Empire Earth
Description official descriptions
Age of Empires is set in the past, Command & Conquer explores the future, but up to now there was no real-time strategy game that covered the whole breadth of human history. Empire Earth fills this gap and lets you wage war with everything from prehistoric stone thrower up to futuristic battle-mechs.
Empire Earth’s mastermind Rick Goodman was lead designer of the original Age of Empires. Similarities are thus hardly surprising; in fact, his new game can be considered a 3D version of its predecessor. Despite the graphical leap, the game’s look and feel are very familiar - AoE fans will feel perfectly at home. The perspective is fixed in an isometric view, camera management is not required. In your quest to crush the opposition, you build settlements, collect five resource types, recruit troops (land, sea, air) and, well, fight battles. Unit improvements are no longer researched in buildings, but can be bought at once for each unit type. For example, you can increase your tanks’ hit points, attack value, armor, speed and range separately -- for a price. It's your choice whether to spend your income on a huge army, or on an advanced one. Throughout the campaign, you also earn civilization points for heroic deeds; you can spend these on general unit improvements, e.g. reducing your archers building time by 30%, or making your citizens 20% faster.
The game’s four campaigns span the entire history of warfare: conquer the Mediterranean as the Greeks, lead the English from the middle ages to the battle at Waterloo, change history by making the Germans victors of the First and Second World War, and finally create a Russian empire in 2025. The campaign missions are heavily scripted and contain quite a few adventure elements; for example, you must lead William Duke of Normandy safely through enemy ambushes. As the scenarios focus on a set time frame, you don’t advance through the 14 epochs (from the Prehistoric Era to the Nano Age). In skirmish mode and in multiplayer battles, however, you may lead your people from caves into skyscrapers.
Spellings
- 地球帝国 - Simplified Chinese spelling
Groups +
- BestSeller Series (Cendant / Havas / Vivendi Universal) releases
- Covermount: Fullgames
- Empire Earth series
- Games that include map/level editor
- Green Pepper releases
- Historical Conflict: Hundred Years War
- Historical conflict: Napoleonic Wars
- Middleware: Bink Video
- Setting: 2010s
- Setting: Classical Greece
- Setting: Future now past
- Setting: Medieval Europe
- Setting: Totality of history
- Sound engine: AIL/Miles Sound System
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Credits (Windows version)
167 People (164 developers, 3 thanks) · View all
Game Design | |
Lead Single Player Game Design | |
Single Player Game Design | |
Lead Multiplayer Game Designer | |
Multiplayer Game Designer | |
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Programmers | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 83% (based on 32 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 66 ratings with 9 reviews)
Well, it certainly *tried* to be as good as Age of Empires...
The Good
Sierra really tried to make Empire Earth seem like Age of Empires 3. They advertized every single team member of theirs that was even related to Age of Empires, pointed out in what ways their game was better, etc. If they hadn't done this, I might have enjoyed Empire Earth more.
The game has okay music; I didn't like it as much as AoE's music, but it was still nice.
The Bad
I didn't like this game from the start. The first impression I had was 'damn, my citizens are ugly!'. The 3d models really aren't very good, excepting a few nice looking buildings and mechanical things later.
There aren't enough units and researches to get for each age, and the advancment between ages is too steep. The problem with this is that every player is quickly jumping ahead in ages as soon as they have maxed out researches, instead of stopping to build an army in-between; it becomes a kind of weird race against time instead of tactical battle. The first player to max out basically wins, because he can nuke the blazing daylights out of every single other civilization (litteraly...) while they're still advancing to the age where such things are possible. If two players advance at pretty much the same time, havoc ensues and the game becomes a boring slugfest almost instantly.
The tactics are generally lacking. Terrain dosen't work as well in Age of Empires; whether it's their map makers, or limiations of their engine I'm not sure, because the map editer was very oddly put together and I couldn't make anything decent of my own.
The Bottom Line
Empire Earth really can't seem to get anything right. I'd rather play the original Age of Empires than this poorly designed ripoff.
Windows · by ShadowShrike (277) · 2003
The Good
The campaigns were very good in this game. The objectives were easy to understand, and I had never come across anything like them in any other game. I had fun playing around with the camera which was eay to control and adjust. Last the units, I enjoy building up big armies, and so far Empire Earth lets me build the biggest [1200 units.] This means huge battles, and I don't know about you but thats the whole reason I buy these games
The Bad
The standard game mode can become boring, becuase the game's AI thinks the same each time. This leads to a lame game if you know whats basicly going to happen to you in the end. Last the game is just plain slow. It takes a while to produce a unit which is bothering when trying to build up a large army. My advice to solve this tiny problem is to make two or even three of each military building.
The Bottom Line
So basicly Empire Earth has good gameplay, but can become boring after a while if all you play is the standard game mode. I 'd say its worth the money if you want a game that not only lets you fight in modern times but also in the past. For me the goods outwayed the bad. Buy it for gameplay and graphics not for a game you think is new and different from all others, becuase it's not.
Windows · by Xiao 91 (3) · 2003
The Good
So nice real time strategy game
The Bad
One game is too long and can be more than 30 hours
The Bottom Line
Often the same way to win against IA is to build towers evrywhere
Windows · by adamo · 2023
Trivia
Epochs
The 14 Empire Earth epochs are:
- Prehistoric Era (500,000 BC)
- Stone Age (10,000 BC)
- Copper Age (5000 BC)
- Bronze Age (2000 BC)
- Dark Ages (0 AD)
- Middle Ages (900 AD)
- Renaissance (1300 AD)
- Imperial Age (1500 AD)
- Industrialization (1700 AD)
- World War I (1900 AD)
- World War II (1930 AD)
- Modern Era (1950 AD)
- Digital Era (2000 AD)
- Nano Age (2100 AD)
Server shutdown
The official online servers were shut down on 1 November 2008.
Awards
- GameSpy
- 2001 – PC Game of the Year
Information also contributed by Sciere
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by -Chris.
Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, jean-louis, Patrick Bregger, Plok.
Game added November 19, 2001. Last modified April 13, 2024.