a Starbase is to nail them while they're in construction, but what happens if you miss your chance? I recognize that Sins is a slow-paced game but I wouldn't want progress to come to a halt altogether and reduce the gameplay to a lot of minimal back-and-forth between empires. (This sounds exacerbated by the upgrade you mentioned that leaves you in control of a planet even after its colony has been bombarded, so long as its Starbase remains intact.) That's not to say this isn't a very informative review -- it is -- I'm just curious whether it comes down to personal taste, or whether I'm simply being too skeptical.

Either way, ten bucks is a steal so I'll probably find out for myself soon enough. Hell, this expansion is probably what I need to pull me back into this game after going far too long without playing it. On a side note, I need to rewrite my original review. It really sucks.

Starbases are tough, but they aren't indestructible. The first defensive upgrade doubles shield and armor capacity, but also takes 1800 credits (and some crystal/metal) and about a minute and a half to construct. If your opponent is sinking his income into building unbeatable starbases then he's not expanding, and that means you can mass those assault cruisers and take 'em down from a safe distance. I think the TEC one has does something like 40 DPS against structures and fires from halfway across a gravity well.