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Reasonably entertaining but rather complex. Good RTS

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 110 / 116
Date: May 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Empire Earth 2 (EE2) is a worthy successor to Empire Earth (EE), filling a number of holes and adding massive amounts of content to the original game. The play is frantic and tough and enough content's been added so that you can spend days on a single game. I knock a star off both fun and overall for a combination of things making the game far more complex than it should - including inexcusably skimpy documentation - but this deserves 4/4 stars for fun and playability as a game that can keep you up late, late, late at night.

If you've never played 2001's EE, you should. The concept here is pretty simple. You control a civilization from the stone age through far in the future, but as this is a real-time strategy (RTS) game you can't stop the clock like you do in Civ, meaning you're constantly fighting off opponents along the way. The real issue is why you should buy this over EE. The simplest way I can put it is to compare the original Civilization versus Civilization II, where the two games were both popular but for different reasons. The first one created a genre and became a classic. The second, while not nearly original, fixed holes and added massive layers of complexity to the first game.

Simply put, there's a lot more in EE2 than there was in EE. With 300 differing units (versus 200 in EE), more civs, and any number of new variables ranging from weather to tech advances to temporary bonuses, it means that the old "hold off the barbarians by building Hadrian's Wall until you advance and build 10 leviathans to do a Sherman's March through Georgia" RTS strategy doesn't work here. At higher difficulty levels, the AI has gotten a lot better. As well, civilizations are more balanced. The two combine to force you to really have to know the ins and outs of both your civ and your opponent to win. Everything (resource management, unit management, battle strategy, and far more advanced diplomacy and battle plan coordination) becomes important to watch, especially at higher difficulty levels. The downside is it's a major pain trying to keep up with everything, but if you can it's a blast. The fact this is multiplayer-ready straight out of the box is also an improvement, as well as significant tweaking of handicap levels in multiplayer games that make the potential of newbie versus veteran matchups actually playable for a change.

Where this loses a star on both fun and overall is that they didn't do enough to make the information overload easier to manage. There are a couple nice new features in the UI (the Citizen Manager is helpful but I find multiple screens just make things even more confusing) but nothing revolutionary, like the city managers in the later Civs that helped you deal with all the extra layers of complexity. Even small things, like unchangeable hotkeys, weren't well thought out. Where I go from frustrated to disappointed is unacceptably skimpy documentation. There is no tech tree printout included, something basic to all RTS games and that was included in EE. Moreover, neither is a civilization list along with their bonuses as well as any detailed information on unit and building statistics. While all three are available piecemeal in the in-game tooltips feature, that doesn't make up for the fact that this is basic stuff that any RTS game should include. (It's almost as if Sierra has made a deal with Prima to force you to buy the strategy guide.) The lack of help in managing the new complexity means this game is far better suited to hard-core, experienced RTS players than those new to the genre. Finally, graphics are only ok at best even though this requires fairly new equipment to run properly.

Don't get me wrong. This is an entertaining game that will have you shocked that it's 3 in the morning when you just wanted to play for a couple of hours before bedtime. Its just that if they'd spent a little more time polishing up playability this would leap from a good game to a classic. Still, very much worth buying.

Empire Nations Stew

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 54 / 70
Date: May 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Stainless Steel Studios has good timing with games. The first *Empire Earth* crossed my laptop as I was settling into my mobilization for Operation Nobel Eagle. I'd come home from long patrols and unwind with a heaping of world domination. I seemed to have an easier time of it than our current Administration.

Now Mad Doc takes over and returns the series as I am mobilizing against the Real Time Strategy genre. I'm sick of retread RTS games whose publishers promise much, but deliver something too safe. With American culture currently awash in remakes and rehashes, it seems nobody can produce anything fresh or innovative anymore.

*Empire Earth II* doesn't change my perception. But it's as solid an RTS as anybody has managed: being streamlined enough for anybody to get the hang of it, but with enough useful details and tweaks to separate the men from the boys. It also looks and sounds good.

Graphics definitely makes demands of my Radeon 9800 AiW and my 1G of Kingston ECC memory: aside from the great-looking explosions, shrapnel, and dust clouds, EEII suffers from horrendous slow down whenever more than a few units or civilizations exist on the screen. Shutting off the good-looking weather and seasonal effects didn't seem to matter. Audio booms deep, loud, and clear over my home theater system. *EEII* one-ups *Rise of Nations* in audio and video.

*Empire Earth II* plays more like *Rise of Nations* than its own predecessors. However, marketers tried to make *RoN* seem like a real-time *Civilization*, when it was really just another *Starcraft* knock-off. *EEII* at least announces up front, "Hey, I'm an RTS".

So *EEII* falls into the Imperial RTS subgenre with Blizzard mechanics. Players select with the left-click and execute unit orders with the right-click, except for special powers and building orders, which are executed and canceled in exactly the opposite way. Players build town halls/ command centers to generate labor units who mine and build everything else.

Newer structures, resources, and limitations help explain why *EEII* plays like *RoN*: just as Big Huge Games borrowed liberally from Stainless Steel Studios for its first RTC, Mad Doc borrows liberally from BHG for *EEII*. For example, MD took the research point idea from *Rise of Nations*, and so Universities and Cathedrals generate points needed to research tech. MD also borrowed the "warehouse" idea from BHG, which allows labor units to deposit resources closer to mining sites. Finally, Mad Doc employs BHG's national borders concept (inspired by *Civ III* and *Alpha Centauri*), but here borders are fixed in pre-generated territories instead of being adjustable culture lines. *RoN* forbids building outside of borders, but borders could be pushed back. *EEII* freezes borders, but actually makes overseas construction a requirement for capturing territories.

And with that the similarities largely end. *RoN* makes a big deal about multiple victory conditions and paths, but it really just boils down to war. In fact, *RoN* is so conquest-oriented that it allows only the most pathetic defenses in order to discourage base camping. Fortresses, for example, helped to establish borders, but no matter how heavily you garrisoned them and upgraded the attack value, they couldn't stop a pack of archers from reducing them to rubble. A good offense is the best defense, and so *RoN* virtually mandated the tank-rush to stand much of a chance of winning under just about any circumstances. Especially at the end, when the final technologies allowed instantaneous unit construction.

*Empire Earth II* almost delivers what *RoN* promised: the opportunity for a meaningful economic, technological, or diplomatic victory. In part because *EEII* defenses and fortifications actually work, allowing the player to sit behind fences, walls, turrets, towers, fortresses, anti-air, and anti-ship guns while he or she gathers resources to win the "Economic Crown" over and over again. There's nothing quite as heartwarming as watching a fortress hurl a massive fireball into an upstart Visigoth and knocking him flat. The catch is, *EEII* limits the number of active fixed defenses in each territory to 7 per type (2 for fortresses). This forces the player to plan more carefully than RTS titles normally require, since these limitations give other players a higher chance to outflank defenses. Defense structures also seem to have lower hit points than in many other RTS games, but they compensate with greater range and firepower. This helps to thwart the infamously ignominious tank-rush.

*EEII* generally thwarts *RoN* with lots of little tweaks. The former abolishes that stupid, traditional 200-unit population cap in favor of a cap distribution system. A maximum cap of 2000 overall units per mission still exists, but it's possible to command up to 1000 units at a time. *EEII* also centralizes the research and unit upgrades in a single UI display instead of requiring the player to hunt down individual buildings. Civilizations are now grouped by regions and both Wonders and super powers are region-specific. In regards to resources, *EEII* allows warehouses to be built almost anywhere they are needed, and warehouses, city centers, refineries, and uranium mines can be garrisoned with citizens to increase gathering efficiency. More unit types seem to exist per era (but less than in the original *EE*). Finally, it features a pause button, complete with hot key, which effectively turns *EEII* into a turn-based game: one can still give orders and scroll around the map while paused.

But tweaks are what *Empire Earth II* amounts to. Nuclear weapons don't set off an Armageddon clock, but don't do much damage either. I find the defense cap arbitrary. I believe more non-military and more civilization-specific units should exist. I also believe more Wonders could exist for each region. And the lack of a power grid or storage building capacity, as found in Westwood Studios games, eliminates some economic and military depth from *EEII*. Worse, the game is unbalanced heavily in favor of air power: instead of tank rushing, I build six to eight airfields and win skirmishes entirely through tactical bomber rushes.

Still, I enjoy *Empire Earth II* more than *Rise of Nations*. Mad Doc still got my money. I guess that's as good a capsule endorsement as any.

If you think Empire Earth 2 is one of those plain, simple RTS games, then you are wrong.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: February 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Now I have played a lot of RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games in my spare time. But I expected Empire Earth 2 to be like the first Empire Earth game except for graphics. I was wrong when I downloaded the demo of EE2 (Empire Earth 2). I was excited even though it was a demo! Realistic battles and expanding your puny, Stone Age men to lasers and mechs in the final epoch (epic if you can't pronounce it). Soon, I bought the game and boy, was it incredible! Now what is exciting is that you can have the total population to 2000! Except you won't be able to create all those soldiers. Anyway, I have played EE (Empire Earth) it was interesting, but I wanted more than what I got in the first game. I wished for something like a thing inwhich you can just use a scroll and let the A.I do the sorting when it comes to gathering resources. When I played EE2, it had even more than what I barganed for: A War Planner system that uses teamwork with your allies, A Citizen Manager, and many more that I never expected in a RTS game, ever! The game is alive with weather that affects gameplay, hurricanes, blizzards, and sandstorms don't cause damage; however, they do affect line of sight and airplanes have to return to their base. I experienced a hailstorm once during my conquests. And if you want to see a battle close-up, press PgDn for down and PgUp for up. And Crtl left and right arrows to rotate incase you were were reading the EE2 guide too fast.

I enjoyed starting in Epoch 1 in humble beginnings and I will list you the epochs and what they mean

Epoch 1= Stone Age
Epoch 2= Copper Age
Epoch 3=Bronze Age
Epoch 4=Iron Age
Epoch 5=Dark Age
Epoch 6=Middle Age
Epoch 7=Renaissance Age
Epoch 8=Imperial Age
Epoch 9=Enlightment Age
Epoch 10=Industial Age
Epoch 11=Modern Age
Epoch 12=Atomic Age
Epoch 13=Digital Age
Epoch 14=Genetic Age
Epoch 15=Synthetic Age.

EE2 is based on historical nations and every epoch is based on historical times (except for Genetic, Synthetic, and a bit of Digial Ages). In time, as you learn techologies, you will be able to advance through time. What I also like is that in the orignal game you start in 500,000 B.C and you stop at the future ages. But in the sequel, it starts at 10,000 B.C, giving even MORE historical accuracy.

There are 80% more buildings than in EE and more units and civilizations! 3 more epochs have been added to the orignal 12 in EE, and many more features such as territories. It feels like a RTS version of "Monopoly". And through the start of Mankind, people have been scattered after the Tower of Babel affair (they wanted to reach Heaven but God made their language different and they couldn't finish the tower). But they made certain tribes and soon, they became nations. And if you betray the A.I they will call you Judas (When Judas betrayed Jesus). I thought that was fine for the game not to hide any Christian words.

And the units are great, from swords and shields to lasers and mechs, the sci-fi world has not been revealed in the final epoch (15.) And along the way, you must build certain buildings both economical and military to survive. The A.I has improved big time. You have to build your armies quickly, or the enemy will rush you with a large army! And nobody wants that, now do they?

I think that the EE2 deserve some credit for their hard work on Empire Earth 2.

P.S There is an expansion for Empire Earth 2. I won't review it until it comes out, but if you are curious, it is called Empire Earth 2: The Art of Supremacy.

Better than the first................

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 18
Date: April 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Yesterday I bought EE 2. I loaded it and started to play and I was amazed. First of all I played and have the first one. The first release broke out of the hum drums of RTS games by integrating a whole new aproach in many ways (not going into detail) but this one uses that success and mutiplies it by 5X.

The interface is more simple to use and there is a editor that is shipped with it. Although some units are not avaliable in it the editor is more robust including triggers and perameters the whole works.

The graphics are great but nothing like Rome Total War set on high resolution but better than the original which is to be expected.

My problem is even though this is a huge and fun to play game the game play is the same. With new releases lately in the RTS field such as RTW and Code Name Panzers which throws out the resource gathering (it's getting old) and replaces it with a more non-linear way of playing with you deciding how the story will unfold type of play there is no reason why Empire Earth 2 should integrate this to.

In all, a great game that advances on the aspects the original introduced 4 years ago. My advice if you liked the original then you will like this one but if your looking for a RTS that is earth shattering like WarHammer or RTW wait until this fall for the new Star Wars: Empires at War to come out. This may be what your looking for! Check it out on Gamespot or in PC Gamer this month and you'll see what I mean.

I really want to like this game...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: July 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

EEI was probably one of my favorite games of all times. I really wanted EEII to blow me away like the first one did when it came out but the reality is that it just doesn't live up to the hype. Don't get me wrong, it's good but as one other reviewer mentioned, it desperately needs an expansion pack. I'm tired of games being rushed to market so they can get your $50, only to get another $30 from you when they decide to finish the game....but I digress

Here's what I don't like about EEII
1. This game is SLOOOOWWWWWWW. You get a skirmish going with 8 other AI nations and start building some aliances, forget it. I have found that if I break aliances so that you can no longer see their units on the map, the speed increases but that is a horrible work-around to have to use.
2. The tech tree system is flawed. It seems like I don't pay any attention to what I'm researching because your goal becomes crowns, not improvements to units or buildings.
3. peasants are dumb. Nearby buildings being built don't attract idle nearby peasants to help with building etc.
4. Balance of unit strength is not very good. Tanks don't do very much damage and are destroyed too easily for instance. I can beat pretty much any skirmish by building about 7 or 8 hangars and producing helecopters as fast as possible. You get a group of 30 helo's and you can sweep through pretty much any defense in a couple minutes. You don't even have to control them, put the que on auto and send them on search and destroy and they'll scour the map shooting anything they don't like while you sit back and enjoy a doughnut. Way too easy.
5. The previews talked about an amazing AI that would learn your style and counter it. I had way more trouble with AI in EEI.
6. Wonders are stupid. I remember frantically racing to build certain wonders in RoN and EEI because their powers were cool and helped. They need more and better wonders.
7. Nukes are stupid. Way too weak, slow and most are shot down by AA fire.
8. I liked it better without the territories.

Overall, if you use a good RTS game like I do, to manage stress, this game will certainly occupy your mind and is relatively enjoyable. If you want a new and improved EEI, keep waiting.

Horrible... Just Horrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 24
Date: May 18, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Wow... talk about a shocker. I loved EE1 and thought that EE2 would be one heck of an improvement. I could not have been more wrong. My first clue was how slowly my mouse was moving on the screen... ok, so I'll just adjust the mouse options and speed them up. Guess what... there are 2 mouse options, reverse buttons and scroll speed. That's it. Unreal. (and for all you who like to dismiss complaints like that b/c of a poor system, let me just say that this is running on a 2 month old P4 3.2Ghz (HT) with 1 G ram, top of the line GeForce card on a custom built platform so this is a game play issue, not a system issue.)

Alright, so I'll try to play anyway... what's a little mouse lag. So I go to configure the map. Remember all those great little selections from other games (terrain age, wetness, etc). Those are missing too. Yeah you get to pick a few options but nowhere near as many as I'd like (or as many as are in most other games). Fine, I'll suck it up... So I picked "Gigantic Map"... guess what... It ain't very gigantic. I have a civilization on each side of me and can't build too much b/c the territory is so frickin small. So, let's go kill some nieghbors... no, can't do that until you build a university, garrison some citizens and then RESEARCH how to attack. C'mon. That's just stupid.

Now I know each game has a learning curve, so I try to stick it out. Let's build a little army, do a little research and get on with it. A note on the research... I can't seem to tell that it makes any difference. It really is hard to determine which technologies do which (instead of being "gunpowder" they have names like "spear point"(having nothing I might add to do with Archery or spearmen)).

For sake of my fingers, I'll stop the list now but let me assure you the litany of mistakes go much beyond what I have written here. How this game has been rated so high by everyone I'll never know. The concept is great, the graphics are good but the interface and game play suck to level I can only barely describe. How this ever got out of Beta this way is beyond me.

For the first time in a long time I played a game for less then an hour, pulled it out of the cd and I plan to send it back to the manufacturer with a little note saying I do not "accept the license terms".

I guess I would be less upset if this had been one of those "bargain" rack games for 9.99 that you had never heard of and we're taking a risk on but this is EMPIRE EARTH. One of the acknowledge masters of the RTS world.

How sad to see such a great franchise like EE die such a slow and ugly death. Sierra... What the heck happened!?!?!?

Reasonable, but a bit uninspired

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: May 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First I'll start by saying this is a pretty good game. It's taken several nice features from other games and put them into one release, which is cool. However, this game feels a lot like Rise Of Nations, the tech tree system is almost identical and the territory based maps are similar as well, making you wonder if this is EE2 or RON2.

Another issue is the 3d graphics (I think this is a major problem with the game industry right now, full 3d isn't necessarily better, look at AOK or Stronghold: Crusader). While the graphics are very nice to look at when zoomed in close, they add little to the game-play and can ruin performance. I feel that the point of games like this is to have epic battles and rule vast empires, neither of which are done best at close zooms were fancy textures would be visible anyway.

A small side note is that the pathfinding isn't up to modern standers either; units sometimes get stuck trying to move around the edges of forests, and don't always take the best rout.

All in all, this game does draw together some of the better features from the RTS field and can be a lot of fun if you have a good machine and don't mind your troops getting lost every now and then.

Disappointment to game players

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: July 18, 2005
Author: Amazon User

To me, the authors of this game concentrated far too much on looking pretty instead of gameplay.

The computer player knows every move you make even when no elements have come near your defenses.

Walls tumble down without any problem and look horrible when you try to rebuild them.

When defenses are too strong, entire units of priests will come and 'magically' take over.

There's no way for you as an individual to constantly give orders to every little unit who appears to be too stupid to act on their own. (citizen standing next to burning structure without doing anything for example)

The horses and equipment move in an unrealistic way, not like the original Empire Earth which looked excellent.

I was really hoping to be able to do more battle simulation. In Empire Earth I, you could actually set up pretty realistic scenarios but with II, it's just a little game.

In many ways the units acted far more realistically in EEI and I've gone back to EEI and am now just letting EEII sit in it's container.

I've tried for weeks to give EEII a good try and to learn as many tricks as I could but it just doesn't seem worth it.

Could have been better...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: May 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing history related rts's for quite some time now, starting with Age of Empires 1. The first empire earth didn't really bring anything new to the standard success formula of these games, it just had 'more'. When Rise of Nations came out a while back, I was astounded, it streamlined the clunky interface of the RTS and allowed you to do so much all at once without freaking out about how fast/slow you did things. This allowed you to focus on the combat aspects of the game. Empire Earth 2 is just Empire Earth 1 with some of the great features of Rise of Nations added on. The whole idea of capturing the enemy city center was taken from Rise of Nations. The whole 'frame in frame' idea with the little window in the lower right is really stupid. There is no point to this as you can just push the spacebar when anything happens. Besides the weather effects, the graphics are not that good. The game also has a pretty clunky interface. It is true that it is a deep game and everything, but then again so is Civilization 3. This game has almost no innovation, just taking parts of other proven games and throwing them together with duct tape. If you are going to play a history rts, with ages and such, get Rise of Nations instead.

Good potential but so many bugs...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: September 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game is fun when it works correctly. Multiplayer is extremely painful to play because of all the bugs. I'm hoping for another patch soon. It is on version 1.1 as I write this. I needs some real work.

I have a pretty good gaming system (256MB graphics card, 1 GB of RAM, etc) and yet it still crawls at times. I had to shut down some of the graphical effects to make it run better (it really appears to be only certain units that kill it. I stopped making some units because it kills the game). Even when you baby it, when too many units are on the map it cripples the game. About 3 other players is all the game can handle.

Beyond that it is very similar to the original EE. The core difference is that the system to advance epochs is different. It slows advancement and forces you to make some non military buildings. This was probably an improvement over the original. It make it easier to have a good battle and not mean that you are behind in advancement.

The interface is also improved. Many of the functions you need are on the display so you don't have go hunt for a particular buiding to upgrade something.

Overall I would say it will be worth a play but I would give it 6 months to buy until they work out the bugs, as it is... disappointing.

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