In a way, it’s unfair to compare Sins of a Solar Empire, from Ironclad Games and Stardock, with the biggest real time strategy title released this year, Red Alert 3, from Electronic Arts and its Los Angeles Studios. They are very different games, with far apart settings, and target audiences that rarely mix. But Sins of a Solar Empire has something that the third installment of the Red Alert spin off from the Tiberium universe lacks: the clear power to create excitement.

Sins of a Solar Empire is set in space. You can develop planets and star systems, extracting resources you can use to build fleets that will crush your enemies. There are nimble fighters you can use and big capital ships, sporting a wide array of special powers. The player has access to a research tree that can be used to increase his ability to wage war. There are three races, with unique characteristics and strategies, and the theater of war is superbly customizable. You can fight small 2 star skirmishes and huge 8 star galactic battles.

The Artificial Intelligence powering the computer enemy is not to be discarded. The AI can adapt tactics to the player’s moves and is downright vicious in going after the planets the player has defended too lightly. It also uses the Pirates as disposable shock troops to lead a balanced force on a rampage in the player’s space.

The game has some flaws, but they tend to show how well it was conceived. All but the smallest of skirmishes take hours to finish, which can be hard to manage for the time starved player of today. Most matches also tend to go to stalemates, with all the end game players sporting huge fleets and being afraid to commit them to battle because of the risk of losing them. At certain points, the game can feel too slow, especially in the early stages.

But Stardock has been very quick in patching the release and addressing most players’ complaints, like the overpowered Pirate faction in the initial launch. The company is also developing three mini expansions for Sins of a Solar Empire, with the first, Entrenchment, hopefully arriving in early 2009. It appears we are going to play Sins of a Solar Empire well into 2009, if not 2010.