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[Frumple]

Probably as up to date as the .pdf manual

[Mephisto]

Dunno, I have a few games on my wishlist that I know for a fact had bigger discounts last sale AND the already mentioned things like CS:GO with only 50% stick out like a sore thumb... but that's just my opinion.

Vaguely related, I finally got tired of waiting for Arma 3 to have more than 35% off. I got off work early today and I value playing over the next three days more than the $8 I could have saved waiting.

Then again, I bet it's going to be one of the daily deals tomorrow.

[Flying Dice]

If anyone hasn't noticed, the wonderfully vile Postal 2 is on sale on Steam for $0.99.

[Delta Foxtrot]

GoG put some Square Enix titles on sale. Deus Ex, Thief, there's some good stuff in there.

[Toaster]

Although to be perfectly honest I'm one of those crazy people who, with a game like this, read, or at least skim (because I won't understand some of it until I've experienced it) the entire manual before playing. IN MY DAY GAMES CAME WITH THREE HUNDRED PAGE MANUALS INCLUDING A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF WORLD HISTORY AND WE READ THEM ON THE WAY HOME AND LIKED IT!

Amen, brother.  And we marveled at the ones that were spiral bound (Icewind Dale, I'm looking at you) for ease of reference while we play!

[Flying Dice]

Although to be perfectly honest I'm one of those crazy people who, with a game like this, read, or at least skim (because I won't understand some of it until I've experienced it) the entire manual before playing. IN MY DAY GAMES CAME WITH THREE HUNDRED PAGE MANUALS INCLUDING A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF WORLD HISTORY AND WE READ THEM ON THE WAY HOME AND LIKED IT!

Amen, brother.  And we marveled at the ones that were spiral bound (Icewind Dale, I'm looking at you) for ease of reference while we play!

Have you ever seen the manual for the first Homeworld? That thing was a work of art; a good chunk of it was devoted to stories and worldbuilding about Kharak and the clans, which has zero impact on gameplay. Just another way that that game was a wonderful thing, from the music to the plot to the innovative gameplay.

[Anvilfolk]

Have you ever seen the manual for the first Homeworld? That thing was a work of art; a good chunk of it was devoted to stories and worldbuilding about Kharak and the clans, which has zero impact on gameplay. Just another way that that game was a wonderful thing, from the music to the plot to the innovative gameplay.

Aw man, or the one for Netstorm: Islands at War. So good.......

[nogoodnames]

I'm thinking of getting Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion while it's $10. How is it? Better or worse then Star Wars: Empire at War?

[Mech#4]

Hm, "Sins of a Solar Empire" has a slower pace to the battles and general gameplay than "Empire at War".

Personally I would say it's better than EAW because colonising, building and defending/attacking all take place on the same map. You do lose ground battles but the space battles are pretty awesome to watch. EAW often left me feeling unsure on what to do because the map wasn't as clear as it could be on where the enemy can attack from, maybe I'd get better at that if I played it more.

SOASE has a very good modding community. If you get SOASE you can find mods converting the game into anything from Star Wars to Star Trek to Battlestar Galatica to Halo. Star Wars mods to look for are "Star Wars: Alliance", "Star Wars: Ascendency" (made by the people who made "Thrawn's Revenge for EAW), "Sins of a Galactic Empire" and "Star Wars: Interregnum".

Have a look on ModDB under top 100 and you'll find a fair few mods listed there.

[Chiefwaffles]

It's a pretty different game than Empire at War, really. But it is much slower paced, as Mech#4 said.

[Flying Dice]

SoaSE is a better game, but EaW has the advantage of Star Wars pewpewpewpewpew. They're, as mentioned, very different games as well.

[Niveras]

EAW is more like a space 4X: it boils down to "kill the other guy(s)" but there's a distinction between the empire-level and tactical maps. I found it okay, although I liked the Corruption expansion more because of the somewhat unique flavour of the third party/pirate/independent faction, plus fleshing out that faction required that they add more non-movie/expanded universe ships and units, which is a Good Thing (I loved Star Wars: Rebellion for this, but that game is showing its age).

SoaSE is more like an extended RTS, think Starcraft in space (note that despite occurring in space, there's no controlled 3D movement, but EAW didn't have this either). There's only one map; empire management occurs at the same level as tactical combat. I think the original goal was to make it a kind of real-time 4X game but, in my opinion, it does not work out that way: the only options for victory are obliteration or mutually willing alliance. I find the pacing kind of bad because there's a lot of tedium in just pushing fleets around and glassing the other guys' planets, then taking them over so they don't take them back (though thankfully you can queue constructions if you have resources to pay for them in advance). This is especially true once you're done with research, which tends to happen quickly for me since I always play at fast pace purely because I feel the games take too long (especially in combat/movement) at any other speed. Likewise, once research is done and you're steamrolling, you've long past the point where you'll ever be concerned about resources. This pacing and the game in general is probably better in multiplayer. The races are more Warcraft-era than Starcraft in terms of how distinct they are, but they still have some unique research as well as unique powers (particularly in their capital ships as well as some support ships) to set them apart. Micromanaging these powers (especially in corvette and cruiser tier support ships) can be annoying since toggling auto-use is okay but not necessarily the best way to use them.

All that said, I haven't played EAW in a while (years), but still load SoaSE Rebellion (or rather, its under-construction mod Interregnum) on occasion. SoaSE is definitely more popular, particularly in the modding scene.

[BurnedToast]

I only played the original SoaSE, so I don't know how much they changed it for the sequel but..

I wanted to like it a lot more then I did. The pacing just constantly felt... off. Played like an RTS it was just way too slow paced, everything just took way too long and you couldn't really manage the battles in a satisfactory way. But if you played it like a 4x, it's too simplistic and shallow, lacking the ability to just mash end turn over and over when nothing was happening, but also lacking the ability to stop and think about things when it was hectic.

Also fighters and bombers were obscenely overpowered (again, this was the original game, no idea if the sequel rebalanced things), capital ships were supposed to be like hero units but even max level capitals would drop in seconds to a couple of bombers and it was not easy to defend against them - they were replaced for free so sending them all on a suicide bombing run on the enemy capital was low risk high reward. I always ended up with tons of carrier ships just orbiting the edge of the gravity well safely out of range, while the fighters and bombers shredded everything.

It's not a bad game, it just felt like they missed a lot of potential and it could have been much better.

[umiman]

To the guy asking about CK2's sale price. Lo and behold it's 75% off. Again.

[McMagma]

Is it worth to get the CK II Collection or should I just get ck2 and the dlcs in sale?

edit: Just got KaG wish me fun!