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Introduction to Empire Earth |
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The Basics - Real Time Strategy - Play at the same time against other players. - Epic scope - spans over 500,000 years, from the discovery of fire to laser technology and beyond. - 12 different Epochs - but you don't have to play all of them in a game. You can choose to play a four epoch game for example. - There will be 12 different resources (not sure about this one I've only heard of five resources: gold stone wood food iron). - There will be over 300 technologies to choose from. - There will be over 2,500 weapon upgrades, nevertheless, mastering these thousands of technology upgrades is easier than learning the 75 node technology tree for Age of Empires. - Large Randomly Generated Worlds Featuring Photo-Realistic Graphics. - A multitude of terrain types within a single map, including marsh, desert, gravel, and snow and ice. - Diplomacy will play a major role in Empire Earth. - You can make your own custom civilization, with it's own special attributes. - Male and Female heroes will play a pivotal role in Empire Earth. - Multiple paths to victory, including conquest and constructing wonders of the world (i'm a little tired of wonders). - Empire Earth will boast excellent water effects and shadows. The Game Engine - The Game is 3D. - "Photo Realistic" terrain. - There is night/day. - Can zoom in and out but not rotate (scenario editor's triggers are rumored to cause rotation though). - Terrain Affects Gameplay. - Graphics change through epochs like buildings and villagers. Units - There will be over 2,500 weapon upgrades, nevertheless, mastering these thousands of technology upgrades is easier than learning the 75 node technology tree for Age of Empires. - Siege Towers allow units to go over enemy walls and get into the town (Yay! Siege towers! I was hoping for them in aok). - Train 200 different kinds of units. - All units can be upgraded. - Engage in historic siege warfare - breach an enemy's walls with catapults, rams, and siege towers. - Battle on land, air, and sea with different units. - Every civilization gets all the units and upgrades. - Units can get upgraded in attack, defense, and range. - Customize your military units using up to 10 adjustable attributes, such as attack strength and armor. - All aircraft have a limited fuel supply after which they must return to base refuel and take off again. - Balanced gameplay - each unit has strengths and weaknesses. - Use your priests to conjure - or protect against - calamities in addition to converting and healing. (aren't we all a little tired of priests in our RTS games?) - In EE there are more naval battles and ships than other games. - Each ship has a rigging and hull part. If hull is destroyed than ship sinks, if rigging is destroyed than the ship doesn't move/cannot move. Each have their own set of hit points. Can upgrade the 2 parts separately to make them stronger. - More units are available after each age so the Bronze Age will have less units than the Atomic age. - Airplanes land and takeoff at airports (and I assume on aircraft carriers too). - Observation Balloons "Blimps" are in the game. - You can enslave enemy citizens (villagers) but there are no such slave units. If you enslave (capture) an enemy citizen it just becomes your citizen. (They tried that in AOK) Buildings - More than a dozen different wonders, each with special powers.(I hope wonders will give bonuses other than victory) - Over 20 building types (seem kind of a low number...). - Buildings will play an important role, for example temples will protect the area around it from enemy calamities (disasters), universities will protect your units from being converted by the enemy, hospitals will heal your people, and etc. So it matters where you put buildings. - Naval Yards and Docks repair ships - Units will fight better when closer to a town (town center and town buildings) - Towns can be made into a capitol, not many details on this but most likely a technology. - Farms once built do not expire unless destroyed in a battle Civilizations - There will be 12 included civilizations. - Create your own civilization attributes or choose a predefined civilization. - Every civilization gets all the units and upgrades. - Each civilization will have 100 different attributes. - Civilizations get evolution points that can be spent to improve the civ. - Players will be able to leverage their civilization's prestige in order to influence certain game events and will be able to utilize the game's economics engine to create trade partnerships, embargoes and even full monopolies to protect their interests. - During the course of a full game civilizations will rise and fall many times . Disasters - History is full of diseases. Small Pox, Malaria, TB, Plague, Leprosy. It's a good bet you'll see some types of diseases in Empire Earth. - Fire, floods, earthquakes, volcanos and plagues are some of the calamities. - Disasters can occur at any time and ruin you civilization or ruin your enemy's civilization. - Use your priests to conjure - or protect against - calamities in addition to converting and healing (Isn't this stuff getting a little too close to actual magic?). Heroes - Male and Female heroes will play a pivotal role in Empire Earth. - Enlist great historical heroes - such as Napoleon or Patton - to enhance your civilization's abilities. - The King himself Elvis is one of the heros - Heroes generates some influence on either military performance or production. - Each epoch will have 2 military heroes and 2 economy heroes (so maybe 48 heroes in total?) Epochs - The Atomic Age consists of three specific sub-epochs: WW1, WW2 and the Modern Age. - Middle epochs will have most interesting weapons/units. - 12 different Epochs - but you don't have to play all of them in a game. You can choose to play a four epoch game for example. Map Editor/Scenarios - The historical units in EE are only available to be used in scenarios not multiplayer like the Trojan Horse. - The Court Jester is a unit only available in the editor - there is a "Set Graphic Effect" effect that will allow you to place many 'special effects', such as smoke, fire, explosions, and even lasers. - Since water is an elevation, there is no actual tool for only placing water. And, since water is an elevation, you can have many different levels of depth, and even place terrain under the water. Water is created through the elevation menu. Any elevation that is less then 0 automatically becomes water. So, if I place an area with elevation -2, it will automatically become water. Units can walk through water with an elevation of -1. So no water atop mountains - some effects in the editor: Fade Camera In/Out Set Daylight Hour Send Dialogue Fire Graphic Effect Cast Calamity Task Object to Area Set Unit Class Attribute Set Object Owner Create Object - some terrain in the editor: Grass Cracked Mud Leaves Smooth Stone Weeds - Any kind of terrain in the game can be placed underwater, along with many ambient objects, as well as naval objects such as sharks and fish. - rain and storms can be created using triggers. - The camera can be rotated to a degree using triggers - you can have your own sounds and music play using triggers. - Most of the AI work is done in the editor itself, using either the Player's menu or trigger, although you will probably be able to edit it by hand as well, if you so desire. - there is at least 6 terrains that are roads - using a special trigger, you can cause the scenario to go into "cinematic mode", where you esentially become the director. The player cannot move any units or the camera, so you must script all the action. Once you deactivate the cinematic mode, the scenario continues on as usual. - the graphic scale of all objects in the game, no matter what, can be changed - A child unit is available only in the editor - There will be a survive-without-anything option for designers - You can set the speed of a unit - 30 scenarios in 3 large campaigns for single player or cooperative multiplayer. - 20 training scenarios will guide you through the basics. - There are 20 or more terrain types in Empire Earth. - Create your own custom scenarios with the included campaign editor. - The Map editor is in the game not like Starcraft's. - There will be an unit editor (more like a trigger effect) than lets you change units for single player scenarios/campaigns (no use for multiplayer.) - A scenario designer will determine the unit cap in a fixed scenario, while people playing a single- or multiplayer "deathmatch"-style game will be able to manually set it to whatever number best fits the style of the players or the size of the map. The cap is game-based, as opposed to player-based. - Units are carried over from the last scenario to the next in campaigns. - The maker of scenarios can make their own pop limit in their scenarios. - Trigger Conditions will feature the <, >, = - Some of the possible campaigns in Empire Earth are 1) D-Day: a campaign that handles WWI/WWII in Europe, so there is plenty of seaborne invasion action, not just D-Day. 2) Civil War: a possibility. Also, since stock units are "eurocentric" sierra says they don't have too many troops that can pass very well for Yankees or Southerners (but there are units called civil war infantry!). If demand seems high, this can be something for an expansion pack. 3) WWI: The "world war" campaign has 6 scenarios dealing with the War to End War, featuring the Somme and Cambrai. 4) Gulf War: The "modern" era is not covered well in the campaigns, but may pop up in an exclusive campaign (like for those who pre-order the game) or to be released over the web later. - Here are some more campaigns: The Greeks: Covering the whole history of the Greeks from the Trojan War to the conquests of Alexander. The Spanish: The creation of the modern Spanish state, from the conquest of the Visigoths in the aftermath of the fall of Rome to the Spanish Armada. Also touched on are the Moors and the days of Charles V, whose empire in Europe would only be surpassed by Napoleon. The British: The glory of England, from the invasion of William the Conqueror to Wellington's defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The Germans: World Wars I & II seen from the German perspective. Start by guiding the career of Manfred von Richthofen as he becomes the famous (or infamous!) Red Baron. End by conquering Europe, and attempt to rewrite history by executing Rommel's unimplemented plan, "Operation Sea Lion", the invasion of England! As with games like Panzer General and Close Combat, they avoid touching on German politics of the times. The Russians: Take control of Russia in the near future as the experiment in democracy ends in failure. Conquer Europe with both human and robotic troops. Use your technological prowess to create the Time Machine and conquer time and space itself (time machines?). Multiplayer - Multiplayer can be played either directly or through WON.net. - Custom units will not be able to be used within the multiplayer game, but custom civs will. - Several multiplayer game types, including deathmatch, teams, and cooperative, for up to 8 players. - Share control of a civilization cooperatively with friends. - The historical units in EE are only available to be used in scenarios not multiplayer like the Trojan Horse. Misc. - You will be able to tax your people - Empire Earth will feature a trade feature, if you are low on certain resources. - Empire Earth will be easy to learn and won’t require any one to read a manual to start playing, yet is a very complex game that allows many different styles of play. - A new thing to think about when building those mass-destruction weapons is what might happen, like it might miss it’s target, it might blow up causing radioactivity to cover the map. - Seasons will affect the game. - You improve your ability to acquire new technology by increasing your civilization's Literacy rate. This method requires little or no micromanagement. - There will be no real limit to the number of units, there will be limits to the number of polygonal units you’ll want to have onscreen. Stainless Steel Studios ideally would like to see no more than 50 visible units due to issues with performance, but they won’t really be able to control this. But if you want can set it to 800 and there are 8 players than each player gets 100 limit but if 4 leave than the other 4 players get 200 each and etc. - Formations will be in the game. - You can issue orders to units in pause (probably not true in multiplayer). - There are seasons in the game. - Terrain greatly affects gameplay. - Houses may be optional, not sure what this really means, I guess you can make all your people live in squalor (it means poverty). - Approval and morale ratings can improve your economic and military abilities. - There are 20 or more terrain types in Empire Earth. - Resources sources (like gold mines) do not expire 
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