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)

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

A really good idea, good effort, but just short of the finish line.

The Good
The fact that it has 12 eras to play in which is really fun because you can practically transition from any RTS era to another (even sci-fi fantasy which is in the later ages). They finally put controllable airplanes in a major RTS game which is good because I love my squadron of bombers. Fighting in the modern era is really cool too because it makes you understand modern war tactics. Aircraft carriers are fun as well, but are sadly still disproportionate to other things on the map. For example a villager is as big as tall as a tank and an airplane is the size of a horseman. But the game is fun non-theless, it possesses a 3d landscape that you can zoom into during the game (there is really no reason for this but they added it to the game and its fun to use ocassionally). Having a hero in the game is fun too except for the fact that you have to trigger his abilities, its not automatic like in Warcraft III. Watching the midieval armies fight is fun too, and I like the buildings they drew for that age/era, they are authentic looking. Having snipers is cool too, thought it would be nicer if they laid down. Lastly the WW2 artillary is awesome! Sadly there is only one artillary unit, but you can supplement that with airplanes.

The editor is good in this one too, you can practically make your own detailed campaigns and movies! Yeah you can actually make those in-game movies you see in all the RTS games, though it is rather hard to learn with all the triggers and all.

The Bad
The transition from era to era is really sketchy which makes sense because human techonology changed so drastically so its makes sense. But I do recall that the Roman legions were more powerfull than the barbarians and that doesn't really happen in the game. The lack of more units makes it kind of annoying to because you want to totally experience an Era/Age when your playing and you only get a glimpse of it before you advance and go to the next. Eventhough there is a variety of units to play with in Singly player, in multiplayer everyone has the same units (there are no set civilizations with their own units). Although there are civiilizations in a sense, you have a 100 bonus to spend on your custom civilization and give your people special advantages like faster villagers or faster airplanes. Or you can pick from the preset civs which is just preset bonuses not really the civ (although it does almost match the people's military tendancies but that is irrelevant, because people would have better planes not the same planes that are faster!). Anyway, single player levels are really long and somewhat boring. The future ages make no sense with walking robots because it would be way more efficient to have the have wheels or fly and its hard to distinguish between them because its just an army of shooting robots (except one with a sword). The first ages are really useless too, fighting in the prehistoric age is really bland because there are only 3 land units to pick from, and a raft with a guy hurling rocks. They could have been more creative then that really! Oh, and what's up with only six people to a mine? I wanna mine gold damnit! Other things that are missing is cruise missiles which I really wanted to use, missile silos in multiplayer, more helicopters, any sort of long range missile too (scud for example), being able to alter the landscape with your army would also be a really positive revolutionary step which would have made this game really good (imagine being able to make bridges or ditches).

The Bottom Line
Well to tell you the truth I was going to get a job at SSS and I talked to Rick Goodman the head of the company and he told me his dreams and aspirations for Empire Earth. To tell you the truth the ideas in his head sounded like a splendid game, but I think when they actually made it, it fell short of his invisioned glory. Maybe with better artists and more production time they could have made it a really good game. But the sad reality is that Empire Earth gets boring pretty fast, after you've seen all the eras and have gotten frustrated trying to figure out how to advance (which I still don't exactly understand 'til this day) because there is either a need for another town center or building or more military units and its not written down in the manual either. Also the multiplayer can only go so far. It's too rigid in my opinion and winning in the modern age is easy. Make some anti tank guns and a huge group of bombers and bomb everything the enemy has. Add one or two B-2's and you've got yourself a win almost guarenteed (that is unless the other guy hasn't done that to you first).

If you want good strategy games that came out the same time as this one that are better you should check out Warcraft III which is very good, or Age of Mythology which is good.

Windows · by Thiago Oliveira (85) · 2003

Age of Empires III. About as good as it predecessors.

The Good
Make no mistake about it; Empire Earth IS a copy of Age of Empires. It looks, plays, and sounds the same. The graphics are the same, the interface is the same, the game is the same, right down to the resources and what they look like. The ONLY difference is that this game tacks on more technological development, right up to modern times and the "nano age."

This is a shameless ripoff in every way, but to its credit, it does it well. Age of Empires IS a good game, and so is Empire Earth. The graphics are crisp and easy on the eye, the interface is smooth, the sound is great and the gameplay is just as good as when Microsoft published it as Age of Empires. And it IS an upgrade; there are some nice rules changes, and far more units.

The Bad
The game has two major flaws. the first is the AI - which, incidentally, doesn't play fair. The computer doesn't follow the same rules the player does, as a result of which computer players are absurdly strong. Even at the lowest difficulty level, giving the player every possible advantage, the computer seems to get free resources and buildings Winning is very difficult, and will only happen with some luck.

The second is that in an effort to expand the game to modern times, the game zips by the technology progression way too fast. Whereas Age of Empires had four or five "Eras," this game has 15. The differences between Classical and Byzantine techs don't seem really apparent when you're buzzing through them at a rate of one era every fifteen minutes. The game's "epic" Civilization-style scope of the entirety of human history seems very contrived against a standard Age of Empires map.

The Bottom Line
Not the epic masterpiece it's being described as, and not a necessary purchase if you still enjoy your Age of Empires II set.

Windows · by Rick Jones (96) · 2001

[ 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.