Hey all,

I only tried Empire Earth once at a friend's place as a teenager (over a decade ago), and at the time it seemed appealing. A few years ago, I made up my mind when considering getting into this series: based on the info I gathered from the Web, I decided to get Empire Earth II and Empire Earth II - The Art of Supremacy, and NOT Empire Earth + expansion. I have had no regrets.

That said, I am generally interested in RTS scenario design (both history-based and fictional). I like to play the scenarios and campaigns of various RTS games - they provide ideas for my own modding efforts.

Now I wonder if I should play the campaigns in the original Empire Earth?

It isn't exactly news that Empire Earth has badly aged: the graphics is one thing, but what really sucks is the AI and personally I can't stand the idea of all civilisations looking the same (vaguely Western aesthetic).

Still, while it cannot compete with Empire Earth II, I figured maybe the campaigns in Empire Earth (and its expansion) still manage to heave themselves up to the level of the campaigns in Age of Empires II (speaking of the original Age of Kings)? From a mission design perspective I mean. I say AoEII because there isn't a chance in hell that the Empire Earth scenarios can rival those in Empire Earth II (again, from a mission design perspective - having played both, I can say AoEII is good but not as advanced as EEII). I am not overly interested in the cheesy implementation of in-game cinematics - which from what I've seen on Youtube really do elevate the camp to new levels, not what I expect from a (mostly) history-based game - but am asking specifically about the gameplay vs AoEII scenarios.

If the Empire Earth scenarios are less well designed gameplay-wise than those in AoEII, then I won't bother.

Thank you for any insights!

I played them way back when it originally released, so my memory is hazy. But I don’t recall anything terribly Interesting.

Thanks for the reply! I will await to see if other opinions come in, but yeah I do have a rather lukewarm impression based on what I have read so far.

I should say that it’s still a great until later experience. Nothing quite lie it. I’ve played it from release to now and enjoy every moment. But some games do some things better. But for a long many-player game, it’s something special.

The Empire Earth 1 campaigns are absolutely terrible. The campaign is really the intersection of the game's two crippling faults: a non-existent AI, and a lack of cohesive creative vision. I really wanted to like this game as a kid, I defended it tooth and nail based on the awesome game it could have been, but looking back even the strongest prescription of rose-tinted glasses can't mask how much of a turd the singleplayer experience is. I can only really recommend Empire Earth 1 if it's deeply nostalgic for you, or if you have friends to play multiplayer with. Its singleplayer experience is just plain bad.

Thank you Darvin for your reply!

Since I am not in a hurry I will be happy to wait in case there are more replies, but you basically homed in on the core problem of Empire Earth - and what I've long suspected just keeps getting more and more confirmed (without even touching the game lol), which is that at least as far as the single player experience is concerned, Empire Earth really is disappointing and not just vastly inferior to Empire Earth II, but also inferior to some older RTS games like Age of Empires II, Starcraft, Red Alert 2 etc.

P.S.: at least I did get a chuckle from checking out some Empire Earth Russian campaign cinematics!

Yeah, some of the dialog does have a "so bad it's good" quality, but I personally don't feel that's enough to carry when the gameplay is a poorly-paced grind against infinite waves of enemy units.

Indeed!

Going off on a tangent:
- the following is just some rambling about historical RTS campaigns connected to Empire Earth and similar games, sorry if it comes across as a random collection of thoughts...
- Age of Empires has a Greek campaign, the fact that Rick Goodman was instrumental on Empire Earth thereafter makes me wonder if the latter's Greek campaign was supposed to be a sort of "redux".
- Empire Earth has an English campaign, from what I've read most of it set in the Middle Ages; Stainless Steel Studios thereafter created Empires - Dawn of the Modern World, which also has an English campaign set in the Middle Ages - another "redux" of sorts, intended to do better justice to the setting?
- Empire Earth II comes with a German campaign which is way more serious about history than the German campaign in Empire Earth - was another German campaign chosen by Mad Doc Software as a way of highlighting its intent compared to its predecessor?
- Empire Earth II also sees Mad Doc make another American (US-centric) campaign, after a first effort in Empire Earth - The Art of Conquest - maybe another choice partly driven by a desire to improve a previous take on a given nation's history?
- Empire Earth II - The Art of Supremacy comes with another Russian campaign which, again, is way more serious about history than the Russian campaign in Empire Earth and I think that too is not a coincidence.
- compared to the "classical" Age of Empires series, Empire Earth is extremely biased toward Western culture at large - all campaigns are basically within the broader Western sphere (no "Yamato" campaign equivalent this time!); again, Empire Earth II seems to respond to that by introducing proper visual distinctions between civilisations and by providing non-Western campaigns like the Korean campaign.
- the thoughts above relate to content, style and "spirit" - I guess what I am trying to say is that I feel Empire Earth II is the proper successor to the classical Age of Empires series, with Empire Earth being just a misguided attempt at making the "ultimate" Age of Empires

**end of line**

First time I attempted to get through the EE campaigns I made it less than half way before giving up due to how slow and dull they felt. Later I discoevered I could increase the speed by hitting the "+" key a couple of times, and this made it much more bearable (though it's annoying you have to do it at the start of every scenario rather than being able to choose a default speed). The pace is so glacial that even on this fastest setting, it still feels closer to "normal" speed on AoEII, but it made enough of a difference that I could enjoy the scenarios much more. I would still consider them inferior to AoEII, but I had some fun with them, and the historical scope is cool.

Thanks for sharing your experience, you raise an interesting point: scenario pacing. There's two things here: pacing due to the mission design, and game speed. Sounds like the latter with the default setting was the main issue in your case. Slow game speed may have been favoured at the time because of common hardware limitations (I also see that EE was also rather generous in terms of pop cap compared to most 3D RTS games of the time, and that can be taxing).

By the way, while I won't play EE in light of what has been discussed previously, I just finished playing through the campaigns of Empires: Dawn of the Modern World - this game is generally speaking great, and with it Stainless Steel Studios showed how they had matured since EE with this successful implementation of their scenario design philosophy (along with the successful implementation of very distinct civilisations, which is very satisfying too). My favourite campaign in this game is the Admiral Yi Sun-Sin campaign :)

First I've heard that the campaigns are bad. I've really enjoyed the game as a kid, even after having played AoE2 and the likes. Does it hold up from a gameplay perspective? I have no idea honestly, but I've found the cutscenes to be quite captivating.
I'm gonna give it another go after finishing AoE4 (and if I can manage to sort out the technical problems... yikes)

If you like in-game cutscenes in your historical campaigns, I can safely recommend Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. Heck, you'll even find that in-game characters move their mouths when they talk (EDIT: it's like the Half-Life moment of RTS games lol)!

yes already have that in my backlog lol