Back when Age of Empires 2 held the RTS genre in a death grip, people were content. They still are, but one developer wanted more. After all, Bigger is Better, right? Rick Goodman, designer of AoE, moved on to form Stainless Steel Studios and their flagship title, Empire Earth, was primed to announce itself as the new king. Thousands of units, huge battlefields, epic age advances, tons of civilizations (and even build your own civ)...it was gonna be awesome. Unfortunately, it suffered from a lack of balancing, a horrible AI, and poor multiplayer stability. Age of Empires continued to reign. But at least one company saw the diamond in the rough, and began Empire Earth 2. The same company that added a Space expansion to the original EE. And lucky for them, they polished the diamond to amazing lustre. For starters, Empire Earth 2 is polished. The interface is clean and efficient, and really does a good job of displaying the plethora of options you have available. The standard stuff is all here from single player campaigns, scenarios and skirmishes, to multiplayer. One thing I'll recommend from the start is to do the tutorial. Many people will skip it I'm sure, but fortunately the standard tutorial is not here. The game expects you to know how to move your units, and is merely going to teach you whats new to EE2. Believe me, there's alot to learn. The first thing a new player is going to gasp about is the Citizen Manager. The idea behind it is so simple, and will easily become the best innovation to happen to RTS games in years. The average RTS player loves to micromanage. If a resource gets too high compared to another, say too much wood and not enough food, he runs back to his base and begins to reassign villagers. This could take him out of a hectic battle and may cause him to lose. Fortunately, all those numbers showing your resources just aren't stats, they're interactive! If you hover over a resource, say wood, you'll get an icon of a citizen and a number. The number is how many idle citizens you have. If you right click a resource, you effectively take a village off that resource and he gets put in your idle pool. Then if you hover down to another resource and left click, you automatically reassign that idle villager to the resource. All without ever going back to your base. The ease of use of this feature are so mindbendingly simple, it's a shame it wasn't available in other RTS games. EE2 takes it one step further. The Manager also has an overhead full map view of the resources available. This will take your focus off a battle, but if you prefer to relocate citizens to a specific resource, instead of having them choose one, this screen lets you do it. You also have the option to place certain resource nodes like farms or oil derricks on this overhead map. This saves time scrolling around the map to find a resource spot hidden behind trees or something. The whole thing is done beautifully, and adds so much more playability to the game. The next huge innovation is the War Manager. Ever want to feel like a real general? This screen gives you an overhead full screen map, similar to the CM, but with options to draw arrows and attack points to really flesh out a battle plan. Not only that, but you can share your battle plans with allies, and coordinate strategic attacks. Also, if you're playing with a computer AI as an allie, you can send them battle plans to have them attack with you. Send an AI directly into a fray, while you issue troops to the rear. The system is also very easy to learn, and it's only takes seconds to get a decent battle plan drawn up. Unfortunately, most RTS players still prefer the build up and rush attack approach, so those of us who prefer a slower, more strategic game may find this option rarely used. But it is there, and it adds a ton of strategic depth to the game. Coupled with the WM, they added a "coordinated attack" button. Basically, turning on CA will allow you to issue attack orders like waypoints, or positional changes, without having the troops begin to carry out your plans. Once you toggle CA off, they carry out your orders one by one. It's not much, but it can be useful to get allies to attack at the same time. Also, you can waypoint enemies, so instead of getting group one to attack an enemy battalion of tanks, you can waypoint group one to attack tank 1 first, tank 2 second, tank 3 third, etc. Needless to say, the combat engine in this game is phenominal. You really get the impression you're controlling an army in a war, instead of just spamming units. The next improvement is the diplomacy options. They are alot more Civilization like, in that you can tribute resources, territories, or even units in order to get an ally. You could also be evil and demand tributes to have a weaker nation join you. And if they refuse, crush them! Bwahaha! If anyone has used diplomacy in a Civilization game, they'll feel right at home using the diplomacy options available here. Again, these improvements are all geared to really have you feel like your running a nation trough the ages and it gives the game an incredible epic feel. This is what Empire Earth aspired to be. This time around, there isn't a civilization builder, and instead we get 16 different civs with unique units and all. Those familiar with the Age of Empires series will feel more comfortable this time around I'm sure. Also each civ has it's own artowrk and details, though "similar" civs may share similar details. Like Southern American civs (Aztec, Inca, etc) will look similar, much like Mayan and Aztec were similar in AoE. This is nice, because a big complaint of the original EE was that every civ looked the same. I would have liked a civ builder, however, with the option to choose a tileset. It would have kept that gargantuan feel EE had when it came to civs, and would have also kept custom civs from looking identical. Another big change from EE is territorial control. Much like Rise of Nations, your nation has a territorial border, however these borders are actually set in the map. And you can build outside your territory (assuming it isn't already controlled) at a 50% increase in build time. Going back to diplomancy, many of you may have been confused when I stated you can trade territories. By trading a terrtory, you effectively give control of that area to whoever you traded it to. This might seem blasphemous at first, but those true strategists out there are probably salivatating! You can only have one Town Center in a territory, and to capture other territories you'll need to build up in open areas. If you're under attack, the enemy only needs to take over or destroy your Town Center (in the case of destroying it, they'll have to rebuild one of their own) to claim your territory. If they capture your Town Center instead, any buildings you built will instantly become theirs. It's a tricky system to explain on paper, but it works really well in the game, and you won't really notice it too much unless you plan to capture an enemy TC instead of destroying it. More strategic options, I say, and a cool idea in an RTS. Technology advances are probably going to be the hardest to get used to. Most RTS games have you go to specific buildings to advance specific techs. EE2 doesn't require you to select any building to advance a tech. In fact, no buildings offer unit upgrades or research options. Instead, you have a semi-circle of options in the UI, and the first is your tech. Each area (Military, Economic, Imperial) has 4 techs to research, and all do varying things, like increase speed or reduce costs. But the real kicker is advancement. You only need a few techs (approx. 6) researched to advance to the next epoch, but once to age up, any techs you didn't research are gone, to be replaced by techs in the new epoch. Of course, most people will just spend every tech point they get and advance everything before aging up, but if a player focuses primarily on Military and Economic techs and ignores Imperial, he will age up faster, giving him faster access to more powerful military techs. It a very cool system, and puts a taste of strategy in how you handle your researching. Whereas before, you just grabbed everything you could afford. When it comes to unit advancement, there really isn't any. Each unit has a rank; Regular, Veteran, Elite. You pay for the upgrade on the unit, and the upgrade applies to all similar units. So if you want Elite Pikemen, you find a pikeman, and upgrade him to Vet, then to Elite, and now all your Pikemen (future pikemen included) are Elite. Of course, considering the scope of epochs, you won't always have pikemen, and if your playstyle has you zipping through certain epochs, it may not be worth upgrading your units. Overall, these changes really force you to think about how to plan your armies based on your playstyle, but they won't detract you from getting into the game quicker, like combat. At the moment, it's hard to say who will get the advantage, the rusher or the turtler, early on. One can hope both playstyles will be on equal footing early on, letting games get into really meaty and fun wars. Unlike in the original EE. Another feature is the Crowns System. So for example, if your civilization excels in a certain area, like Military, you may win the Military Crown. The crown grants you a "power" of your choice (basically a bonus to an area specific to the crown, like increased infantry speed and attack, or more armoured tanks) that last for 5 minutes. After which, the crown is taken away and whoever has the highest score gets the next crown. If you still have the higher score in Military, you again receive the crown and can repick a power. Whether you keep it the same or choose a new one is up to you. Trying to capture a crown really boosts the competitive nature in all area of the game. Instead of people just being content on having the strongest army, those of you who prefer stronger Economies will have more competition vieing for the Economic crown. Also, winning a crown earns you a Leader, which is a unit that will boost morale of troops and get them to fight harder, or boost resource gathering (Economic), or increase territorial strength (Imperial), while also having a couple attacks of his own. All of these new features are explained throughout the tutorials, and playing all 4 won't take you longer than 40-60 minutes. While EE2 has done a fantastic job of making them very accessible even to new players, it will take a bit of playing before you get used to them all, and alot of playing before you begin to master them. These are some incredible innovations, and they really spice up the RTS genre. Instead of being just another base builder, EE2 has brought in alot of new strategies to the fold and really put the strategy back into Real Time Strategy. It'll be awesome seeing how it will play in multiplayer skirmishes. And speaking of which (heh), the game configuration screen will give you a heart attack. It's almost like Mad Doc took everything people wanted and blended it all up, and made the best game setup screen ever. The options are incredible! In fact, the map options get their own page, of the four pages of settings to tweak. If you choose random map, you have full control over the type of map, like climate (tempurate, arid, warm), rivers (low, medium, high, none), forest (low, medium, high), land type (continents, large islands, small islands, etc). Then you have options for seasonal controls (how often should weather change, if at all), resource distrabution (random (EE style heh), uniform), game speed (there are two speed options, and one lets you even edit speed tables, such as increase civ gather speed, but decrease civ walk speed, etc). Also, if a player drops you have the option of replacing them with an AI, or removing them entirely. For handicaps, you can set individual resource boosts (or unboosts) and even choose what epoch everyone starts in. Everything is well placed, and the interface very easy to use, with every option needed to make sure you can setup the perfect multiplayer game. Also, you can have a maximum of ten people in a game, and Direct IP games are available. I don't really know what else I can gush about Empire Earth 2. It really has become the game I dreamt Empire Earth would be (or at least become). It has a huge....epic...gargantuan feel to it, but manages to keep the advanced stuff out of sight until you get confortable with it. While it does have a steep learning curve, anyone whose played an RTS game for any serious amount of time in the past will pick up on the new features quickly. The only thing Empire Earth 2 has to do is get past the bad taste the original left in everyones mouth, considering the quality of production, it shouldn't be hard. --writen by nightlith, and posted for him.
This is a terrible, terrible game. Let's examine this car wreck one piece at a time. First, the interface is good on ideas lousy on execution. The picture in picture idea is interesting, but in practice feels more l... Read Full Review
This is a very wide game. Thus, game isn't that old, many things are reminding me, that it's from very begging of strategies. But it's not. The concept of this game is absolutely the same as in EE original game. Your ... Read Full Review
