Greetings and today is an LGR thing I’m
covering largely as an excuse to immerse myself in it again. This is Empire Earth, developed by Stainless
Steel Studios for Windows PCs and published by Sierra On-Line in 2001. And back then, I was quite the fan of Microsoft’s
Age of Empires games by Ensemble Studios. I mean, I still am, but back then dude? That series was my own personal messiah of
real time strategy games. So Empire Earth appealed immediately due to
its aesthetic similarities, being a history-based RTS where you begin in an ancient era and
progress through time by harvesting resources and researching new technology. Then once I learned development was helmed
by Rick Goodman, one of the co-founders of Ensemble Studios and a lead designer on Age of Empires, I was 100% ready to give Empire Earth a chance. It certainly impressed on the packaging level,
with a large gatefold box flaunting its art assets and strategically-quoted praises from
the press. And inside it gets even better, with an inner
cardboard box holding an assortment of physical goodies. Including a sizable technology tree that folds
out to reveal a massive number of upgrades over fourteen time periods, rightfully inviting
comparisons to Sid Meier’s Civilization in addition to Age of Empires. The box also contains a convenient quick reference
card covering the game’s dizzying number of hotkeys and shortcuts. And then there’s the instruction manual,
a 240-page opus of information, with fifteen chapters, multiple appendices, and craploads
of subsections dutifully covering each individual facet of gameplay.
Fantastic stuff. It’s almost anticlimactic seeing that the
entire game is packed onto a single CD-ROM holding less than 600 megabytes, but y’know,
the early 2000s. Speaking of which, ya gotta love this ad for
those classic Alienware Area 51s. Seems you got a hundred bucks off a Pentium
4 build, not bad. Hehe, and my copy in particular also came
with this printout from the previous owner, revealing they’d had problems getting the
game to run at all on their Dell Dimension 4300. Sierra’s just like, “eh, shut down everything
and check DirectX or whatever.” Dude whatcha gonna do, you got a Dell. Anyway that’s enough paperwork, let’s
start up Empire Earth and explore half a million years of human history. It begins with the usual assortment of animated
logos and intro cinematics, with the main video showing a leader throughout multiple
periods in time, each having something going on with his right eye. This guy, this guy, this guy, this guy. Apparently depth perception is not a requirement
for military leadership, so that’s encouraging. After this is the main menu with options for
single player, multiplayer, game tools, settings, and [exit!] Unfortunately Empire Earth’s official multiplayer
lobbies were taken down years back, though there are still ways to play online through
fan-made servers like NeoEE.net if that’s your jam. But yeah, for this video let’s jump into
the single player, which admittedly looks a whole lot like Age of Empires. You’re presented with choices for playing
a random map, four campaigns, custom scenarios, saved games, and learning things. That last one supplies new players with eight
tutorial maps guiding you step by step through the most important systems and strategies. Citizens construct all the buildings and gather
all the natural resources that are necessary for a civilization's survival and growth. It’s good stuff, with fully-voiced narration
and maps purpose-built to ensure that you don’t get too far ahead of the tutorial
by accident. However, if you’ve played Age of Empires,
or even like Command & Conquer or Warcraft, then you’ve already got a general idea of
how it’ll go. There’s a central building acting as a base,
you send out units to collect resources from the map, construct more units and buildings
using those resources, and progress things by dedicating resources to upgrading tech. Whether you’re playing a random map, custom-made
scenario, or the main campaign, the core formula changes little. What does change are the individual goals
for each map, ranging from basic survival, to building wonders, to forging alliances, to complete and total domination of everyone on the map. Personally, I prefer playing randomly-generated
maps and duking it out against AI players. Even if the AI leaves, eh, a bit to be desired
considering how much it tends to cheat, it’s still an undeniably fun time for me. There’s something sensationally appealing
about beginning with a few basic units, an unseen map, and a massive tech tree just itching
to be researched. No story, no waypoints, nothing getting in
the way of me and my own individualized path towards real time strategic world domination. And Empire Earth is a prime choice for that
kind of gaming, with its mixture of world history and the game mechanics popularized
by both Age of Empires and Sid Meier’s Civilization. An RTS game where you’re allowed to advance
yourself so far ahead of the competition technologically is wildly captivating to me. Where the enemy is still floundering around
in a prehistoric era while you’re rolling up in a squadron of tanks, helicopter gunships,
and atomic age bombers, ready to nuke ‘em back to the stone age. [nuke ferociously detonates] Except they were
still technically in the stone age anyway so you haven’t really done much except glean some kind of twisted catharsis by way of technological overkill. Whatever man, that stuff’s precisely my
brand of enjoyment. Taking real life history and coming up with
your own alternate timelines through gameplay, it’s pretty much the best. And it’s one of the biggest reasons I continually return to the classic AoE and Civ games, again and again. But with those, you’re stuck choosing between
two very different approaches to the same idea And that’s where Empire Earth comes
in. Let’s start with the passage of time itself,
which functions a bit more like Age of Empires than Civ despite spanning 500,000 years. There are no individual years stated, but
rather multiple ages to progress through representing sections of history, referred to here as epochs. Each epoch provides the opportunity to utilize
a distinct set of buildings, units, and technologies. And you progress to the next one by accumulating
the proper buildings and resources from the current epoch and selecting it as an upgrade
from your capitol building. Of course, the effectiveness of each unit,
building, or technology depends on your chosen historical civilization, with each one boasting
their own strengths and trade-offs. There’s also the option to roll your own
through the built-in civilization editor, as well as opportunities to upgrade stat bonuses
at certain points throughout time, a fun departure from the classic Age of Empires formula. Another one is the population system. Not like, number of units, I mean the ability
to populate certain buildings. For example, placing citizens inside of a
settlement will upgrade it to a town center, and placing more citizens inside a town center
will upgrade it to a capitol. Same goes with granaries, which will improve
the resource output of its resulting farms. And once citizens are inside, they stay inside,
making it a kind of upgrade as opposed to the garrison system seen in Age of Empires II. Populating buildings is especially important
when expanding your empire since you can’t simply plop down a fully-formed town center
anytime. You need at least five disposable citizens
nearby to make that happen. This means that sometimes, the more effective
strategy is to accumulate and send in a bunch of priests to convert enemy citizens instead. They may not have the iconic AoE wololo going
on, but they still have similar types of mystical conversion powers at their disposal. And religion goes further than that with the
addition of prophets, which may be slow to move and even slower to regenerate energy,
but are massively powerful in their ability to cause calamities. Earthquakes, volcanoes, firestorms, malaria,
plague, hurricanes, it’s awesomely crazy stuff. Kinda feels like a precursor to what we’d
get in 2002 with Age of Mythology, now that I think about it. That is to say, it’s supernaturally ballbusting stuff if you fail to adequately prepare yourself to handle it. Which in this case means placing your own
temples to counteract any powerful prophetic nonsense. Another world-changing addition arrives in
the form of the world wonders, which serve more of a practical purpose compared to the
original Age of Empires. They’re more in line with Civilization,
where wonders provide stats bonuses to the player that constructs them. A few examples are the Library of Alexandria
that reveals all buildings on the map, the Temple of Zeus that allows your population
to self-heal instead of relying on hospital buildings, and the Pharos Lighthouse that
lifts the fog of war from waterways. Then there are hero units, available in both
strategist and warrior types. Who they are changes with each passing epoch,
but they both provide extra oomph for your armies by doing things like healing nearby
units, performing battle cries, doling out powerful attacks, and generating positive
morale. Yeah morale is a key component for boosting
unit effectiveness in Empire Earth, so if there’s low morale units die more quickly
in battle and fight less effectively. Certain buildings generate and boost morale
as well, much like the citywide happiness seen in Civilization games, only here it’s
a nearby area of effect. In fact, it’s the main function of houses
in Empire Earth. They don’t increase the population limit. All of this comes together to create a game
that feels like a hybrid of both AoE and Civilization in terms of gameplay and aesthetics, while
not becoming as complex as either one of them. With so many epochs to go through and less
time spent in each of them, you don’t get as many unique buildings, units, and attributes for each civilization as you do in the Age of Empires games. Likewise, with the real time strategy focusing
on individual units and buildings, you don’t get the world-scale viewpoint of Civilization
with its emphasis on city-states, diplomacy, and trade. Rather, Empire Earth is a compelling in-between
that felt downright refreshing back in the day. The amount of time it covers is vast without
being overwhelming, and the strategic systems in play are simple enough to quickly understand but complex enough that it takes a while to fully grasp them. And I’ve largely only been talking about
the randomized maps thus far, the campaigns are a whole ‘nother thing! Like I said earlier, I’m often one to head
straight for the randomized deathmatch mode or create my own custom scenario, get all
comfy with a coffee, and simply play around with the systems till I’m satisfied. Empire Earth, on the other hand, has enough
of a captivating single player campaign to pull me away from the random seeds for a bit. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, but Empire
Earth is rendered in 3D instead of the 2D sprites that were still in use by both Age
of Empires and Civilization back then. It wasn’t the first strategy game to go
3D by a long shot, but Empire Earth was certainly the first one I’d played that featured 3D
in-engine cutscenes for its story. Hehe, for better and for worse... "My people! We must travel west to a hostile village called Troas. From them we shall steal the secret of traveling
upon the deep waters." "The Government surely knows Volgograd is our stronghold, so we can expect them to send forces here very soon." "If we can successfully defend Volgograd and then destroy the Capitol in Voronezh, our dreams of Novaya Russia will come that much closer to reality." Ahh, 2001. When the PC games industry was enjoying a
new generation of 3D rendering tech and two gigahertz CPUs. Yet voice acting and in-engine cutscenes were
still very much a work in progress. But dang it, they tried!
Hehe, yeah. Empire Earth’s cutscenes and voice acting
crack me up man. Those accents. My word. "What be your business in our fair town?" "I am William, the rightful Duke of Normandy. During King Henry's Invasion, Lord Toustain
sought to take what is mine by birthright." "Very well, young William.
You shall have our help. And may God be with us!" Despite the... phenomenal voicework and high-fidelity character models... Empire Earth’s campaign is still pretty darned splendid. You play through a wide variety of scenarios
both historical and fantastical, divided into four campaigns featuring: the founding and
building up of ancient Greece, fighting as the English against France from the Battles
of Hastings through Waterloo, taking part in both World Wars through the eyes of German
forces that eventually take control of the United Kingdom, and finally playing a reconstructed
Russian Federation with leaders that travel through time to stop an invasion of the United
States in the year 2098. Again, it’s that mix of historical facts
and alternate timeline absurdity going on that makes Empire Earth so enjoyable and I dig that they played with that idea in the campaigns too. Even back in 2001, I’d already played through
countless historical simulations that reenacted epic battles and diplomatic struggles of old,
so the option to take the reigns of an army of giant robots and super soldiers with laser
katanas was exactly what the LGR doctor ordered. The fact that it was up against a somewhat
believable real life scenario of the future, with a historical past that looked exactly
like our own otherwise, made it all more fun. It’s the same reason I enjoyed Command & Conquer
Red Alert so much. Except that here, you can play as the Allied
and Soviet forces back when they were cavemen, all the way up through the age of nanotechnology. Or even beyond that, if you got the expansion
pack in 2002, The Art of Conquest. However, this time around development was
handed off to another team entirely: Mad Doc Software, who before this worked on the Star Trek Armada games and later became Rockstar New England. So yeah, not a bad choice at first glance,
but unfortunately the end result was. Ahh, somewhat lacking by most accounts. The drop in quality is immediately apparent
when playing any of the three new campaigns, with each briefing screen showing these awful
isometric maps instead of the tailor-made images showing actual details like you got
in the base game. I mean just look at this, can you tell what’s
going on or where you’re supposed to go? It’s like they just went into the scenario
editor, zoomed out, took a screenshot and called it a day. Same goes for the cutscenes, which are of
notably lesser quality in Art of Conquest. Half the time there’s no voice acting at
all anymore, and when there is? Hehe. If you thought it was corny in the original game, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. "The Romans have refused your offer of tribute and refute our claim to settle here my King! If we do intend to bring our people into these
lands, then that addled brained idiot king has got another thing coming! This foolhardy endeavor will be answered with swords and blood. In the Roman Governor's own words, my King." This is a shame because the new campaign synopses
are excellent. You get to play through the rise of the Roman
Empire under Julius Caesar, the Pacific War through the eyes of the US in World War II,
and a storyline set around descendents of the Qin Dynasty colonizing Mars and fighting
an interplanetary war for Martian independence. Yep, this pack lets players enter the Space
Age, complete with multiple spacecraft, orbital satellites, teleportation technology, and
maps set in space. A great addition in theory, but once again
it’s a bit of a letdown seeing as it’s exactly the same gameplay under a slightly
new skin. Instead of water, it’s open space, and instead
of watercraft and ships you get spacecraft and spaceships. To help sell the idea there’s a parallax
effect going on with the starfield background, and a rocky continental drop-off along the
edges of land. So yeah it’s all a ruse, you’re essentially
doing the same thing as before, now with flat floating land masses in space and your citizens
are replaced with robots. There are other additions like Civ Powers
granting unique boosts, new civilizations and unique units to go alongside them, and
various tweaks to difficulty and gameplay in campaign and multiplayer modes. But yeah, being that the main addition is
the spage age, it’s a bit of a bummer that it doesn’t go too far beyond simply allowing
certain maps to use spacefaring ships instead of seafaring ships. Ah well, it’s still worth messing about
with the scenario editor and coming up with some absurd situations. Nothing like quite like having a group of
prehistoric hunter-gatherers in space versus an army of killer Mechs and Capital Ships. [lasers, explosions, space nonsense] Of course, having sold over a million units in its first year on the market, the Empire Earth series
didn’t stop here. The original devs at Stainless went onto create
Empires: Dawn of the Modern World in 2003, a spiritual successor to Empire Earth. So it’s a spiritual successor to a spiritual
successor? Yo dawg. Mad Doc continued the mainline Empire Earth
series with a direct sequel in 2005, an expansion to that in 2006, and a crappier sequel to
the sequel in 2007. After that though? The series seems to have died on the vine
for the time being, which is an absolute pile of crap considering the continued attention
Civilization and Age of Empires have received since the mid 2000s. Seems like there’s still an audience for
this kinda game if you ask me. And as charming as the original graphics are,
I’d love to see Empire Earth receive an HD remaster someday. Or perhaps a proper fourth entry that returns
to its roots of being, y’know, a good game. Until then, the original can still be bought
and played today, warts and all. The Gold version packing the main game and
expansion is sold on GOG, though in my experience it requires some compatibility mode settings
to get working properly. But the light hassle is well worth it to experience
this one, I think. Empire Earth is half serious history, half
cheesy sci-fi, but it all culminates in a game that still isn’t quite like anything
else. [Empire Earth music plays] And if you enjoyed this episode of LGR then
check out some of my other stuff I’ve done a lot more stuff! Retro tech and computer games and y’know
all the kinda related stuff is what I do here, so stick around if you like this. And as always thank you very much for watching!
So glad to see Empire Earth... Such a great game which seems to be mostly forgotten.
IMO this was the game that had the last of the great manuals.
It was a damn tome and beautiful.
A lot of my youth was spent buying a game and reading the manual on public transport on the way home.
I was sad to see it go.
I loved this game. I'd just build my economy until the end game epoch, make a bunch of units and set them to "Search and Destroy" to end the game. It made my computer lag.
Oh man, rushing through the ages so that you could nuke entire civilizations that were still using blunderbusses... it was amazing.
I miss this game so much!
The sequel was clearly more divisive among gamers. It was demanding on contemporary PCs, and the UI comprised of dozens of buttons, while ahead of its time, was pretty convoluted. Like, does any other RTS feature a smaller fully functional camera view along the minimap? I appreciate the more 'down to earth' vibes compared to the original. You could send "war plans" to your allies, build special coastal defenses to help regain naval control, research sort of mini tech-trees within each epoch, send cloaked spies to gather espionage or sabotage enemy buildings... EE2 was so much more elaborate compared to classics like Age of Kings to the point of collapsing under its grandioseness. Yeah, I guess it's understandable when there's suddenly a heavy snowstorm rendering visibility to near zero. A good reason why Company of Heroes2 got rid of weather effects in the online play mode.
And Empire Earth3 from another studio was a shiny looking buggy mess. They clearly wanted to cut down stuff here and there to simplify the experience and focus on flashy military action. It got tedious really quick due losing all the charm and captivating elements from the prequels. A big part of creating a great video game is not underestimating your target audience or trying to take shortcuts to success by condensing basic ideas from other titles.
This is my favorite RTS of all time. I bought it on GOG and have been playing it quite a bit recently.
For some reason this was the only RTS I ever got into. I'm always surprised how few people remember it.
Still playing aoe2 online in 2019
There is still a community playing this. Since Sierra closed their servers, there has always been a community solution. Now it is called Save EE. You just need to install the game and then patch it, and you will be able to play online or lan. Still by far my favourite RTS. They has been a lot of content like new maps and scenarios. So whoever liked it, it can still be a blast even today :)