Just so that you know, Empire Earth demo has been released.

FrostyBoy · October 20, 2001, 21:03

I'd post this elsewhere, but Empire Earth has been discussed on the civ3 forums before a few times, just thought ppl should know the demo is out, since friday.

hello padlock.

Mars · October 20, 2001, 21:12

Thanks

Bakunine · October 20, 2001, 21:13

What kinda game is that?

Turn based?

Chuckles · October 20, 2001, 21:14

Excellent. I keep forgetting the dates for this one.

The Templar · October 20, 2001, 21:24

Quote:

Originally posted by Bakunine
What kinda game is that?

Turn based?

As I understand it, Empire Earth is essentially a real time version of CTP (i.e. civ with sci-fi).

Akillias · October 20, 2001, 21:32

its an online multiplayer game i think

Akillias · October 20, 2001, 21:33

and real time

Bakunine · October 20, 2001, 21:35

Thanks for the info.

But i prefer turn based

ixnay · October 20, 2001, 22:18

I downloaded and played it; it's pretty good. Just think Age of Empires on a much grander scale - that's what this game is.

Sarxis · October 20, 2001, 22:24

I am one of the beta testers for the game, and it is good

It is similar to Age of Empires, but there are some big differences. For one, the game is rendered in 3d, and this allows you to zoom in and out the view, as well as making everything look better. The game also covers a whole lot more epochs- about 14 or 16 starting in pre-historic times and concluding far into the future.

Some of the other game basics are different as well, but not so much that any fans of classic RTS won't be able to find their way around.

Overall, it is looking very good. But the game is still a work in progress, so it should be even better by the time of the release date.

Falconius · October 20, 2001, 23:07

Quote:

Originally posted by Sn00py
Just so that you know, Empire Earth demo has been released.

And just so you know, the demo is riddled with crash bugs and "unable to load" bugs. Mine won't run, so I went to the official site's forum and 90% of the posts (no exaggeration) are about problems running the demo.

Grunthex · October 21, 2001, 01:42

I had a number of problems getting the demo to run last night, turned out that even when you're playing a single player tutorial mission, it wants to access the net. And it (the demo at least) is alt-tab unfriendly, so I couldn't switch over to tell my firewall to allow it access. Forcing me to reboot.

Once I manually entered the firewall and allowed it access, I was able to run it fine. No crashes yet. Seems interesting. It's no Civ though.

Sorry, I know this isn't really the right forum, but it might help any Apolytoners having problems. If someone wants to relay it to the official forums, feel free.

tniem · October 21, 2001, 02:36

In the future post this in the proper forum, Other Games.

Hopefully Mark will move it soon enough.

Zanzin · October 21, 2001, 02:55

Quote:

Originally posted by tniem
In the future post this in the proper forum, Other Games.

Hopefully Mark will move it soon enough.

Hopefully.

hetairoi22 · October 21, 2001, 03:37

Would somebody be so nice as to add an URL?

Grunthex · October 21, 2001, 03:47

http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?file=80809

I used one of the London sites. Got about 24k/sec. If you were willing to stand in line for the US sites, might get faster. Course, I was primetime too. Might be faster midnight.

Patriqvium · October 22, 2001, 10:52

I didn't like the demo.

The gameplay was a bit unintuitive and the graphics were pretty mediocre for a 3D game. Besides, I personally didn't like the unit balancing system (which was a rock-paper-scissors variant). It seems a bit strange that a battleship has no chance against a galley (the damage caused was minimal) but then sinks a much sturdier frigate with a few shots. Guess there's a point behind this, but the idea was made so absolute it became ridiculous...

tishco · October 22, 2001, 11:53

i was a bit disapointed with the "3d"
youi could only zoom to first perseon and out, but not out further. i suppose that is better than just rotating, but if you have such a good zoom, why leave it at that?
the men look a bit rubbish up close, they all have rigure smiles which are the kind of thing you see on horror games with zombies, and the limp and different walking paterns the mags said about wernt there.
the unit system was to complicated, and sometimes the things with the adavantage lost easily to their weaker counterparts whio were supposed to lose!
shogun does it was better, its just spears kill horse, archers kill spear, and hosrse kill archers. the reast are just extreme attack or defenderers.
just age of empires 3 really! age of mythology, the officail aoe3 looks better although more limited (it only has the originals timespan)

August Borms · October 22, 2001, 12:44

Bah, it crashes when I try to start a tutorial/scenario

Grumbold · November 1, 2001, 12:03

I have to agree with Patriqvium about the unit balancing system. It seemed to me that they have managed to squeeze numerous epochs into a single game because they did not care how badly they ballsed up the reality of any of them. Bow beats Pike beats Sword beats Bow. Yeucch. Three thousand years of military history completely mutilated there in one fell stroke, but it is repeated as a theme in all areas of conflict. I've never uninstalled anything so fast in my life!

That may not be a problem for some, so I'll mention a few more observations. When building walls it was easy to mis-connect parts unless you spent time rotating and zooming the view. End-towers would appear at odd intervals as you tried to build segments. Gates are enormous, probably so that the AI can spot them and prevent them from being killing fields. Selecting troops and clicking on a ship won't load units on transports, they stop on the shore.

On the up-side, its a very ambitious and nice looking game which ran smoothly on my PC. Just not one I will be buying.

Richard Bruns · November 6, 2001, 23:14

I was extremely disappointed with this game. It is technically incompetent, ugly, horribly inaccurate, and simply not fun.

First, it wouldn't run at all until I shut down ZoneAlarm. Why should a firewall interfere with a single player demo? This forewall never interfered with anything else before; why is this game connecting to the internet without my permission?

The tutorial was so bad I shut down the game and uninstalled it. First, the thing was ponderously and ittitatingly slow. That idiot talked and talked, and I couldn't shut him off or speed up the game. There were no instructions for pausing the game, changing speed and settings, or any other basic stuff. I had to sit there, bored out of my skull, while it went through stuff any strategy player knows while giving no instructions for running the game.

The game is ugly. All the characters look hideous, as do the farms and buildings and practically everything else. The graphics in Warcraft 2 were better than this junk.

And as mentioned before, the combat system is hideous. There are simply no words to describe the horribly stupid and inaccurate paper-rocks-scissors thing. It is unbelievably incompetent. Do they really expect me to believe that a heavily armed group of hoplites will get mauled in hand to hand combat by a few stupid archers? What about the Parthian wars, where roman legions got shot to bits by a group of horse archers a seventh their size? In the game that could never happen thanks to their hideous combat system.

In short, I've never seen such a bad game. Do not buy it.