I installed Empire Earth 1 and tried to play it. I couldn't get it to work no matter what I tried and gave up. I contacted GOG support about it and they said they couldn't get the game to work on Windows 10 either and offered me a refund. This is highly disappointing to me. I thought the entire purpose of GOG was to make old games playable on modern computers.

Hello there, I also just bought the game 30 minutes ago. I got it to work on Win 10 with the user patches on this forum. I'm also new to this forum and it won't let me post links. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to alt-tab in and out of the game without trouble.

Information from their website: https://www.gog.com/game/empire_earth_gold_edition
Works on: Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8)

So it shouldn't be disappointing. However, that's a lie (from Gog and others) that Empire Earth 1 doesn't work with Windows 10. Around 95% of people got it working, so this problem doesn't depend on the Operating System, but on the other things, for example faulty NVIDIA/Intel HD graphics drivers, other installed programs (antiviruses), etc.

Anyway, here are some tips which already were posted at Gog forums:
- Many people solved the problem by downloading the game from gog.com instead of using gog Galaxy.
- Sometimes moving the installation folder from "Program Files (x86)", to for example "C:/Games" fixes problems.
- Some antivirus software (especially Avast) blocks the game from start without giving any warning.
- NeoEE patch: http://neoee.net/ improves compatibility and has some fixes to prevent crashes/hangs on Win8/10.

i have the same Problem:

i deactivated my anti-vir, i installed the game in C:/Gog games/, i installed neoEE and played with it but it still didn't work. i am able to start a game but after a few seconds the curser doesn't move, and i had ti quit the game with ctrl-alt-del.
what else can i do?
should i run the game with compatibility-Mode in Windows-XP oder Windows 7/8?
which game-Settings should i choose? Which solution, graphic board

Installed the game using Gog Galaxy or the non-Galaxy version (downloaded from the Gog website)?
Is your screen resolution set to the one with 32 bit colors, or 16? If it's 16 change to 32, because Win10 doesn't support 16 bit colors.

i istalled without Galaxy. Before the download there is the massege from GoG: "this Installation will be without Galaxy". i Play the game with compatibility-Mode Windows-XP. after the first game start i was able to go into the Settings and choose my grahic board, set to Handware TnL and Change the solution to my highest Definition and 32 colours, but then the game shut down. the next time i started the game i go to the Settings once more and i see that my changes had been adopted. But the game freezes after some more seconds.

now i tried with compatibility-Mode Windows 7: the game does not freeze anymore but i am only able to click through the menu. If i want to start a game the game crashes before loading and i am getting back to the Desktop

one other Thing is that in the Setting there is only my onboard graphic board i can choose. it is the Intel HD Graphics 630. My real graphic board, the Geforce GTX 1050Ti isn't shown in the Settings. So i am only able to Switch between the Intel HD and the "Primary Display Driver".

i have got it! i changed the compatibility-Mode to Windows 7, tried another solution, the second highest and it work

thank you

Have you actually tried to run it without any compatibility mode (after you set the resolution)? To be honest running games in the compatibility mode usually causes more problems than helps. This is my personal observation, maybe it really helps in some cases.

About the only Intel HD Graphics being detected by game:
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3733 I cried for many days because of this sh*t (I couldn't play EE2 with my GTX 870M GPU)... Then I implemented DirectX8 to DirectX 9 converter with Unofficial Patch 1.5 and it fixed this problem :)

EDIT:
You can try this thing: http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2/dgVoodoo2.html to run the game with DX7 to DX9 converter. I haven't tested it but I heard that some people use it on EE1.

I had problems as well getting this to run under Win10. I ended up with a multipart fix:

1)I uninstalled it from Galaxy and reinstalled from gog.com. This got the game running, rather than freezing at the Main Menu,, but I had a problem with building and units fading in and out of visibility.

I then changed the screen resolution, starting from the lowest (800x640 or whatever it is), 32 bit, and moving up step by step and eventually got to a resolution where the graphics were stable.

For what it's worth, I have AMD Radeon R7 200 Series graphics board. The resolution I ended up with was 1280x720 32 bit.

So far it's worked well for me.

I just tried it. It works now. But it is not possible to play in full hd, it is zoomed in very much...

Thats how the game is. Only thing you can do about the zoom thing is to follow this guide .
https://www.gog.com/forum/empire_earth_series/guide_how_to_zoom_out_further_in_empire_earth_1