To be honest, I don't think either game is really similar to Homeworld, other than being set in space. Homeworld is a straight RTS, whereas the other two games are more empire management with RTS elements.

EaW has better graphics, and the theming is great if you're looking for a Star Wars game. It doesn't feel as epic as Sins, though. Also, everything in Sins happens in real time. In EaW, when you start a battle, it pauses everything that happens on the galactic map until the battle is resolved.

oooo, this is hard as I love both games.......
Starwars has campaign and free game missions, but hardly anything sandbox like and bad online IMO.
Sins of a solar empire has no campaign but awesome online play and is a sandbox.

Sins has only space
starwars has both land and space.


Hmmm, you can try the demo first to see if your like sins and i believe SW : EAW FOC also has one.

Definitely NOT when you are viewing the strategic, galactic map !

It then looks at least 5 years behind SINS's level of representation of a « cosmic » environment.

But I suppose that you are refering to the graphics during ship-to-ship, tactical combat.

(Those I cannot evaluate since I only played EAW on the grand-strategic scale, asking the computer to rapidly simulate the space battles.)

I don't see how there can even be debate about the graphics, Sins is definitely the prettier of the two. As to gameplay, the best way to get a sense of that is to play the demo for Sins. It should be immediately apparent whether you enjoy it or not.

I bought Star Wars: Empire at War when it was first released. Played it for a week and it's been collecting dust eversince.

Sins is the kind of game that will entertain you for well over a year. There is a lot to it, and once you have mastered one faction it will be time to learn to play as another. There are three factions.

I'm still trying to master Advent. I've been playing as them for over a month, and I still haven't perfected it.

Thanks for the answers to my question, but what about ship movement, do capital ships move like big, slow giants or like phony fighters turning on a dime in outerspace?. I would rather have a little less eye candy and a lot more Babylon 5 cap ship movement in any space game

The capital ships seem to turn around a lot slower than the smaller ships, but they do move fast when moving straight. They are slower overall. I think with the new patch, they will move even faster.

Do a search on YouTube if you don't want to try the demo. That is what sold me. Here's a video for You Tube Video of Sins

Serondal
Homeworld 2 is a great game and I easily recommend it to everyone who likes to go out into space and do some realistic space naval combat using a ocean navy ship class of strength and weaknesses, for example frigates no matter their weapon load will be quickly beaten by a destroyer unless, like the real navy you have a number of them in a taskforce configuration and concentrate all of your firepower on that one destroyer and even then it is ify  
If want to try buying Hw2 may I suggest you look on Ebay for a new on at a good price.

Mentalassassin
I think you have answered that one important and nagging question for me, it true that I had become spoil to Homeworld2 and use that game as a standard to measure other games, but after playing Sins I found myself playing Sins more and more until I left Homeworld and moved in with Sins.
Thanks for bringing me out of the dark ages  

SWEAW definly has better graphics - I put it on full on my desktop and it is gorgeous. The Moviecam zooms in to lone tie fighters - and they look realistic. not to mention the executor and victories. Also battles are a lot more interesting. The ships actually move around instead of just floating there. but... sins is still the better game

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Sins, hands down.
And I am a Star Wars fan!

Ugh... Do not trust the EAW has better graphics comments... I was just playing the zerox 3.5 add-on mod for forces of corruption last night. I had a star wars itch, damned inconvenient.

They are vastly inferior, there is zero comparison graphically between the two games. Up against Sins, EAW is severely dated. It's more in line with the first homeworld, and from an efficiency perspectively, vastly inferior to that as well. It's a clunky bastard of an engine unfortunately.

Which you'll like better... Shit does move a wee bit more in EAW, but outside of that I can't really come up with a high point as far as space combat goes. The land combat is a nice addition over sins, but it's not particularly well done. As far as single player goes, you can kill the most heavily fortified base with depressing ease as long as you have a single y-wing in the system. It's very very easy, even in the worst conditions. Multiplayer could be interesting, but my acquisition of it post-dates my move to the boonies. Sins is by far the more strategic game, but neither of them are really in any way a comparison to homeworld. Sins is sorta like the space half of EAW done right.