Empire Earth Gold Edition

Finally works on Windows 10. A few months ago, the game would crash, but this recent update fixed it.

I bought this game a couple of months ago and am disappointed. I loved playing random maps on Age of Empires back in the day, and was hoping to get something similar with Empire Earth. Unfortunately, the AI cheats heavily and in a way that takes away most of the fun in random map games. Most notably, the AI cheats itself resources. The more you attack the computer, the more resources it cheats itself and the more units it can build. A victory due to economic superiority is not possible, because the computer always outgathers you, no matter how many mines you control. Some people are going to tell you to turn off cheating in the scenario editor. This seems to actually turn off the resource cheating. However, the AI still gives itself free Epoch advances. This also seems to be depending on how fast you advance. Therefore it is not possible (in the early game) to have more advanced units than the AI. In later stages of the game the AI cheats a bit less. It is very sad that the cheating AI takes most of the fun out of the game, because the game is actually pretty good, much better than Age of Empires. The different Epochs have a great feel about them, the attack triangles are great (unit A wins vs. B, which wins vs. C, which wins vs. A), and the ability to improve specific stats (range, speed, hp, attack, ...) of units is nice. You should definitely get this game if you are not so much into random games, or don't care if the AI cheats. If you prefer to give the AI a head start to having a cheating AI, don't waste your money on Empire Earth. Without the always cheating AI, I would have given this game 5 stars. It really is a nice game, as you can read in the many other reviews. But it's only 3 stars for me, because it is not much fun, and didn't keep my interest for long.

I will agree with the rest of the positive reviews here that the historical campaigns are really well made. However the real essense of the game is the skirmish mode where you can get your faction from the stone age to the space age and have to fight the others for resources and territory as you make your town bigger and advance from age to age... And this is where the problems start as the game cheats really hard! On normal to be able to keep up with the AI, you have to use half of your population or more for resource gathering, while the AI always has more resources than you, always sents troops to attack you and always is one age ahead of you, and all that without having a single worker gathering resources. That was the reason i lost interest in this game and never gave a chance to any of the other games in the series.

At its core, Empire Earth is an old-school strategy game: you gather resources with your citizens, build buildings, muster an army and try to annihilate the opposing force. It has nothing fancy, like experience-gathering heroes (there are heroes, mind you, but they don't advance levels) or (al)mighty artifacts, only sound strategic gameplay. Yet, it is different from most other base-building RTS games; it neither has a fantasy setting nor is set in some sci-fi world (mostly). It plays out in the various epochs of human history, and on an epic scale, too: the game's timeframe spans from the prehistoric age, when all you can fight with are clubs and stones, to the distant future, complete with mechs and (in the expansion) spaceships. There are 14 epochs in all in the original game, and 15 in the expansion. You may start in any of them, and can set the end to be any of the epochs which come after the starting one (yes, if you're patient /and have a good defense/, you CAN go through all of them in one game ;-)), advancing through them by investing a considerable amount of food, iron and gold in the process. Like in every old-school RTS, the base of your success is a good management of resources. There are 5 of them in the game (food, wood, stone, gold, iron) and you'll need them all in order to succeed: for example, you use wood for most of your buildings, while iron and gold, along with food, go into training various units. One thing to note is that in this game it's virtually impossible to run out of natural resources: every deposit has 300,000 resources in them, which is a HUGE number. Trees, animals and pathces of vegetables are the only exceptions, but there are plenty of trees and you'll want to change from animals and vegetables to farming as soon as possible anyway. Speaking of units, Empire Earth employs a rather solid rock-paper-scissors system, with every type of unit being more vulnerable to something, while having no difficulty in eliminating a certain other target. Unit line-ups are mostly what you may expect from an RTS; there are archers, pikemen, various cavalry, catapults and such in earlier epochs, and riflemen, tanks, airplanes and cannons in later ones. It's not your bog-standard unit composition, though: there are priests and prophets, which give the game a unique flavour, especially the latter. While priests can convert enemy units (and, in later epochs, even buildings!), prophets can call down calamities on unsuspecting foes, such as plague to kill an army in a slow way, or firestorms to wreak havoc among enemy buildings. There are a number of ways to play Empire Earth: if you want to go single-player, you can play one of the campaigns (by the way, they can take an extreme amount of time to finish), play a scenario or go against AI-controlled enemies in a skirmish, either in free for all or teams. And if you'd like to play multiplayer, you can do that too, over a LAN or over the Internet. Finally, the AI of computer-controlled foes deserves a mention; unlike those of many other strategy games, it IS a challenge even for more experienced players. Too bad the same can't be told about the pathfinding AI: for example, units are prone to stumbling over each other in narrower places. Still, it does a relatively good job, and it's not that difficult to get used to its quirks. To speak of the downsides of the game, I think the weakest point of it is the graphics; it's not simply dated, it was ugly even when Empire Earth came out. While it's decent when viewing from a distance, textures (especially those of people) are outright ridiculous when you zoom in on them. So, you'd better watch events from a nice distance, even when not in battle. Also, the (intentionally slow) gameplay may not be that attractive to people used to today's spiced up strategy games. All in all, Empire Earth is a great game in that it delivers what one may expect from it. If you like classic real-time strategies, I advise you to check this one out.

Empire Earth divided into 14 “epochs”, society progressed from pre-historic to “nano-age” (to space age with the expansion). The game’s makers claimed it spanned over 500,000 years, however with no year indicated in-game, only an “epoch”, it’s hard to tell. Training scenarios are very good regarding basics. With all or most “epochs” selected, you’re playing a very long game of scope and ambition, but Empire Earth has many flaws that can’t be fully listed here. Clunky fiddly interface, poor mouse control and sensitivity (altho adjustable), non-rotatable pseudo-3D camera angle plus monotonous heavily looped ambient sounds. Over-sensitive side scrolling even on lower settings, zoom range is limited on all resolutions including maximum, no god’s-eye-view here! Yet the highest zoom is often too restrictive for adequately controlling battles. A big drawback for an RTS that’s war oriented, compounded by side scrolling problems, further exasperated by units selection being a convoluted mess. Add the tedious, time consuming chore of having to seek out idle citizens and put them to new tasks, aggressively hostile but incompetent AI opponents plus lack of easy access regarding statistics/information, it equals some major playability impediments. If you can get over all this, the history spanning epic empire building game aspects do appeal. Research technologies to allow new buildings and units plus upgrades while you wage war in 14 different historical styles as history unfolds. Gamers may even create prophets who can bring down old testament style cataclysms upon their enemies! Four game speeds, three difficulty levels with customizable random map games including many options help re-playability. Create original maps, scenarios, campaigns etc using an in-game editor. Each epoch is depicted well enough given the truly awful graphics at the closest zooms. With a near overwhelming number of options, despite some shortfalls, this is a game that can amuse. Rating 59%