Empire Earth

aka: Diqiu Diguo, EE, Empire Earth: 500.000 Jahre Menschheitsgeschichte in einem einzigartigen Spiel, Empire Earth: An Epic Conquest Spanning 500,000 Years, Empire Earth: An Epic Conquest Spanning 500,000 Years of Human History, Empire Earth: Une fabuleuse odyssée à travers 500 000 ans d'histoire de l'humanité
Moby ID: 5374
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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

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Credits (Windows version)

167 People (164 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

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

I have a lot of bad things to say about this "Age of Empire" rebellion game...

The Good
The game has new features, different from its predecessor Age of Empires II. I commend their "trying" to come up with something new, as well as their ambitious attempt to "compile" all ages, past and futuristic. So what do you have when you combine Age of Empires, Cossacks, Red Alert and Starcraft? I'll tell you later...(save the best for last).

This game has no races or nations like other games, instead the differences are given to "civilization bonuses", which if you play a normal game (not campaign), you get to choose what bonuses your "race" excels in, similar to character creations in RPG games only this applies to a race (or nation). For example you can customize your nation to excell in Tanks (e.g. 20% attack bonus, 20% armour, etc). Therefore it would probably virtually impossible to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of a nation in a multiplayer game!

Improvement of units are now delegated to the units themselves, not in buildings (e.g. barracks), however with a limitation. You can only improve only a number of improvement per type of unit, therefore also creation diversity in unit abilities. Example: If you maximize attack, defence to maximum, your unit may lack speed or movement, etc.

The graphics are sound features are very nice. I've noticed some detailed work when you bombard walls and buildings, which gives a more "real" affect.

I do commend the fact this is the only game (I know of) where you can actually play the part of the Nazi's although not explicitly expressed in the campaign description.

The Bad
Now for the good stuff, er bad stuff. What I don't like about this game. As I said earlier, what do you get when you combine Age of Empires, Cossacks, Red Alert and Starcraft? TOTAL CHAOS!

This game has NO FOCUS. Trying to bundle everything in one package, making this one very boring real time strategy game in the long run. But no matter that's not what's bad, it gets worse.

HORRIBLE INTERFACE! Not recommended for experienced players that take value of informational detail: You click on a unit and there is no description what so ever about the unit. Not even a help menu to explain the uses of units and buildings. BY THE GODS! What are they thinking? Do they actually think that gamers just play? That they do not actually like to READ and KNOW more about those little icons they move around in the game? If there were awards for IGNORANCE for EDUCATIONAL VALUES this game would win top awards. Sorry for being harsh, but games like this do teach much to those playing them unlike most games I've played.

Oh, and the campaign? You'd be better of playing Age of Empires I. Much better. Unfortunately, my personal opinion is if they hope to rival Age of Empires with this "game", they'd be better of making chess programs.

The beta testers (as well as the campaign programmers) failed big time in this game too (well not big time, but irritating enough). When you play the campaign, you'll probably understand what I'm talking about. Whoever produced the campaign needs to get another job! NO TASTE! And talk about bad acting. The story teller could bore you to sleep. No creativity and they keep limiting your options on what units you can or cannot do. In certain situations you cannot control your units because of the plot (They're my units, don't move them!). There goes the strategy!

The units are a little less irritating than of Cossacks. Units can actually bump other units therefore ruining their previous stance. Probably because using 3D features. Which also make units hard to move in tight situations, in addition they can't march in formation very good either. (Should've learnt better from Cossacks)

And there's the air units. If you know how to control those flying birds someone let me know. Forget flying in formation, because there is no such thing. Red Alert fans would laugh out of their socks seeing how the air units (specifically planes) operate in this game. They fly one by one, flying around like a pack of vultures. So you can forget about lightning attacks from the air. They get there when they get there.

Did I mention bad interface. Oh, yes I did. No pride, by gum.

The Bottom Line
Expect minimal brain activity. Better off playing Age of Mythology, worth being called Age of Empires III.

Windows · by Indra was here (20756) · 2003

The creators of AOE really messed up....

The Good
First, the fact that you get planes and over 10 different Epochs is pretty darn interesting. They had a good idea for civ attributes too. The campaigns are mildly engaging for a RTS. Cool resources.(wood,food,stone,iron,gold). You get cavemen.

The Bad
The graphics. UGLY!!! You can zoom up real close to guys and that's a good thing, right?? WRONG!!!! Their clothes are horrible and their faces look like they have been transplanted directly from a game from the early 90's. This wouldn't be so bad if the building looked good, but they don't. They look so fake and are much poorer than AOE 2. Before I mentioned Epochs. Pretty much the same thing as ages in AOE. But now it takes a minimum of 6 hours to get from the pre-historic era to the Nano-Age. This translates into the game being an "age race" for the first 6 hours. The resources are ok, but you need tons of them to get to a new age. In Aoe, 1000 of anything was considered alot, but in EE, you need over 8000 food to get into some ages!!! This too could be overlooked if you could get some good tactical combat in, but NOOO!! It's pretty straightforward in the beginning, but after you advance a couple Epochs, there are over 15 units all with their weaknesses and strengths. Monks are also useless. You have so much micro-managing to do, that you don't have time to use them effectively. Planes have poor A.I. Instead of making it simple and just having it hover around or stay in the hanger, they fly around in circles!!?? Why!!?? This makes it very difficult to group them together or get them to go anywhere. Fuel is another pain. This fuel means that every few minutes, they have to return to the hanger to refuel. So you always have to have them "refuel" because they fly around wasting fuel and chances are it will be half gone before you find them. Stop Atomic Bombers is another pain. Diligent gamer as I am, I built turrets and aa guns all around my Island. This was useless, as I was informed that my aa guns were attacking something. Zooming over there, I find an atomic bomber fly past my aa guns, fly over 30 something villagers and nuke them out of existence!! I was livid. I had paid a pretty penny for those AA guns and they had been ineffective.They had not even done the job they were erected for in the first place. Another large bug was that, in the last Epoch, you get to build these big robot things. They are incredibly expensive, but I said to myself that they were worth it. They're not!!! They cost more than they are any good and seem to be good against nothing in particular. This is odd because nearly every other unit has a strength and weakness, but these robots apparently don't. Expect alot of waiting, as, unlike AOE, you do alot of waiting for resources. Forget about getting up a well balanced army.(i.e. I'll bring my infantry away from the calvary and bring in the pikemen) Battles are so fast and hectic that you can't move your guys around because 1. They don't instantly respond to commands and 2. They move slowly, even the Calvary.

The Bottom Line
This game is a poor RTS. If you already have Age of Empires, don't waste your money on this. If you don't have AOE, get that instead.

Windows · by James Kirk (150) · 2003

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

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

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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 March 22, 2024.