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Hello there. Some of you may know me from my previous battle.net name, LuckyNewbie:P. You may have also noticed by now that this isnt a Brood War Battlereport, but instead on something much bolder (more than a 640x480 screen) and much more expensive. You might have heard of this game already, so here I am to review it for you from the Starcraft prespective. Whatever the case, I hope you find it amusing, or at the very least, I hope you didn't think it sucked. Following my traditional style, you can always skim through the quotes.
Now, without futher adu, I bring you....
An Introduction
"empire earth is like pong only with better graphics and more strategy"
- WilliamWC3
This game was played on the 1v1 Empire Earth Ladder YoungGunz created found at Case's ladder. I had trouble enough finding a game, but Gunz and his opponent Player_Rho were benevolant enough to let me observe. With Empire Earth, its really easy: instead of being a player on the observer-made maps of starcraft, you can opt for "observer" status. Observer status lets you have god vision over the whole map, limits your chat to other observers, and is about the only cool feature sierra.net offers over battle.net in online gaming.
The map played was also a unique feature in that it was created by a random map generator (and also the fact that it was not Lost Temple). The map was on the "tiny" size for some close fighting at rho's request, and the minimap of it can be seen on the right.
Warning! If you have already played this game or at least the demo please ignore the following text. This is a very crude attempt to explain the game to the heathens in under the 100+ pages the manual took.
Understanding Empire Earth
"You act as if people look to you as a respected or even well-liked person."
- Frost
The Economy:
Sorry, no minerals and vespene gas. In fact, no command centers, hatcheries or even a nexus. This is Empire Earth --- both players start off with five villagers and a capitol. The capitol acts as an engineering bay and command center in starcraft terms (or forge/nexus, evolution chamber/hatchery, have it your way). It researches non-weapon/armor upgrades for villagers and towers such as faster farming and iron mining times, and makes new villagers with the appropriate resources (50 food). Early in the game there are two concerns, depending on how many resources you started with: food and wood. Food is needed to make more "citizens", the cornerstone of any civilization and the equivalent of an scv. Wood is used to make buildings, and is in abundance.
Of course this wouldnt be very fun at all if you could only return your resources to your Capitol you start with, so you can construct settlements, drop off points kept near resources to optomize transportation time. Settlements are put near any valueable resource such as a forage patch, iron mine, stone mine or gold mine. Settlements cannot make new villagers.
You can also make new Capitols (new villager makers) by "populating" a settlement. When five citizens are put into a settlement by right clicking on it, the settlement upgrades and can perform all the tasks a Capitol can.
Aside from Food and wood, there are three other resources: iron and gold, which are both necesary for research and unit production. No gold or iron, no military, simple as that. Oh yeah, and only 6 villagers can be assigned to a particular mine. Stone is the final resource, used to make guard towers (and anti-air guns) as well as walls.
The Military:
You cant complain of imbalance in Empire Earth, because combat is based on a rock-paper-scissors thing that gets more complicated as you get more advanced. Before gunpowder there are three types of units: Shock(sword, axe, etc), Pierce(spear, javeline, pike) and Arrows(arrows).
Shock weapons absolutely maul archers, which in turn get killed by spear weapons. Spear weapons, you guessed it, get easily peppered by arrows and take more than the usual damage. Its a bit confusing at first but easy to catch on.
Let the games begin!
"[i] got 1246 [S.A.T score] as a freshmen,start of year too"
- Frost
YoungGunz starts as blue terran in the lower center part of the map, while his opponent Player_Rho starts as red in the upper left. The immidiate concern of both players is to get food to make more citizens. Rho is quite the blood-thirsty one and finds the closest horse herd to use as his food supply, and makes a settlement inbetween an iron mine and the tasty beasts. Gunz, on the other hand, is fortunate to find a forage patch and makes a settlement right on it.
Because the starting epoch randomed to the Stone Age, neither player can make farms yet, sorry Charlie. Before farms, food is a precious commodity like the iron and gold, so it is imperative to get to the next epoch (Copper Age) where they can be built. Macromanagement, on the other hand, is simplified even more in Empire Earth. To keep up villager production, simply hit H-C-C, which will zoom to your capitol and make two new citizens.
For a while, both players are content to collect their wood and food. Rho gets some good luck and is blessed when the animals migrate closer to his food settlement. Eventually both players get a small citizen force and both train some canine scouts.
The Canine Scout is just that, a scout, only in dog form. It can outrun most units and can dodge stone-age towers if running away from them. Oh yeah, and no clicking all over the place either. All units come with a cool "explore" option which executes an ai script to scout unexplored (and later, unrevealed) areas of the map. Can SCVs do that? Didnt think so.
Being on the "tiny" map setting, the two players find each other fast. By now both players have guard towers over their precious settlements to discourage attacks and villagers are now being pumped out of two capitols for each side. It isnt much of a wait until the first barracks and archery ranges go up, and the attacks begin.
First Blood
maybe Nate can perl the universe and block out all the annoying people
"nate writes Perl filter, 95% of United States squelched"
- SnowSquall
Player_Rho makes the first move, being the first to make an army. With a handful of spearmen he moves around the guard tower and into the vulnerable gold mine on YoungGunz east flank. Spearmen being the unit of choice for their ability to skewer citizens easily, they quickly get to work.
Spearmen are the best early-epoch unit because of the absence of any long range arrow unit. The spears they carry are excelent at mauling clubmen and villagers, the other two units available early in the game. Their one weakness is that they continue to be the only spear unit during the Copper Age, and become obselete.
Gunz hasnt been idle either, and retreats his citizens back to his own army. A spearman versus Spearman battle ensues, but in the end the home-field advantage of quicker reinforcements is enough to sway the odds in Gunz favor, and so ends the first skirmish.
However, Rho tries to catch Gunz off balance and throws a small squad of slingers (the first arrow-type unit) right up the center. Unfortunately, this is located right next to the troop making facilities which have made more than enough units to hold off the attackers and drive them back to their own turf. Back in Rho's base, slingers, spearmen and a clubman defeat the pursuers, and once again both forces build up.
Little time passes before the armies collide again. Rho has an army of 5 spears, 4 slingers and a sole clubman versus 7 spears and 5 slings. Both players attack.
At first, the battle goes Gunz's way, and it turns into a slinger versus slinger match. Then, without warning, Rho's slingers suddenly put on white shirts, put down the sling and grab some bows. Rho has reached the next Epoch!
The Copper Age
[LuckyNewbie:P] The bad part about that is where you turn when the shit hits the fan
[British] Well, away from the fan, hopefully
As both armies flee back to build up and upgrade, Rho points something out when Gunz complains of low food. Sometime during the attack, he ordered his army to kill hippos. Yes, kill the hippos that were feeding Gunz's army. When a military unit killed an animal instead of a citizen, little meat is produced, so to set Gunz he killed them off. Could this be a new empire earth strategy (or something carried over from aoe2)?
After a minute or so Rho decides to try and exploit Gunz's right flank again, just as he had before. This time the citizens run away. When i zommed in i thought that all the white shirts in the woods were citizens, but they they started shooting arrows. YoungGunz now has the copper age as well, and a bigger army. Rho's raiding party of spearsmen and archers gets easily overrun, and Gunz army prepares for the offensive. Rho tried to do the two-pronged assault again and brings 6 archers to the front. Unfortunately, they run into a tower and an advancing army that just crushed him before, and they are again butchered.
Counter-Attack
"lucky, any name containing an emoticon is gay
...
and yes, i just used the word emoticon in a sentence"
- Sp|nE
With ~20 archers, Gunz goes out looking for some trouble. He stumbles upon a few iron and stone mines and starts killing the citizens. Rho, deciding its now or never, charges with his own troops. With a pair of horsemen, about half a dozen archers and a few spearsmen, the battle ensues. In the end, numerical superiority, as well as strategically placed calvalry to delay shock weapons from tearing up his archers, gives Gunz a decisive victory and with it the game.
With his army defeated and his guard tower burning up, Rho gives an honorable "gg" and resigns.
Conclusion
"[ground-lobp shields his eyes and dons a protective suit in anticipation of lucky's next battlereport]"
- ground-lobp-
Well, there you have it, Empire Earth. I know it was a short game, but its a start. I made this hoping to get some members of the Empire Earth community to write some as well, and I really want some of you old friends and brood war vets will buy the game and play me online. (you know who you are)
As always, the lessons learned:
1) Time your attacks right if you plan on doing a two-pronged one
2) Buy Empire Earth
3) Frost is a moron
4) Buy Empire Earth. Serious.
Thanks for reading my report, leave a comment please, it'll be appreciated.
RobertKeith: when the guy is losing, the map sucks
RobertKeith: but when hes winning, it owns
[five seconds later]
MaRiO--a: No thnx
MaRiO--a: This map blows
MaRiO--a has left the game
[=Ironman=]: its not bad
LuckyNewbie:P: rotflmao
As always,
And from now on,
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