“I know this music. It’s time to change the beat.”–Zorg, The Fifth Element

So you like the Warcraft, do ya? Like the SC, the BW? Think you’re pretty tough, conquering countless worlds and beating back limitless Orc hordes, dontcha. I hear you’re married to that 6ling build order and addicted to the sweet taste of M&M and Heavy Metal. Allow me to suggest an RTS title with a new tempo: Empire Earth. For $40, it comes served with a bag of chips and a side order of “all that.”

The fundamental difference here, and a heavily emphasized one, is the sheer panoramic view of conflict as it has recurred down through the ages. In the various Crafts you’ve got your simple tech tree, but here the evolution itself is detailed, enabling your civilization to progress through 14 Epochs of history, flavors past, present and future. Gone are the times when steel-sheathed humans carved their empire out of convenient blue crystals and green fumaroles, eating cardboard rations in their uniform depots; your citizens in Empire Earth will have to hunt, fish, chop, and mine for their resources. Chase down caribou, research hafted tools to efficiently mine stone, send out fishing boats to spear offshore halibut…sound involved? Newbies just can’t conceive of the scope EE is working with. Intimidation factor is jacked way the hell up, but allows the game to boast the following RTS features I’ve wanted to see for some time:

• Morale bonuses and penalties created by buildings, Heroes, and spells. Red Alert 2, which I recently went out and got, uses morale in a unit experience system, but EE’s influences from fighting on home turf and under respected Warriors and Strategists is sound as a pound.
• Air, land and sea combat! Again, a few games (Warcraft 2,RA2) have been able to integrate all three, but now you’ve got actual diversity, with around 200 units to choose from. Nuke, torpedo, and charge your way to the win.
• In Multiplayer, choose from 21 races or go nuts and make your own, naming them and assigning the economic/military stats you’re comfortable with. My Moriartians happen to be fairly adroit at mining iron and making some mighty sharp spears….
• SP goodness. Not only do you get to sack Troy, beat the hell out of the French and refight WW2, you’ll also get an in-depth (!) history lesson. “Stay tuned–you’re gonna learn a lot!”
• A little term called ’strategy’. After trying out EE, I realized that SC is basically a tactical exercise. Blizzard’s games are more fast-paced, spell dependent and reward a good fighter. Planning largely amounts to expanding at the right times and building your army according to what race your opponent is playing. Now, we’re all humans again. If you want to gank your foe’s base, you’d better bring the family, cause now everything has more hps than even Warcraft 2. Guys with swords are gonna have to work for it, so beef them up with some trebuchets, ballista, or even cannon. You’re going to win on your terms with this many weapons.
• One of my personal favs, a system based on unit enmity. This is my term for what is essentially the rock-paper-scissors method of resolving battles. On land, Pierce owns Shock owns Archers owns Pierce. On the high seas, Battleships owns Frigates owns Galleons owns Battleships. “Owns” is about as accurately as I can put it, since you’re going to be horrified or elated the first time you see unit enmity in action. The elan and mettle of the men still matters with the incredibly flexible unit improvements (speed, armor, range, hps, and attack), but if you don’t have the right tools for the job, you’ve got a tooth-and-nail fight on your hands. So no charging your Bronze Age cavalry into those Stone Age spear lines! Just don’t DO it. Unit enmity gets especially juicy when you head into more modern Epochs…suddenly the tides can shift 5, 7 or even 9 ways.

At this point I’ve mentioned about 1/5 of the perks I’m loving in this game, but those are all contributors to an accurate and customizable game. There are, however, two features that may put off some gamers, though RTSers are used to seeing these as constants, these being:

1. Multiplayer winning conditions. You win a game one of two ways; either destroy every major building (not counting minor structures like farms, walls, etc) AND every unit (!!) or win by constructing a player-variable number of Wonders (0-6) of the World and then defending them for an agreed-upon period of time that starts when a countdown informs all players that you’ve built the last one needed to win the Wonder race.

   As far as the first condition, it’s utter nonsense. Not only do buildings come up faster based on the # of workers on them, but most armies will have a sizeable land force, and the bloody infantry is slow as molasses compared to Craft’s Marines (owing to all sorts of terrain they have to cross). If a unit runs from another, it’s pretty damn hard to catch them without speed upgrades or vehicles. Sure, you can float/make ’spite buildings’ with Blizzard, but at least there you don’t have to wait a while before you get air to hunt them down. I can’t see why the hell this condition exists, so if you play a pal, agree to resigning when it’s over, for beer’s sake.

   The Wonder victory was put in there to offset this, but also unbars the gate to a few gameplay problems, one obvious one being that if your walls take forever to topple, it’ll be damn hard for them to stop your Wonderfully mad scheme. I’m glad that here the players have the option of cancelling Wonder victories before they play or modifying the provision and Wonder clock to any extent–we should also be able to do this with the above. We can, however, now win flagging or futile games that would otherwise make us play chase all day. This con also doesn’t affect the great single player campaigns, since the win conditions are the story goals of the map involved. However, I’ll bet honest ducats that Net play is filled with more outright hate than any other online game I’ve ever seen. Well, maybe not Quake. Those faggot campers.

2. Length/depth of play. Not everyone wants to guide an honest-to-God civilization through eons of development and culture to win the day. They may appreciate the perks like change of clothing, buildings and units through history, but then again they may just catch that straight-to-video in the VCR in the middle of it. Here again, Stainless Steel Studios have provided compromise, here in the option of agreeing beforehand on the starting time period and the finishing one (pinnacle of progress). This was certainly needed and resonant with the customization found thoughout EE, as you can play any style of game you want, be it Panzer blitzkreigs or the future of robotic warfare. The game’s final 2 ages haven’t occurred yet, so you get that healthy mix of ’Tesla Stuff,’ as one Batman villain termed it. That Empire Earth offers this in addition to its main draw of unbelievably painstaking ancient and modern army organizations is a titanic achievement.Matches at Steve’s may have lasted 4 hrs apiece, but this only occurs when you want them that long, and I sure don’t. Map selection, in addition to containing weather, desert or winter terrain, and around 8 or so regional terrain biases,
   lets you pick from 6 map sizes, ranging from Tiny to Gigantic (Steve’s only pick, heh). Game speed, as with the blessed Crafts, is naturally also your call to make. Again we see that this is a game that will conform itself to anything you want to make of it.

So if RTS chances to be your preference or casual interest, give her a look. I’ve even put Torment on the backburner since taking the field, and that should carry some weight. If you want a game, name your people and an Epoch and we’ll go for glory.

Rating: 9/10

Related Ratings:
Starcraft: 10/10
Brood War: 9/10
Red Alert 2: 8/10