Empires: Dawn of the Modern World Updated Impressions
This upcoming history-themed real-time strategy game will have seven playable factions, and the French and Russians will be two of them. Get the details here.
Studying the history of the ancient world can provide powerful insight into the human race, both about its origins and about its continuous development over time. And apparently, it can also help you make great real-time strategy games--these are games that let you harvest resources, build up bases and cities, commission armies of soldiers, and use them to pummel your enemies into submission. One of the most ambitious of these titles to date has been the 2001 game Empire Earth, which spanned more than 2,000 years of human history, from the Stone Age to the Space Age and beyond. Empire Earth was a truly epic game--perhaps a bit too epic for some players, who found that they preferred to play only in specific time periods (or "epochs"), rather than through the game's many, many centuries.
Fortunately, developer Stainless Steel has decided to take a more-focused approach to its next game, Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. The new game will instead cover only 1,000 years of human history. According to lead designer Rick Goodman, this is still a formidable task, especially since the game's seven playable factions will all have completely unique armies and technologies--no two nations will have any soldiers in common. In fact, the game offers so many options that the studio has decided to effectively split the game into two parts: empire building, which focuses more on research and building bases, and tactical combat, which plays more like a traditional real-time strategy game and emphasizes fast-paced battles between battalions of soldiers with unique units. And fortunately, the game's main single-player campaign will be restricted to three major time periods: medieval Europe, 15th-century Korea, and World War II. We recently had an opportunity to watch both the French and Russian nations in action during the World War II period.
According to Goodman, creating a real-time strategy game with many different playable sides that all have completely unique armies is a real challenge, which is why each playable side has a specific theme or quality that helps characterize it. This theme will be reflected in the faction's armies, economic development paths, and special nation powers--large-scale effects that can be used to turn the tide of battle. For instance, the French will embody "cleverness," both on and off the battlefield, rather than brute force. As such, this playable side has a number of powerful bonuses and military units that emphasize the nation's cunning nature.
The French weren't known for their military power in World War II, but they do have powerful defensive capabilities, such as the potent "embargo" national power, which temporarily prevents opposing nations from creating any kind of military units at all. The French can also supplement their nation's population of worker citizens without having to build extra housing to accommodate them--essentially, they don't suffer the constraints on their population limit that other nations do. In addition, all French buildings will be automatically garrisoned by citizens the moment they're built, so the French can repair damage more quickly than other factions. Also, when French buildings or vehicles are destroyed, their occupants will come pouring out, unscathed and ready to fight. The French will even have a "militia" national power to turn their peaceful worker units immediately into infantry soldiers armed with rifles, which is a surprisingly effective strategy, especially since France doesn't need to constantly produce housing to support a growing population.
Empires: Dawn of the Modern World Quick Links
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- Activision
- Stainless Steel
- Historic Real-Time...
- Release: Oct 21, 2003
- ESRB: Teen
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