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Feature Articles > Preview > Empire Earth II (Preview)
The full range of human history on your hard drive! Coming soon. Empire Earth was a bold experiment, a big risk; could real-time strategy gameplay be stretched into handling a Civilization-style grand strategy game? The answer was yes, with reservations. Some lauded the game as a classic, others, including myself, felt it was a decent game flawed by too many units, too much chaos, and not enough control. The ante was upped by Brian Reynolds and Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations, a game of with a similar concept and ambition, but quiet where Empire Earth was flashy and elegant where EE was chaotic. Can a new developer (the original Earth was made by Stainless Steel Studios) deliver the same frantic "everything including the kitchen sink" time-span and unit list as Empire Earth, while also keeping the experience from spinning out of control? The answer is coming to your hard drive soon, in the form of Empire Earth II.
 Like the first game, Empire Earth II challenges players to manage a civilization from the Stone Age all the way to the Future. You can set different victory goals, limit the AI abilities, play multiplayer, only play in a single or handful of epochs, and thus create the experience you most want to play, every time you play. It's a lot to consider at first, actually it's pretty overwhelming, but the game's military units follow a simple and obvious "rock, paper, scissors" concept ("ranged infantry is weak against cavalry, cavalry is weak against spearmen, etc.,") and players will find themselves picking the game's concepts up until they become second nature. Empire Earth II offers more: More units, more game types, more options, more buildings, more research and research paths, and even new epoch to explore. This seems like bad news to gamers who felt the first game was overambitious, but it's mitigated by new "micromanagement" tools that help you divvy your empire up into manageable chunks and let you tell the AI how you want things done. Don't manipulate each peasant into performing each task, you won't have time for that, instead use the citizen manager to allocate the work load. Separate managers and screens let you, at a glance, see how your economy, military, and empire are faring, which lets you take on the mantle of governor, king, or "God on Earth" (if you like) and manage things they way a ruler truly does: By giving orders, rather than micromanaging each and every worker. Even more interesting is the "War Planner." By using a simplified territory map you can set waypoints, patrols, and even plan for ambushes, traps, or assaults from separate directions. It's so much easier to do this using a "drawing board" rather than on the real map it's a wonder RTS makers didn't come up with it sooner. This also gives the game the strategic depth its predecessor lacked.
 Another new concept is the "crowns." In each game the player who leads in military, Imperial, and economic status gets a crown, which enhances that aspect of their game for a limited time. The "Economic Crown" might be used, for example, to boost production of a certain resource and the "Military Crown" can be used to beef up the firepower on your tanks, for example. Holding, using, and keeping crowns is the best way to not only pound your enemies underfoot, but customize your Empire to suit your needs. Crowns also offer an interesting strategic choice. Since each epoch has 12 research paths and you need 6 of them to advance to the next epoch (but, generally, all or most of them to gain a crown), is it worth slowing your advancement through history to gain the advantage of a crown? Seems like it, but then your opponent gets ahead and comes at your with gunpowder units against your archers. Was the crown still worth it? Diplomacy has been significantly improved since the first game. Now you can wheel and deal easily with the computer opponents this may be the deepest diplomatic model and RTS game has ever seen but the beta falls a little flat in terms of AI (the game isn't finished yet). Where diplomacy really shines is in terms of multiplayer. Suffice it to say fans of real-time strategy multiplay are in for a treat, given the options the diplomatic and trade interfaces offer. Multiplayer also shines with the previously mentioned "War Manager." Human players can devise all kinds of wicked tricks and strategies for warfare, and watching them attack can be inspiring. You can even trade and share your war plan with your allies for devastating co-ordinated assaults. Also the graphics are better, they've taken a cue from Rise of Nations and added borders, the game features a wide variety of maps, three full campaigns (ancient Korea, Middle-Ages Germany, and America, beginning with the Spanish-American War), a powerful skirmish option, plenty of victory conditions, the aforementioned new units and buildings. Like the original it's an overly ambitious "everything including several kitchen sinks" kind of game, but this time the game developers are arming players with tools that should keep the chaos at bay. Still, right now with the beta, the unit balance is a bit out of whack and combat is almost mind-numbingly chaotic. Will they get all of this refined in time for the game's release (in late April)? We'll have the answer when we get our hands on the final retail version.
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