Inextricably linked to all the most important historical and political events in Russia since the 13th century, the Kremlin (built between the 14th and 17th centuries by outstanding Russian and foreign architects) was the residence of the Great Prince and also a religious centre. At the foot of its ramparts, on Red Square, St Basil’s Basilica is one of the most beautiful Russian Orthodox monuments.

Brief synthesis

At the geographic and historic centre of Moscow, the Moscow Kremlin is the oldest part of the city. First mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle in 1147 as a fortification erected on the left bank of the Moskva river by Yuri Dolgoruki, Prince of Suzdal, the Kremlin developed and grew with settlements and suburbs which were further surrounded by new fortifications – Kitaigorodsky Wall, Bely Gorod, Zemlyanoy Gorod and others. This determined a radial and circular plan of the centre of Moscow typical of many other Old Russian cities.

In 13th century the Kremlin was the official residence of supreme power – the center of temporal and spiritual life of the state. The Kremlin of the late 15th – early 16th century is one of the major fortifications of Europe (the stone walls and towers of present day were erected in 1485–1516). It contains an ensemble of monuments of outstanding quality.

The most significant churches of the Moscow Kremlin are situated on the Cathedral Square; they are the Cathedral of the Dormition, Church of the Archangel, Church of the Annunciation and the bell tower of Ivan Veliki. Almost all of them were designed by invited Italian architects which is clearly seen in their architectural style. The five-domed Assumption Cathedral (1475–1479) was built by an Italian architect Aristotele Fiorvanti. Its interior is decorated with frescos and a five-tier iconostasis (15th–17th century). The cathedral became the major Russian Orthodox church; a wedding and coronation place for great princes, tsars and emperors as well as the shrine for metropolitans and patriarchs.

In the same square another Italian architect, Alevisio Novi, erected the five-domed Church of the Archangel in 1505-1508. From the 17th to 19th century, its interior was decorated by wonderful frescos and an iconostasis. In this church many great princes and tsars of Moscow are buried. Among them are Ivan I Kalita, Dmitri Donskoi, Ivan III, Ivan IV the Terrible, Mikhail Fedorovich and Alexei Mikhailovich Romanovs.

The Cathedral of the Dormition was built by Pskov architects in 1484–1489. Inside the cathedral some mural paintings of 16th–19th century have been preserved and the icons of Andrei Rublev and Theophanes the Greek are part of the iconostasis.

In 1505-1508 the bell tower of Ivan Veliki was built. Being 82 metres high it was the highest building in Russia which became the focal point of the Kremlin ensemble.

Among the oldest civil buildings of the Moscow Kremlin, the Palace of the Facets (1487–1491) is the most remarkable. Italian architects Marco Fryazin and Pietro Antonio Solario built it as a great hall for holding state ceremonies, celebrations and for receiving foreign ambassadors. The most noteworthy civil construction of the 17th century built by Russian masters is the Teremnoi Palace.

From the early 18th century, when the capital of Russia moved to St. Petersburg, the Kremlin mainly played a ceremonial role with religious functions. By the end of the century the architectural complex of the Kremlin expanded with the Arsenal reconstructed after the Fire of 1797 by Matvei Kazakov. The Senate was built in 1776–1787 according to the plans of the same architect as the home of the highest agency of State power of the Russian Empire – the Ruling Senate. Today it is the residence of the President of Russia.

From 1839 to 1849 a Russian architect K.A. Thon erected the Great Kremlin Palace as a residence of the imperial family which combined ancient Kremlin buildings such as the Palace of the Facets, the Tsarina’s Golden Chamber, Master Chambers, the Teremnoi Palace and the Teremnoi churches. In the Armory Chamber built by K.A. Thon within the complex of the Great Kremlin Palace, there is a 16th century museum officially established by the order of Alexander I in 1806.

Red Square, closely associated with the Kremlin, lies beneath its east wall. At its south end is the famous Pokrovski Cathedral (Cathedral of St Basil the Blessed), one of the most beautiful monuments of Old Russian church architecture, erected in 1555–1560 to commemorate the victory of Ivan the Terrible over the Kazan Khanate. In the 17th century the cathedral gained its up-to-date appearance thanks to the decorative finishing of the domes and painting both inside and outside the cathedral. The construction of Red Square was finished by the late 19th century together with the erection of the Imperial Historic Museum (today the State Historical Museum), the Upper Trading Rows (GUM) and the Middle Trading Rows. In 1929, , Lenin’s Mausoleum, designed by A.V. Shchusev and an outstanding example of the Soviet monumental architecture, was finished.

Criterion (i): The Kremlin contains within its walls a unique series of masterpieces of architecture and the plastic arts. There are religious monuments of exceptional beauty such as the Church of the Annunciation, the Cathedral of the Dormition, the Church of the Archangel and the bell tower of Ivan Veliki; there are palaces such as the Great Palace of the Kremlin, which comprises within its walls the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin and the Teremnoi Palace. On Red Square is Saint Basil the Blessed, still a major edifice of Russian Orthodox art.

Criterion (ii): Throughout its history, Russian architecture has clearly been affected many times by influences emanating from the Kremlin. A particular example was the Italian Renaissance. The influence of the style was clearly felt when Rudolfo Aristotele Fioravanti built the Cathedral of the Dormition (1475-79) and grew stronger with the construction of the Granovitaya Palace (Hall of the Facets, 1487-91) by Marco Fryazin and Pietro Antonio Solario. Italian Renaissance also influenced the towers of the fortified enceinte, built during the same period by Solario, using principles established by Milanese engineers (the Nikolskaya and the Spasskaya Towers both date from 1491). The Renaissance expression was even more present in the classic capitals and shells of the Church of the Archangel, reconstructed from 1505 to 1509 by Alevisio Novi.

Criterion (iv): With its triangular enceinte pierced by four gates and reinforced with 20 towers, the Moscow Kremlin preserves the memory of the wooden fortifications erected by Yuri Dolgoruki around 1156 on the hill at the confluence of the Moskova and Neglinnaya rivers (the Alexander Garden now covers the latter). By its layout and its history of transformations (in the 14th century Dimitri Donskoi had an enceinte of logs built, then the first stone wall), the Moscow Kremlin is the prototype of a Kremlin – the citadel at the centre of Old Russian towns such as Pskov, Tula, Kazan or Smolensk.

Criterion (vi): From the 13th century to the founding of St Petersburg, the Moscow Kremlin was directly and tangibly associated with every major event in Russian history. A 200-year period of obscurity ended in 1918 when it became the seat of government again. The Mausoleum of Lenin on Red Square is the Soviet Union’s prime example of symbolic monumental architecture. To proclaim the universal significance of the Russian revolution, the funerary urns of heroes of the revolution were incorporated into the Kremlin’s walls between the Nikolskaya and Spasskaya towers. The site thus combines in an exceptional manner the preserved vestiges of bygone days with present-day signs of one of the greatest events in modern history.

Integrity

From the date of including the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square on the World Heritage List all the components representing the Outstanding Universal Value of the property are within its boundaries. The territory and the integrity of the World Heritage property have also remained unchanged. Within its boundaries the property still comprises all the elements that it contained at the date of nomination. The biggest threat, however, is unregulated commercial development of the adjacent areas.

Authenticity

The history of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square is reflected in the archival documents of 12th–19th century, for example in medieval chronicles, cadastral surveys, estimated construction books, painted lists, inventories, foreign notes and in graphic matters such as manuscripts, chronicles, plans, drafts, engravings, lithographs, sketches of foreign travelers, paintings and photographs. These documents are exceptionally valuable information sources. Comparison of the data received from archival documents and those obtained in the process of field study gives the idea of authenticity of the property and its different elements. This comparison also serves as the basis for project development and for the choice of the appropriate methods of restoration that may preserve the monuments’ authenticity.

On the border of the ensemble a number of monuments destroyed in the 1930s were reconstructed according to measured plans.

Protection and management requirements

The statutory and institutional framework of an effective protection, management and improvement of the World Heritage property “Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow” has been established by laws and regulations of the Russian Federation and the city of Moscow.

According to the decree of the President of RSFSR of 18 December 1991 № 294, the Moscow Kremlin was included among especially protected cultural properties of nations of Russia – the highest conservation status for cultural and historical monuments in Russian legislation.

“Kremlin and Red Square, Moscow” is a Cultural Heritage Site of federal importance. State protection and management of federal sites is provided by Federal Law of 25.06.2002 № 73-FZ “On cultural heritage sites (historical and cultural monuments) of nations of the Russian Federation”. The federal executive body responsible for protection of the cultural property is the Department for Control, Supervision and Licensing in the Cultural Heritage Sphere of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.It is in charge of all methodological and control functions concerning restoration, usage and support of cultural heritage sites and the territories connected.

The World Heritage property is situated in the urban environment of Moscow. The city policy regarding cultural heritage protection and town-planning regulation is the responsibility of Moscow City Government, represented by the Department of Cultural Heritage, the Department of Urban Development and the Committee for Urban Development and Architecture of Moscow. In 1997 the boundaries of the protective (buffer) zone were approved in order to preserve the property, and to maintain and restore the historical architectural environment as well as the integral visual perception of the property.. There is a need to ensure the creation of an appropriate buffer zone and to develop close liaison between all stakeholders, including the Moscow City authorities, to ensure that constructions around the property do not impact adversely on its Outstanding Universal Value.

The World Heritage property is used by the following organizations: FGBUK (Federal Government Budgetary Institution of Culture), the State Historical and Cultural Museum-preserve “The Moscow Kremlin”, the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation, the Federal Guard Service of the Russian Federation and OJSC “GUM Department Store”.

The Taoist master, alchemist, and pharmacologist Tao Hongjing was born in 456 near present-day Nanjing. He served in various positions at the courts of the Liu Song and Qi dynasties until 492. In that year he retired on Mount Mao (Maoshan), the early seat of Shangqing or Highest Clarity, a Taoist tradition based on meditation and visualisation techniques. The retreat he built on the mountain remained the centre of his activities until his death in 536.

After his initiation into Taoism around 485, Tao set himself to recover the original manuscripts, dating from slightly more than one century before, that contained the revelations at the basis of the Shangqing tradition. Tao authenticated and edited those manuscripts, and wrote extended commentaries on them. This undertaking resulted in two works completed in ca. 500, the Zhengao (Declarations of the Perfected) and the Dengzhen yinjue (Concealed Instructions on the Ascent to Perfection, only partially preserved). These and other works make Tao Hongjing into the first systematizer of Shangqing Taoism, of which he became the ninth patriarch.

During his retirement on Mount Mao, Tao Hongjing also worked on the Bencao jing jizhu (Collected Commentaries to the Canonical Pharmacopoeia), a commentary on the earliest known Chinese pharmacopoeia, the Shennong bencao (Canonical Pharmacopoeia of the Divine Husbandman). The original text contained notes on 365 drugs. To these Tao added 365 more, taken from a corpus of writings that he refers to as “Separate Records of Eminent Physicians.” Tao’s arrangement of the materia medica was innovative. He divided the drugs into six broad categories (minerals, plants, mammals, etc.), and retained the three traditional classes of the Shennong bencao only as subdivisions within each section. In a further group he classified the “drugs that have a name but are no longer used [in pharmacology].” Tao’s commentary discusses the nomenclature, notes changes in the geographical distribution, and identifies varieties; it also includes references to the Taoist “Scriptures of the Immortals” (xianjing) and to alchemical practices. With the exception of a manuscript of the preface found at Dunhuang, the Bencao jing jizhu is lost as an independent text, but has been reconstructed based on quotations in later sources.

Since the establishment of the Liang dynasty in 502, Tao enjoyed the favour of Emperor Wu (r. 502-549), on whom he exerted remarkable influence. Shortly later, he began to devote himself to alchemical practices under imperial patronage. His main biographical source, written in the Tang period, has left a vivid account of these endeavours. Along with scriptural sources they testify the importance of alchemy within the Shangqing tradition, which represents the first known instance of close links between alchemy and an established Taoist movement.

The game is much greater than the sum of its familiar parts. It’s also one of the best shooters so far this year.

When EA announced Dead Space a year ago, I recall some members of the press deriding the game for looking just a little too familiar. I know I was guilty of doing it. But in our defense, you have seen all this before: A massive, grungy industrial starship gone dark, adrift in a remote system with no sign of its crew. A horde of hideous monsters spewing forth from a sinister, amorphous biomass hiding deep within the ship. Audio and text logs scattered around every deck that reveal what happened, piece by piece. An over-the-shoulder perspective that snaps to a zoomed-in aiming view for combat.

Doom 3, check. System Shock 2, check. Gears of War, Resident Evil 4, check.

But all those blatant similarities didn’t matter in the end. After finishing it, I felt stupid about knocking Dead Space for displaying its influences so prominently, because this game is pretty darn amazing.

The story isn’t astoundingly original, but it does a fine job of moving you from one section of the ship to the next. You take the role of deep-space mining engineer Isaac Clarke, a member of a five-man crew dispatched to investigate the loss of contact with the USG Ishimura, an enormous “planetcracker” mining ship. Clarke’s girlfriend was stationed on the Ishimura, so he has personal as well as professional reasons for getting in there and finding out what’s going on. About five minutes after arriving, Clarke’s own ship is toast, his five-man crew is down to three, and those three have been separated by a vile menagerie of creatures overrunning nearly every inch of the ship. Over the course of the game’s 12 roughly hour-long chapters, your priorities will shift from saving the Ishimura to saving your own ass, and you’ll barely fight your way through one tense, frantic monster attack after another as you try to escape the ship. The game is densely packed with spectacular moments from beginning to end, and the action is paced well enough that you never get bored or feel overwhelmed at any given moment.

It’s easy to forgive a game for being derivative when it’s presented with so much impact and it plays so damn well. Dead Space has some of the tightest, most well-balanced controls I’ve ever used in this kind of game. There are so many variables in a third-person shooter that contribute to the way it feels–the camera speed, the sensitivity of the analog sticks, the interval between hitting the aiming-mode trigger and actually being able to fire a gun–and I can’t complain about any one of these factors in Dead Space; they all feel sublimely tuned and perfectly balanced to be easy to use and, above all, fun. You can hold a shoulder button to run, but unlike Gears’ famed roadie run, you can still stop on a dime and break into a sidestep in an instant (or even run backwards). Everything about the moving, aiming, and shooting controls is superbly balanced and really entertaining.

EA has been throwing around the catchy marketing phrase “strategic dismemberment” in reference to Dead Space for a few months now, which is justifiable since that’s actually a good way to describe the combat. Most of the game’s grotesquely mutated enemies have spindly arms, legs, tentacles, and other appendages that you can shoot off with a well-placed shot or two, and you get these satisfyingly meaty snapping sounds and a jet of blood every time you separate another body part. You can also stomp an enemy that’s down but not out with your heavy spacesuit boots to splatter their limbs before they can get back up and keep coming at you. And I do mean splatter–it’s a really gory game.

The precision aiming required to properly dismember the enemies adds more depth to the combat than you’d get with most shooters, where you’re just pumping rounds into a guy’s torso or, at most, aiming for his head. Here, you’ll want to specifically shoot for the knee to stop a fast-running monster from chasing you down, or shear off one of the smaller types of enemies’ tentacles because they can fire spikes with them. The game’s basic pistol weapon, the plasma cutter, even lets you orient its wide beam vertically or horizontally for more accurate slicing and dicing. Another weapon, the ripper, shoots a saw blade about eight feet in front of you and then just holds it spinning in midair, letting you rake it over an enemy and slice them up every which way. You can imagine the possibilities. With eight weapons on the roster and an alternate fire mode for each, there’s a lot of variety in the carnage here.

Dead Space throws in a few more mechanics above the basic shooting action. You can telekinetically pick up and launch some objects as weapons, and you can also throw a stasis field to slow down an enemy briefly, making it easier to take their limbs off with precision. Both of these abilities are useful in fairly frequent environmental puzzles, some of them simple and some clever. I liked that the game didn’t try to portray Isaac as a mining engineer…who also happens to have psionic abilities. Both of these abilities stem from devices in his suit, and that’s that.

Lastly, there are some noteworthy sequences in zero gravity and in a vacuum (sometimes both). The vacuum sequences don’t play any differently–they just feel more urgent, since they put you on a timer as your air tank runs out–but they dramatically desaturate the color palette and dampen the sound almost entirely, which creates a uniquely eerie atmosphere, especially when you’re clomping along with your magnetic boots on the outside of the ship and some monsters silently sneak up behind you and attack. In the zero-G sections, those boots keep you planted while everything else floats freely, and you can jump from any one flat surface to another. So every wall becomes a potential floor and you never really know which way is up. It’s a refreshingly confusing approach to weightlessness that creates some interesting puzzle scenarios.

This is a game you really need to play on a big high-def TV with a good, bass-heavy sound system. It’s an audiovisual tour de force, with some of the moodiest and most impressive lighting effects on this generation of consoles. Some of the interior environments of the Ishimura are positively cavernous, or filled with massive thrumming machinery. There aren’t a lot of boss encounters, but the sheer scale of a couple of them in particular left my jaw hanging open. The sound design is also extremely well done, not just for the ever-present creepy ambient backdrop, but also some of the in-your-face effects, like Isaac’s sonorous gasping when he’s badly hurt and out of breath, or that aforementioned grisly wet crunch of severed monster limbs. The sound effects have a real weight to them that beg to be conveyed over speakers with some serious muscle.

Dead Space would be a great game no matter who made it, but I’m more impressed with it since it’s coming out of EA. That bastion of the annualized sequel is finally taking some risks with original games, if not always original ideas, and in this case the risk paid huge dividends. You’ve probably seen most of Dead Space’s parts in other games from time to time, but you’ve rarely seen them assembled this well.

Historians believe the Queen is a descendant to the founder of Islam – after tracing her family tree back 43 generations.

The claim makes the British monarch a distant ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad.

The findings were first published in 1986 by Burke’s Peerage, a British authority on royal pedigrees.

But the claim has recently resurfaced after a Moroccan newspaper said it had traced the queen’s lineage back to the Prophet.

According to their findings, Elizabeth II’s bloodline runs through the Earl of Cambridge in the 14th century, across medieval Muslim Spain, to Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter.

Although disputed by some historians, genealogical records of early-medieval Spain also support the claim and it has also been verified by Ali Gomaa, the former grand mufti of Egypt.

Burke’s publishing director wrote to the-then Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher in 1986 calling for increased security for the royal family.

‘The royal family’s direct descent from the prophet Mohammed cannot be relied upon to protect the royal family forever from Moslem terrorists,’ he wrote to Thatcher.

Recognising the connection would be a surprise to many, he added, ‘It is little known by the British people that the blood of Mohammed flows in the veins of the queen. However, all Moslem religious leaders are proud of this fact.’

The study from Burke’s Peerage first officially suggested the Queen’s connection to the Prophet Muhammad.

They claimed the Queen descends from a Muslim princess called Zaida, who fled her home town of Seville in the 11th century before converting to Christianity.

Zaida was the fourth wife of King Al-Mu’tamid ibn Abbad of Seville. She bore him a son Sancho, whose descendant later married the Earl of Cambridge in the 11th century.

But British magazine the Spectator points out Zaida’s origins are ‘debatable’. Some historians believe she was the daughter of a wine-drinking caliph descended from the Prophet. Others say she married into his family.

The reaction to the Queen’s reported links to the Prophet have been mixed.

Abdelhamid Al-Auouni welcomed the news in his piece in Moroccan newspaper Al-Ousboue, writing: ‘It builds a bridge between our two religions and kingdoms.’

Meanwhile a tongue-in-cheek headline on the Arab Atheist Network’s web forum read: ‘Queen Elizabeth must claim her right to rule Muslims.’

One person on internet forum Reddit rubbished the claims however, writing: ‘This is just propaganda used by the British monarchy to appease the growing number of Muslim subjects.’

Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.

In the last decade, fans of sci-fi strategy have divided into two basic groups. One group has stuck with the old-school 4x genre (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) through thick and thin, preferring the turn-based games that have sprung up in the wake of Master of Orion, Ascendancy and Alpha Centauri, more recent examples being the Space Empires and Galactic Civilizations series. The other group has embraced the RTS genre, adopting the starship combat of Homeworld and its imitators, or the ground-based tactics of StarCraft and Supreme Commander.

In a lot of ways, the chasm only seems to be widening. While the big-league publishers push for the mainstream audience with more action-oriented RTS games like Command and Conquer 3 or Universe at War, the smaller developers involved in the 4x category seem to be making games that are ever more complex, convoluted and inaccessible. Surely there’s room for something that sits in the middle, harnessing the long-term depth of the 4x style to the more exciting pace and visual spectacle of the RTS?

It appears so, because Sins of a Solar Empire is currently looking like the PC sleeper hit of the season. Currently only downloadable from publisher Stardock (annoyingly you’ll have to install and use Stardock’s own client, which didn’t work flawlessly on my machine) if you live in the UK, it’s a sprawling strategy epic that seamlessly combines the 4x and RTS traditions. Note the word seamlessly – this isn’t an RTS with the campaign structured around a political/economic map, nor is it a 4x game where the action switches from turn-based fleet manoeuvres to RTS combat whenever two forces collide. It’s a game where the 4x stuff and the RTS stuff is happening at the same time, all of the time, on the same map.

The secret is the way the game handles scale. Zoom all the way out and you can see the whole of the current planetary system, each star or planet linked to its neighbours by a network of ‘phase lanes’ – essentially hyperspace motorways that enable high-speed travel across the map. Zoom in using the scroll wheel and you can see the planets and the various military and logistic installations orbiting around them. Zoom in further and you can home in on the battleships and frigates in the vicinity, right down to the smallest individual fighter. It’s fast, and gives you a breathtaking sense of the game’s epic scale.

While zoomed out, you can still make out facilities and fleets from the reasonably intuitive icons. While zoomed in, you can admire the graphics in all their glory. Those hoping for a next-generation Homeworld with Unreal 3 engine levels of detail may be disappointed, not least because some of the smaller animations that made Ritual’s debut so lovable are missing. All the same, Ironclad’s own Iron engine does a nice line in bump mapping, plasma effects and specular lighting, all of which help to make the game’s space battles look suitably cinematic when seen up close.

Enjoy the sight of grand battlecruisers exploding, because it’s one you’ll become familiar with the more the game goes on. This is a galaxy at war. The Trader Emergency Coalition is already locked in battle with the cruel Vasari Empire when the Advent, a bunch of religious outcasts, forced from their homeworld years before, come looking for revenge. Not only are the TEC, Vasari and Advent factions scrapping over every system, but the galaxy is infested with gangs of space pirates to boot. There’s no need to get too caught up in the story; with no formal story-based campaign it’s little more than a framework for a whole bunch of skirmish scenarios, but this isn’t a game of gentle colonisation and exploration. It’s a resource grabbing, arms race running festival of destruction, and while alliances, diplomacy and trade have their place, building and using a mighty starfleet is the most crucial aspect of the game.

Doing so involves a lot of work. First, you’ll need money, and that means a) taxes and b) trade. Colonising planets and improving the civilian infrastructure means more happy taxpayers, and therefore more cash in the bank. Secondly, you’ll need facilities; not just frigate factories and capital ship factories to build the ‘bread and butter’ units and commanding capital ships, but defensive structures and military and cultural research facilities. The last bit is important, because Sins of a Solar Empire relies heavily on research in order to optimise the offensive and defensive capabilities of your ships, but also to raise the cap on the number of frigates and capital ships you can command, or give you the skills you’ll need to colonise more hostile worlds. Finally you’ll need metal and crystal resources in order to build your facilities and fleet. All these things are connected by a number of fairly complex game mechanics, but your task is reasonably simple: build and upgrade your fleet then explore, colonise and defend new planets from aggression, while mining resources and boosting civilian facilities to keep the credits flowing. And don’t forget to chip away at your rival factions and deal with the space pirates while you’re at it.

If this sounds like a lot to be getting on with then rest assured: it is. Luckily, the guys at Ironclad have done everything they can to stop it feeling like hard work. For a start, everything in your budding galactic empire is available at a click from the Empire Tree on the left of the screen. This collapsible, tree-structured list means you can click on a single ship or an entire fleet and send it off to battle in some far flung corner of the galaxy, then click on the frigate factory orbiting your home planet and order up some reinforcements, then find a construction frigate and order a new missile platform to be built around your latest acquisition, all without having to scroll around the map or click through a succession of menu screens. What’s more, you can reorganise your ships into separate fleets or ‘pin’ specific fleets or structures if you need to find them quickly, making an initially daunting display surprisingly easy to navigate.

In addition, a lot of things are quite sensibly handled automatically. Ships that ‘phase space’ to a new planet will automatically be added to the fleet surrounding that planet unless you command otherwise. That fleet will automatically attack hostile forces as they phase in, with individual ships picking targets appropriate to their own offensive strengths and defensive weaknesses. Units with special powers, like colonisation or heavy attacks, will use them automatically unless you decree otherwise. In other words, you don’t have to micro-manage every single little aspect of the game – you can keep your head on the big picture, moving the fleet that’s just attacked planet X to defend planet Y when necessary, without having to worry whether every last unit will know what it’s doing. Even construction isn’t a chore. Select a builder unit and ask it to build a metal or crystal refinery and it will pick out the nearest available resource, not sit their dumbly while you specify where to go.

Admittedly, not everything comes easy. The initial tutorials take you through the basics of construction, combat and resource management, but you’re well advised to start off with a short game against a single, easy AI to give you breathing space while you learn the ropes. Pick one without pirates while you’re at it. One thing the initial tutorials don’t make clear is that the pirates in the galaxy operate on a bounty system. Pay them off and they’ll attack your rivals. Don’t bother, and they’ll attack you, sending larger and larger waves of ships the higher the bounty goes up. This can be infuriating, because just as you’re preparing your grand offensive or recovering from a heroic defence, the blasted pirate fleet will show up and knock your right back to square one. Trust me; you’ll have enough to deal with in your first games without dealing with the pirate menace (though note that in games with more than one enemy faction you can make a little cash on the side by attacking the faction with the highest bounty and claiming the prize for yourself).

The combat will also take some getting used to. With so many ships covering quite large distances, this isn’t a game of tank-rush tactics or complex manoeuvres; more a question of ensuring that you deploy balanced forces in sensibly structured waves and understanding how and when to move fleets from one flashpoint to another. Building reinforcements can take time, and phasing in from one planet to another takes time, and going from planet A to planet C will involve two legs in the journey (stopping via planet B) not just one. As a result, you need to keep travel times between planets in mind and avoid sending reinforcements one by one; if you’re already losing the battle, you’ll just send more ships to their demise. Sheer numbers of capital ships can win the day, but you’ll do better if you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your various craft and deploy a balanced selection of all types. What’s more, you also need to protect and make the most of your capital ships. Like the hero units in some RTS games, these gain experience in combat and, through that experience, develop new offensive and defensive capabilities. Grooming super units will make things a lot easier later in the game, but the downside is that there’s nothing more depressing than losing the capital ship you’ve spent hours beefing up in a hasty attack against overwhelming odds. Save often is my advice.

Sins of a Solar Empire is not a game for everyone. It’s very demanding on both your time and your concentration – even a short game can take several hours to complete, and you’ll need several of those before you really understand the various game mechanics. On top of that, it has a tendency to over-prolong the end game, though a) this is a common fault of strategy games and b) there are plans to address this with an upcoming patch. And while the sound of the multiplayer game sounds appealing, will you ever find someone with the time to play through a whole game?

That said, Sins is still a hell of a lot more streamlined and accessible than its standard 4x rivals, most of which look about as much fun as, say, debugging Visual Basic scripts in a complex Excel spreadsheet. Best of all, it reminds me of the Battlefield games, in that it manages to make something powerful and cinematic out of unscripted moments of gameplay. One minute you’re weeping as enemy frigates wipe out your capital ship’s shields, the next you’re cheering as a cluster of your own attack ships arrive and blast the foe to kingdom come. At the same time, it has the depth and obsessive qualities you just don’t get from your regular RTS. Provided you have time, brains and patience, buy it. The effort you put in will be richly rewarded, and it’s all the strategy game you’ll need to last you out the year.

Sins effortlessly combines the depth of the 4x strategy genre with the more straightforward appeal of the RTS. It still hasn’t got the mainstream appeal of, say, World in Conflict or Homeworld, but settle in for the long haul and you’ll find this a very worthy game.