Empires: Dawn of the Modern World

GOOD THINGS: Gameplay is rich in ideas: diferent nations with their own unique mechanisms and "god powers" (all realistic not actually a work of God), which are ok even for those who dislike them (you can sometimes kill 20 out of 200 army men so not a big deal), wonders, but just in last age, two types of gameplay: long empire builder with units actually turning to go somewhere and typical skirmish, large armies and units with abilities, GREAT CAMPAIGN where you rarely have a level where you do your typical skirmish stuff (gather, build, train army, destroy) with convincing voice acting and no lazy cutscenes (which are actually pretty long for it's time) and very nice map desing (again, not some lazy stuff), good graphics, not excellent but really clear and easy to read, ok music, it matches but I personally never searched for it on youtube to listen to after the game. Nicely thought small mechanics like woodcutters cutting all the trees even when one patch of them is gone they move to another, huntable animals which reproduce (unless you kill them too fast) etc. BAD THINGS: not enough gold, there are some of it but lack of market makes it hard in really long matches, shorter ones are fine, AI likes to fortify heavily, on water maps it can get teadious. TL;DR Great potential and really cool concepts that are original even today, really clean historically accurate game which lacks market, resounce trading and doesn't feel as epic as some of todays RTS games

Like Empire Earth, but want more diverse civilizations? That pretty much sums it up! This game takes the good things from Empire Earth and builds upon them. It also cuts some of the tedious and bloated features from the Empire Earth series. There are less types of resources to mine, which affords you more time to fight and requires less to eco. It also boasts very unique abilities and appearances between the national factions. The units are also nation specific and true to history in appearance. The resolution will need to be adjusted, however, to fit modern monitors properly. Hold the windows button+r, search 'regedit' and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareSSSIEmpires look for the keys 'Game Window Height' and 'Game Window Width', change them to 'decimal' 900 and decimal 1440 (for 1440x900, but you can do whatever) and thats it. Aside from that, it seems to run just fine on win7. Overall, this game is more competitive and more fun than Empire Earth, imo. Not by much, but it's enough to justify the price point. The AI in EE1 is abysmal, so this also wins handily in single player. EE2's AI is much better, but I personally dislike the borders mechanic they introduced. Anyway, EDOMW has ten levels of difficulty which makes tuning it to your level much easier than EE. THE ONLY CON IS IT GOES FROM MEDIEVAL TO WWII ONLY, but it does a great job with those eras. If you like RTS games, this is one to get! Do it!

Note: This review is for the CD version of the game, as I will be waiting a little while to see if this comes on sale before buying it. Trying to find this game is one of the reasons I stumbled on gog.com in the first place; I never found it but did find lots of others. This game had an excellent campaign and provided hours of fun for me growing up...until I lost the first installation disc. Then not so much. Easily the best part of the game is the vastly different civilizations you can choose from; each with not only unique units but unique gameplay due to their advantages. For example, if you're Russia or China you ought to spam units and obliterate your enemy with a blitz; if you're germany or korea you want to build a large army nice and slowly and eventually level everything that comes your way. Personally for me, there was nothing quite as fun as sacrificing atomic bombers to take out my enemy's forests and then slowly whittling them down over time. In short, while it's probably not the best game I've ever played, it's certainly one of the most fun! If you like empire earth or age of empires, it's very much like that except with much more varied civs!

Empires Dawn of the Modern World is one of my favorite games of all time. When released it was just the natural progression from Empire Earth. If you played Empire Earth YOU WILL LOVE THIS GAME, if you love AOE and have said to yourself "I wish I didn't have a population cap" BUY THIS GAME. Unlike Empire Earth, EDMW offers unique nations with its own unique units and buildings as well as the nations tactics and abilities. The age progression ranges from Medieval to WW2 where you can advance from playing Medieval age England or the Franks and progress to the United States or Germany. The variation of units between the nations makes the game far more strategic and interesting than Empire Earth IMO. The single player campaign is pretty good but nothing special and AI play can be quite challenging if not a bit predictable. As a LAN game or a game to play with your friends I can't think of a better RTS. GOG states here that there is only single player, this is not true! Go to www.gameranger.com a free multiplayer game service, there are always people online. If you had played this in the past and want to get back into it this is where you need to go. Multiplayer in this game is superb and was the best aspect on release.