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[PTTG??]

I was surprised to read that while there is some discussion of Empire Earth in various conversation here, there were no dedicated threads. I have, naturally, set out to rectify this.

Empire Earth is a relatively old RTS with a rather ambitious scope: the entirety of human history. An expansion extended this into the future, featuring the colonization of alien planets. (Effectively doing nothing besides replacing "ocean" terrain with "space" terrain)

Still, interesting and awesome things were present, including the possibility of invading Rome with machine guns, or having raving madmen summon volcanoes to destroy enemy missile silos.

The game was available for free on Good Old Games, apparently not anymore. I'm sure that it is possible to find... totally... legitimate copies of the gold edition floating around somewhere, though.

Anyway, we aught to play a few games. Note that the servers are long gone, so VPN will probably be a necessity!

[Frumple]

... what is this about it being free? I can't seem to find it...

[MonkeyHead]

Its listed as $5.99. Wont show up in free searches. I think a while ago it was availiable for free for a limited time as part of some promotion. I forget the details. No longer availiable for gratis though.

[Aqizzar]

Still, interesting and awesome things were present, including the possibility of invading Rome with machine guns, or having raving madmen summon volcanoes to destroy enemy missile silos.

I remember prophets being totally overpowered, the the robots being really hard to tell apart in the interface with little indication of what they're for, and multiplayer games basically being a race to advance your tech level.  And every mission in the single player campaign was interminably long and full of terrible voice acting.

More than anything else, it was one of the real pioneers of the rock-paper-scissors RTS unit scheme, and grabbed it by the throat and ran for the hills.  I remember gunpowder infantry/cavalry/artillery being especially egregious in WRONG UNIT = NO DAMAGE effects.

The army-wide upgrade system was pretty cool though, and I certainly salute the attempted scope of the game.  It was fun, just kinda badly constructed as far as I felt.

[Jopax]

It was fun but not for long, Rise of Nations was much more fun, the second EE too, it had a nice idea, the realization was meh at times but most of the time much better then the first one.

There was also that other one that had a much smaller scope but similar idea, going from the middle ages to the close future I think.

[Sonlirain]

While EE had a very interesting concept (from the stone age to lazor fireing robots and spaceships) it was EE2 that wctually perfected it... and EE2 and Rise of Nations are pretty much the same game with different graphics.

[GreatJustice]

EE was great in some ways, but silly in others (eg. to "Win" you had to chase the literal last enemy soldier and murder him since the AI was incapable of surrender).

EE2 improved on a lot of things (Especially diplomacy), but the graphics were really, really silly (The "leader" who is twice the size of a goddamn apartment building, apparently leadership in this world is granted only to an elite race of giants though even regular marines are about house sized)

[Sonlirain]

EE2 improved on a lot of things (Especially diplomacy), but the graphics were really, really silly (The "leader" who is twice the size of a goddamn apartment building, apparently leadership in this world is granted only to an elite race of giants though even regular marines are about house sized)

Nah EE2 had decent graphics.
And i don't remember leaders being that huge. Sure they were about twice larger than your average human but that made him also easier to spot during a battle.

[Glowcat]

I recall Empire Earth 1 and 2 were pretty damn awesome for its time but that might be the nostalgia talking.

Then they released Empire Earth 3 a game that never existed.

But the original game was pretty innovative. It had customized faction strengths using a point buy system, an enormous scope, and it was similar to Age of Empires which is a style I loved.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

The first Empire Eath hasn't aged well at all. Still a great game if you can get over the flaws. Don't expect this to rock your world at first if you're not blinded by nostalgia.

The Bad:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The graphics are weoful. Although most people could get over this it does make the "in-game cutscenes" pretty  hilarious at times.

There's barely any scroll out on the map leaving you with a very small field of view thta you're somehow meant to command your units/do advance tactics with. Thought this might have been modded/hacked in but nobody managed to do it.

Not much variety in each tech group (untill you start getting up to the atmoic ages) which makes the game feel like a rush to get atomic bombers.

Prophets /Priests tear apart the low level units and become the main offensive unit throughout the majority of the game.

No varaiation between buildings of different cultures, no cultural "themes". This might seem like a small one but it means you're really going to be limited in what history to play. For example all the Dark Age buildings are roman so there's going to be no Dark Age Europe or Fedual Japan.

AI pathing is terrible, just terrible. I could never controll a fleet of boats, they just get stuck on eachother.

The rock/paper/scissors gameplay gets extremely confusing by the atomic age+, even more so with the addition of cybers. Usualy turns into a game of build the biggest clump of something. 

Defence is way too powerful with walls having such great HP you need serval siege weapons (in any epoch) to even attempt to take them down, then even if you do they're so cheap and fast to build then it almost seems pointless.

Very little amount of animations/sound affects makes the units all seem very generic as you go through the ages. Pretty much all charactors share the same death sound.

The expansion pack. Sorry, it was just all bad. I didn't have it untill I bought the Empire Earth collection on Gamers Gate and I regret it.
Terrible campaigns, the new civ abilities just serve to overpower some (I'm looking at you, Ottomans), some really strange new units that are just out of place (Cyber Ninja, the fuck?), the space age isn't great and the whole space thing is a failure since you can't have boats and space units on the same map!

The Good

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some great campaigns in there that will have you battlign against the AI for hours. Each with their own flare and style which is generally more than kill the other guy.

Progressing through the ages and dropping atomic bombs on Knights. From the Prehistoric Age to the Nano Age there's an aweful lot of bloodshed to be spilled.

The game picls up a lot of depth with the atomic ages+, could be a little bit too much depth with the cybers but the atomic ages (to me) have some of the best combat in the game. WW1 is a fave of mine.

Can have some pretty intense all out battles (even more so with the improved pop limits) where due to the combat mechanics will have your spacing, placing and micromanaging units determine the fight.

Wonders are interesting and can help turn the tide of combat.

Prophets causing natural disasters are always funny and great to watch.

Great fun old school RTS. With less rush based combat than most other's at the time.

AI seems rather smart and I've seen them rush resourcepoints before, can be nightmarish on hardest!

Civlisation creator is pretty fun and you can tinker your civ how you like it. The Expansion added more to this but due to some of the skills being really unbalanced it breaks even.

Giiiiaaaannntttttt maps. Also a great scenario editor which can be a great lot of fun (when did RTS games stop providing these?).

Some great user mods/maps/campaigns.

[lordcooper]

I have always wanted a game of the C&C/AoE/EE variety set inside the Total War engine.  The closest I ever found was Warrior Kings.  Anyone know of anything like that?

[Angel Of Death]

Ah. Empire Earth. I fucking love this game. Shame my disk is damaged beyond repair. But, there's one major problem I have with the game. The only way the AI is competant on any difficulty lower than hard mode is if you let it cheat, which makes the game nightmarishly difficult.

[Bluerobin]

Looks like I got Empire Earth 2 on gog.com a while ago when it was on sale like 75% off... although I don't remember how to play it at all. I think I was playing a friend's Rise of Nations at the same time and just ended up royally confusing myself about which game is which.

[PTTG??]

OK, so let's give this a shot. I'll try to put together a VPN of some kind and we'll try a game.

What kind of game do we want? I kinda want to try out space, but I don't know if I want to give up sea...

[GreatJustice]

Still, interesting and awesome things were present, including the possibility of invading Rome with machine guns, or having raving madmen summon volcanoes to destroy enemy missile silos.

And every mission in the single player campaign was interminably long and full of terrible voice acting.

The German and Russian campaigns were the prime example of this (though Grigor and Molotov sounded pretty awesome nonetheless)

"LEAVE HER ALONE YOU SVINE"

or

"GREETINGS GENERAL GRIGOR, YOU DON'T KNOW ME YET BUT MY NAME IS MOLOTOV"

OK, so let's give this a shot. I'll try to put together a VPN of some kind and we'll try a game.

What kind of game do we want? I kinda want to try out space, but I don't know if I want to give up sea...

EE has superior user created scenarios/campaigns, but EE2 has the superior multiplayer by huge amounts. I personally loved to make 6 player coop vs the hardest (utterly silly cheating/overpowered) AI or a heavily bonused human player on island maps.

Nah EE2 had decent graphics.
And i don't remember leaders being that huge. Sure they were about twice larger than your average human but that made him also easier to spot during a battle.

EE2 was more cartoony, and back in the day EE1's graphics were pretty decent. They looked nicer I suppose, but I could never get over the stylistic difference (also, EE1 was able to allow you to spot units easily without having to resort to armies composed of giants)