I would like to add that I think that Stardock, as a gaming company, has done an excellent job of showing what a small(er) developer is capable of doing. I know that Stardock is relatively well known for making Windows add ons but until Sins of a Solar Empire came out, I really doubted that it was a well known gaming company. Sure, Galactic Civilizations (the series) is a decent game but it is not as well known as Civilization or even some sub standart RTSs.

I enjoyed the Slitherine games but they always left me wanting more strategically. I think Slitherine’s designers could make a plausible argument that the battles were the point of the game and the strategy merely a way of getting there but probably most of us interested in historical gaming want both tactics and strategy. If either is abstracted, it should be done in a way that still feels somewhat realistic. And most of the time, Slitherines’ strategic layer wasn’t convincing. Still: who else but Slitherine’s Chariots of War allowed me to try and make ancient Judea into one of the greatest mid-eastern powers of the ancient world?

Plus it didn’t help, I think, that the Total War series seems to generate expectations of every unit being capable of receiving and following orders throughout the chaos of combat.