Empire Earth

Jaguar · April 16, 2002, 23:33

I got this game a little while ago and it seems to be very good. 3-D terrain and a lot of units to play around with will keep me interested for a while. My question is, how does it replay after a while? Is it still good?

da_jaymz · April 17, 2002, 06:33

well, it depends if you're into RTS-s, cause the game is like Civ in real time, everything you see and don't like can be changed, combat system in rock-paper-scissors and it gets a little more confusing in world war era when you have 15-20 different units to play with.Its fun, and the game has a killer AI, you can create your own civilization,fun combat, heroes, map generator and a full scenario editor with triggers.

Grumbold · April 17, 2002, 07:24

Conversely I tried the demo for 45 minutes and never want to see it ever again

Rock-paper-scissors is a nice idea for game balance. Making archers that are strong on ranged combat and weak on hand to hand would make sense. Making them deadly in hand to hand and ranged combat against one type of infantry unit but useless against another is just ludicrously stupid and I had to stop playing to save my blood pressure. Other little problems like peasants being able to repair buildings and walls faster than siege engines could damage them didn't help either. I guess I like a small dollop of realism mixed in with my RTS. C&C was fun because although rifles could hurt tanks it took lots and lots of them to score a kill while a tank could squish troops easily. Had they invented a soldier that cut through tanks like butter I'd have uninstalled that one too.

Eli · April 17, 2002, 07:52

It's a pretty good game.

IMO there is no replay value after you finish the campaigns, but that's what I think about all RTS games.

ixnay · April 17, 2002, 11:48

Like Grumbold, I, too, was unimpressed by the demo. I thought the rock-paper-scissors combat didn't work out great and whatnot. I think Rise of Nations will be phenomenaly better than EE.

Sarxis · April 18, 2002, 01:54

I am thinking that RoN will be better too. I have EE, and actually beta tested it.

It was rushed, and has had ZERO support since release. Sierra's servers for the game are a tragic, misshappen hack job and are unmoderated.

Trainers galore!

And only empty promises of patches and changes at this point.

But its a great game! I am just saying that RoN is going to take the same concept and do it cleanly and correctly.

chronocrator · April 19, 2002, 09:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
Conversely I tried the demo for 45 minutes and never want to see it ever again

Rock-paper-scissors is a nice idea for game balance. Making archers that are strong on ranged combat and weak on hand to hand would make sense. Making them deadly in hand to hand and ranged combat against one type of infantry unit but useless against another is just ludicrously stupid and I had to stop playing to save my blood pressure.

This what I thought, too. I played the demo and saw an unmounted soldier shooting at an artillery doing only little damage. However a guy with a rifle on a horse almost killed the artillery with two shots (of probably the same gun).
IMO such combat bonuses are fine in TBS games but not in an RTS game. The cavallery unit should not receive a huge bonus against an artillery instead it should just be fast enough to avoid most of the the arti-shots, no bonus is needed then.

Jaguar · April 19, 2002, 15:17

Whats Rise of Nations? The sequel?

da_jaymz · April 19, 2002, 19:37

a new game by Brian Reynolds

Sava · April 26, 2002, 07:47

I thought Empire Earth was good, but it didn't have enough cool stuff that you could do in single player to make the replay value real high. There were only like 8 or so different types of maps you could play on. I like the overall concept of rock-paper-scissors, but I think they made it too simple. In the modern era especially, it was too easy to build like 10-15 of each type of unit, group them separately, and move them around like an invincible strike force. The AI didn't nearly utilize that strategy. They usually only massed the unit to counter whatever unit I had the most of.

As purely a game, I'd give it a 94. More bells and whistles would have been nice.

Jethro83 · April 28, 2002, 02:10

Empire Earth was good, but for its time, AOE2 is much better.

EE is just like AOE, only with 14 epochs and a Rock, Scissors, Paper combat system (at least until the WW1 era).

Once you get to the WW1 era, it becomes more than just Rock, Scissors, Paper and that's where it shines (damn that Russian campaign can be hard at times).

EE didn't really meet my expectations since it was way too much like Age Of Empires. In fact there were aspects of Age of Empires II that were better than this game (such as being able to convert resources into others at a marketplace).

Sarxis · April 28, 2002, 02:24

Yeah, the beta testers screamed for a market, but the devs either couldn't or wouldn't implement one.

I bet its in the XP though.