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Empire
Earth III Preview
First
of all before I begin this preview I would like to
thank Greg and Vivendi for inviting me and
organising the Empire Earth III University event
that turned out to be a fantastic experience that I
will never forget. Also it was good to meet the
community members and the two mad doc designers that
attended.
We
all played the alpha version of Empire Earth 3 and
so the game is bound to change over the next couple
of months before its release. I arrived in LAX on
Thursday from an 11-hour flight from Heathrow and
had time to settle in and even saw the Hollywood
sign. Thankfully though the event was not until
Friday and so I had enough time to recover from all
that jet lag. All the members of the event were to
meet in the lobby at 4:30pm to meet Greg. Personally
I was a little nervous since I didn't have clue what
to expect or what the next two days were going to be
like. We all took a shuttle to a Vivendi QA building
where we had a few drinks and snacks before sitting
down. We were then told a bit about the game and had
to introduce ourselves to everyone. A trailer was
then shown as well as some actual footage. Then a
few questions were answered followed by dinner and
then downstairs to finally play what we all had been
waiting for, Empire Earth 3.
We
all walked into a room full of monitors and towers
and were told to keep walking down till we saw some
banners. About 30 computers were set up for Empire
Earth 3 and were ready to be played. I sat down, put
my headphones on and joined a game. We all played
against each other and in the first game play
session we were told to use the Western civilisation
since it was closest style to the previous Empire
Earths.
Graphics
The
first thing that comes to your mind when you play
Empire Earth 3 is the huge step up in graphics. It
is by far the best looking strategy game out. I was
quite disappointed by C&C3 but EE3 looks
stunning when seeing it for real. The new emphasised
art that many fans have disliked simply looks
fantastic and I personally love it. The trees are
highly detailed as well as the terrain. Models of
the units and buildings are very detailed and smooth
when compared to any other games out. Buildings such
as barracks use different animations that make them
look interactive and react to the weather in the
game. Despite some lag issues the game was rather
stable for an alpha version. One criticism I had of
the graphics was the size of the siege units, which
I thought were too big. But I was told that they are
still scaling the units and this will be changed.
One of the interesting looking units was the
republican guard for the Middle Eastern civilisation
that was invisible but had a cool white effect on
it. Overall the graphics on EE3 really impressed me
but obviously there is a lot more to a game than
just graphics.
Gameplay
One
of new aspects of the gameplay was the distinction
between the civilizations. In previous Empire
Earth’s the different civilisations only differed
in units and the look of the civilisation. Not only
do they differ in the look of buildings and units in
Empire Earth 3 but they are different in the way
they play as well. The western civilisation is the
style that is played previous empire earths. You
build a builder that builds and you create your
units and get resources from what they build. I
found while playing one of the best units to use was
the Calvary since it only needed wealth and not raw
materials to build. The Middle Eastern civilisation
doesn't use citizens or builders but you simply
build the building in your city center and then when
its complete the building comes out in a cart with
horses (ancient) or a truck (modern). You move the
truck or cart to the place you want build your
barracks or market or whatever and build it. (This
usually takes about 20 seconds and then building pop
ups and the truck or cart disappears). Also another
thing they added to the Middle Eastern is that all
buildings actually attack enemies. This is a pretty
handy feature since it prevents rushes early on in
the game but the civilisation has no walls or towers
to build. However you can still build a fortress’s
though. In the far eastern civilisation you are
given 5 infantry that can build for you instead of
actual builders. Another feature of Empire Earth 3
is the heroes in the game. For example as western
you get a large robot that can make a black hole and
suck in and kill anything around it including units
and buildings. We were told that even though heroes
were implemented in the game, the designers are
going to make it so they weren’t too powerful and
wont be a necessity to win a game.
The
new 5 epochs instead of 15 works much better than I
actually first presumed. In EE2 there have only been
a few games I can remember where I actually used
every epoch. In Empire Earth 3 there is much
distinction between each epoch including the look of
buildings and units. Also to epoch up it was a much
more bigger cost and effected the size of my army or
how much I put into upgrades unlike Empire Earth 2
where you needed university points to epoch up and
basically didn’t effect your resources or the size
of your army. You now have to make a choice whether
to epoch fast and risk being beaten early with a
small army or make a large army to begin with but
risk being beaten by more technological opponent.
The
user interface was a big difference compared to
Empire Earth 2. It is very simple to use and
doesn’t get in the way of the action. It
looked very well done and just really fitted well
with the game as well as being user friendly.
Resources
The
new resource system in Empire Earth 3 is very
different from its predecessors. There are only two
resources, wealth and raw materials. You need both
to successfully play and win a game. To epoch up you
need a just wealth but to build units and buildings
you usually need raw materials and wealth. To gain
resources you build a market for wealth and a
warehouse for raw materials. There a numerous stone
and gold mines around the map that you basically
build a warehouse next to it and immediately 4
workers come out to work on the mine and begin work
on the raw materials. You cannot gain materials from
trees and so trees cannot be cut down. You can also
gain more resources by upgrading your warehouses
where you can choose to buy and build a worker,
which cost 300 wealth. The most workers you can have
though are 6 in one warehouse. This simplifies the
economy much more and lets the player focus on the
actual strategy of combat. Also in the game you are
unable to trade resources, since it will make the 2
resources pretty much just into 1. Overall the new
resources worked very well and it did make it more
player friendly as well as letting the player focus
more on combat rather than the economy.
Sound
The
sound of Empire Earth games have always been rather
good. The units all had their own voices and unique
sayings and some being rather amusing. For example
the western builders sounded like Yoda and one of
the woman archers had a saying that lasted for about
8 seconds but some of these are probably going to
change. The music was good and basically set the
mood of the game well. I’ve personally liked the
music in all EE games and have never seen a large
problem so I was very glad they kept this up.
Brief
about Modding
At
the event I didn’t see anything about modding but
it was discussed. Empire Earth 3 will still use the
map editor Empire Earth 2 had, and there will be no
trigger system but once again scripting. We were
told though that units will be modable and so will
be the maps. You can actually mod and make your own
globe containing each map or province and it can be
all custom made and put onto a globe. Also
multiplayer scenario support was definitely
discussed on the feedback and I think we will have
to wait to see if its there or not. For the
scripting there should be some resources and
information to be released for the modding community
and I asked that they give a lot more information on
scripting than they did for Empire Earth 2.
Conclusion
Despite
this being the alpha I actually loved what I played.
It kind of brought me back that feeling of
excitement that I haven’t experienced in years. I
can see myself playing Empire Earth 3 for many hours
into the night and loving every second of it. I have
played C&C3 and Supreme Commander as well as
other Real Time Strategies but none have really
impressed me or got me addicted. Empire Earth 3 has
finally put my hopes high again. Just that feeling
of playing the style of Empire Earth made me
excited. If all goes well in the beta testing and
the game is well balanced, I can see Empire Earth 3
being huge and maybe winning over the fans that have
come to love Empire Earth 1 but not second. After
Empire Earth 3 University I feel that the game is in
the right hands. They want this game to be a success
and make it so the casual and hardcore players love
it. They understand why EE2 has not gone well with
the fans but I think Empire Earth 3 will put the
Empire Earth name back into the gamer’s top
favourites again.
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