Why is it that I’ve gone off RTS games I hear you ask? Well, to me little has changed since the first C&C game all those years ago. Sure they look nicer and have more units, but the fundamentals are still exactly the same. Some would say “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”, but I for one am rather bored. The A.I. for the computer is always the same for this genre; POOR. From those who know me personally they may retort back that comment by saying “Well, little has changed in the FPS genre, yet you enjoy those games”. I would have to disagree, as although the formula is unchanged for that genre there are always new aspects to a good FPS, such as interactable scenery (Max Payne), better A.I. (‘Return to Castle Wolfenstien’ and ‘Medal Of Honour: Allied Assault’), and different modes of play etc. But RTS games all are the same thing, with lousy and predictable computer A.I. and victory going to the one with the biggest armada, rather than with skill alone.
New air was breathed in with ‘Age of Empires’ and ‘Empire Earth’ follows a very similar path. In fact, if you thought this was Age of Empires 3 you probably wouldn’t be far off (although Microsoft wouldn’t be happy).
I am sure all of you have played AOE at some time, so you’ll know what kind of things you get with Empire Earth. Drop and dragging units, setting formations, building bases, maintaining resources, and just smashing your opponents to atoms. You play across single player campaigns, random maps, and multiplayer matches. You also can play Scenarios (although none come with the game, have to be download from fan sites) which are essentially one-off levels rather than grinding through a campaign.
The Single player campaigns are the usual RTS quality in that they are frightfully bad (not including the C&C games). I think that when developers make these games they must design the way the game plays, the graphics, the units etc. and only then bother to build up a single player story afterwards to fit it all in.
The levels you get are like the ones you can create yourself using their excellent free level editor! Civilians wearing unnatural 'team colours', cities and towns that look like an town planners worst nightmare! If they were going to include civilians and towns you think they would have made specific visuals and terrain suitable to accommodate this feature (i.e. like ‘Red Alert 2’s city maps). It really is quite shockingly bad, and the stories that goes alongside the campaigns far from exciting.
Which era would you like to fight in today?
Empires Earths biggest addition to the genre is the number of human epochs you can fight in. This is pretty cool, meaning it caters for all types of player. If want roman style battles you’ve got the Bronze age, fighting in World War 2 then you've got the Atom age, or futuristic battles involving big cybernetic robots then you got it too! Most are fun to play and are worthy game material in their own rights! Defiantly a decent idea, one of which we have all wanted since the first AOE.
On the other hand some epochs are utterly useless and really boring to play with. They are unrealistic and do feel a little thrown in and not thought about. The modern epoch for instance is really boring, having weapons that are similar to other epochs, and unrealistic vehicles that blatantly we don’t use anymore JUST to fill in gaps (heavy artillery guns went out in World War Two!!). The buildings look wrong for them, and sometimes the epochs (and their visuals) are so similar you just try and skip over them as soon as possible.
The future is especially unrealistic. Civilians hand chopping wood for resources in the 22nd century? Digging gold with pick axes? Pushing it back to your base in a wheelbarrow? This kind of thing is being replaced even in today’s era with machinery, let alone the future. I can think of many ways to make it seem realistic, but again it just feels like it’s been over simplified and basically rushed.
Civilisations
But what about the teams/civilisations you can play? Well the game advertises the fact it has preloaded 21 Civilisations. All well and good if they were actually different! They are different in statistics (e.g. Russians Iron mining is 15% above standard) I give you that but they have no special units or unique appearance about them both in army and in buildings. If you want to you can have Samurai’s, Vikings and Roman centurions all in one army if you like! It’s ridiculous.
Even the new feature of being able to train heroes seems a bit daft with England and France both having the ability to train a 'Napoleon' hero. Eh?
In fact the whole game is quite a strange experience. While it does introduce a few newer features to improve upon the bad points of the AOE games (e.g. Resources that were used up to quickly – All resources last longer in EE) it also seems to take two steps back by removing aspects that were good in AOE, and what other older RTS games have had as a standard for years!
Here are some examples; one good addition in AOE was the idea of units matching their speed to the slowest unit. This has been forgotten about entirely in EE. Diplomacy, an effective tool in war if used correctly has been dumbed down even further than AOE and other RTS games, a totally wrong direction to take. Even in AOE the computer knew when it was beaten in random games. However the computer frustratingly hangs on, even if it means hunting the entire map (a feat with some of the largest maps) for ONE unit just for them to be removed from the game. A real player would have admitted defeat a long time ago, but the computer winds you up by making the game drag on even longer than it should.
A.I
The last sentance leads perfectly onto the A.I. issue, something I feel needs a complete overhaul for the next generation RTS games. Empire Earth does do better than expected it must be said, and certainly is a challenge (one random game took me 7 hours to complete, even on easy mode)! But the computer still can’t build proper bases that actually defend their positions, they don’t target weaknesses, don’t retreat and regroup, don’t defend at key positions, just to name a few.
I trained a whole army of soldiers, I went off to engage in another skirmish I was fighting in to come back and find all but 3 alive. They had been picked off single handily by one sniper. Yet didn’t think about doing something about their fallen ten comrades. Was as though they were facing a firing squad execution!
Though the A.I. is not as bad as the standard “building defences in one position you know they will keep attacking relentlessly, yet the rest of your base is poorly defended” scenario, at times you just can’t help but pull a grimace.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer is where it scores good points, bringing the score a bit up. I’ve only played a short time (less than an hour), but what I played was far more enjoyable. Single player is good practice, but playing against real humans is far more entertaining. If I am bringing bad points against Empire Earth for things other RTS games have done equally it should be able to score points also, as most RTS’s are more fun played this way.
