RTS Thoughts on the Empire Earth series?

[McPlusle]

I recently purchased the Empire Earth series on GOG, with my only prior memory of the series being a demo of Empire Earth II that was on a PC Gamer CD. I remember the game's promised scope in its advertising being utterly mind-blowing, with its claims that you'd play as a civilization in real-time through the entirety of human history and beyond. Despite loving Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, a largely forgotten RTS by the developers of the original Empire Earth, I never bought a single game in the EE series until recently.

So I started a game of Empire Earth 1 and can't help but feel that I'm playing it wrong. No one in their right mind has played a game that spanned all of the game's fifteen ages, right? The cost to tech up is absurdly high on the game's default settings, especially in the first two ages which don't even let you build farms. So far it seems like a decent AoE-school RTS; just one that is a bit over its head.

I haven't played the other two just yet. I know opinion is split as to whether or not II is better than I. It definitely seems like a significantly different and more polished game, if also an even more bloated one. I'm assuming III is every bit the decline I've been told it is, but I'm gonna play it anyway.

So how do you feel about the series (as well as Empires: Dawn of the Modern World)?

 

[sser]

I thought they sucked even in their own time. Rise of Nations is the real winner of that civ/RTS mix.

 

[catfood]

"Rock-paper-scissors +25% dmg vs." trash. Avoid like the plague.

 

[mbv123]

EE1 was decent if you're into comfy base building and hoarding resources.
Don't remember anything about EE2.
EE3 was absolute trash

But yeah, RoN is better.

 

[Grimlorn]

Played the game a few years ago for nostalgia.

If I recall right, it only takes maybe an hour or an hour and a half to go through all the ages. So if it's taking too long to gather resources, you're likely not using multiple settlers to gather resource fields. I think you can use at least 4-6 on each field. Maybe more. The AI will follow you to the next age within 5-10 minutes no matter how fast you go. It will also sit in the same age as you for 20-30 minutes as well before upgrading on its own, but it typically only takes about 5-10 minutes to move into the next age. Just build two buildings and the next age will unlock. I can't remember if type of building matters.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

One of the worst cases of early 3d out there.

 

[McPlusle]

After playing a few co-op matches of EE2 with a friend, I can safely say that it may be the most bloated real-time strategy game I've ever played; so much so that it makes the original game look merely like an overly ambitious Age of Empires mod. I think it's better than the original, but it's still weighed down by a massive pile of arbitrary mechanics that still fail to accomplish what Rise of Nations pulled off so elegantly.

 

[Kahr]

EE1:
For real Multiplayer action it's of course shit and you should play indeed RoN instead.
But i found the campaigns were real entertainment with the great trashy speakers.
AoE campaigns are too serious and bland. EE1 campaigns seem like a twisted, corny parody of world history.
The best are the russian and chinese campaign which implement this ridiculous future setting.
But yeah if you hate trash you won't find it amusing.

EE2 and EE3:
don't

 

[Jacob]

Empire Earth's campaigns are fun. It seems that the developer themselves really enjoy making the campaign, especially the future ones. They also make the Red Baron a warrior hero, fighting with a pistol while wearing a pilot outfit against the enemy's army of tanks and machine guns. Then we have the prophet and the future units...

Too bad the gameplay is shit. The slow pace of resource gathering and tech research makes AoE feels like Unreal Tournament. The buildings are super duper sturdy, the unit selection of the early eras are shit (And by that I mean until WW1), and every single units move with the maneuverability of a tank.

 

[deuxhero]

There is no series. There's one game that never got any sequels.

 

[McPlusle]

I tried Empire Earth III.

No.

My friend and I couldn't even get the game running over LAN due to its demand for GameSpy keys (to play over a physical local network, mind you), so I instead let the game's solo skirmish mode lull me to sleep. Stripping back all of the bloat contained in Empire Earth II actually let III expose the series for what it really is: a trilogy of lackluster RTS games that fail miserably to reach the heights set by Age of Empires and later Rise of Nations, which is easily my favorite game in the AoE school of RTS design (but I also may just be a huge Brian Reynolds fanboy).

I've yet to return to the first game's spiritual successor, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. I hope the game is as good as my nostalgia for it may lead me to believe, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Havoc]

Don't play skirmishes against the PC. The higher the level, the more it cheats. The highest one doesn't gather resources and pumps units 24/7. Tried to play against it with a friend, couldn't. We went on with the "planets" map, where you need spaceships to travel between and saw almost 0 gathering, he even still had his starting bushes. Fucking AIs how do they work?

 

[Deflowerer]

They're just so fucking bland and slow. I think the idea of making a traditional RTS on such a scale just doesn't work. Age of Empires games know it, so they have focused on smaller timescales. Rise of Nations is an exception, but that one was much more macro-focused.

Besides, don't most of these games devolve into space age rushes anyway? What's the point of so many ages and units if you're prolly never going to utilize them.

 

[Codexlurker]

Empire Earth was meh. Empire Earth 2 was even more bland and really I had more fun playing AoE2. Empires Dawn of the Modern World was pretty fun at least on MP compared to Empire Earth back then. I am not even sure I can play it now(literally gamespy is dead).

 

[vota DC]

I hated the fact that Empires: Dawn of the Modern World forced you to change civilization at some point.

Empire Earth was very expensive to age up but upgrading units was very cheap, also units were cheap as age of empires for example infantry was 30 food and 30 ore while heavy artillery 170 wood and 170 gold. Maybe resource gathering is faster? Villagers can have even reach 16 speed with civ bonus in later ages and you get tons of upgrades to get faster gathering.
Some civ upgrades last forever or at least for very long: for example you always get a ranged infantry (except copper age you have rock thrower until stone age, javelin-pilum until middle ages and then you get gunpowder and laser infantry), cavalry and spear infantry last until WW1, archers and sword infantry only until Reinassance because they weren't brave enough to include Chewbacca and Jedi.
There is a lack of unique units in random map despite the fact you see many of them in the campaign (not just the heroes, for example Harold can field the huskarls).

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Dayyālu]

The only memory I have of Empire Earth is making fuckhuge skirmish maps where a shitton of high-difficulty AI enemies limited to early ages and prehistoric ages fought against poor me in the high-level tech ages, making it a weirdo version of the 70ies/80ies sci-fi movies of cavemen versus robots.

It was stupid fun.

 

[Dux]

I recently played through the English campaign of EE and I thought it was pretty fun, actually. Nothing special but it was decent fun while it lasted. The campaign was charming, in a way. When it started reciting Shakespeare's Henry V I couldn't help but smile.

Then I decided to play EE2 and it was like every good thing about the first game had been thrown out the window in favour of fuck all. I could easily see myself going back one day to EE to try one of the other campaigns but EE2 is just pointless. Drab, cluttered and overly "ambitious" garbage with none of the straightforward charm of the first game.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

Empire Earth aged really horrible in terms of graphics but the campaigns were awesome. I never tried multiplayer and I just think this is not the right game for it. I never played the AoE campaigns only multiplayer and it feels like the other way around with EE. (But I maybe should play the AoE campaigns)
Really liked the Russian and German campaigns but also the English and Asian one - just great variety (the rest were good too!). But the game certainly shouldn't be taken to serious.
I never played the second and third part of the series and didn't knew about the spiritual successor - I was really sure it was the only game in the series and never bothered to look it up.
Something that didn't age horribly is the music - the music is still awesome!



Still have that death sound of the villager in my ear that sounds like vomiting.

 

[deuxhero]

Series? They only made one game.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

You restored my former believe that there is only one game. Thanks

 

[Deflowerer]

I think the shittiest part about EE and reason why it has aged so poorly is not the graphical quality per se, but mainly because the art design in general sucks. None of the civilizations, even a group of similar civs, have a distinct building or unit design which really kills the flavor.

Just play Rise of Nations instead of this franchise.

 

[thesecret1]

I played EE2 and I thought it was a good enough AoE clone, the campaigns were great fun. Other than that, it didn't really deliver much in the way of novelty. I also tried EE3 but all I remember about it is that it was terrible garbage.

 

[Galdred]

How about Empires: Dawn if te Modern World? Is it any good? I was disappointed by Rise of Nation lack of proper fortifications! I know they don't match the scale, but it was a cool feature of the Age of Series.

 

[vota DC]

The civilizations in Dawn were really different unlike empire earth but you were forced to convert an older civilization to another one for example modern chinese are..... russians