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Empire Earth III: Last Record Update (October 7, 2015 – 03:04:28 UTC) Last Change Number: 3106316: Steam Store Steam Hub. Information Packages 1 History.

A few weeks ago, Sierra Entertainment was nice enough to send a few of us from Heaven Games out to Los Angelos. My finals are done in school, so it's time for me to give everyone here a little glimpse of what that game is turning out to be.

I’ll try to give my honest opinions on how the game is shaping up: some good, some bad. Before I get started, I would like to make the point that this game is very early in development. I am impressed with how much feedback Sierra is soliciting from the community. They say that they will take our suggestions seriously and if they do, I think Empire Earth III may go far. The problem with Empire Earth II Universities feedback, they said, is that it came so late it the development process.

I guess we will see if that was the case in the coming days and weeks. I'm sure they will do great!

It all began at 2 in the morning on a Friday. After a long trip across country, the attendees of the event meet up and we had our introductions. There were lots of people there, all of which can be seen in the picture below: The Geek Squad! Starting from left to right: Top Row: AGMLauncher( GameReplays ), Mokon ( HeavenGames ), MWace, BoneScorpion ( AI Clan ) Middle Row: Nick ( RTSCentral ), Gamespot Winner, JoD ( MadDoc ), WolfGrim, OneDeadAngel ( HeavenGames ), PzK (EEPlanet ), GameStop Person, FatMother ( Sierra Forums Moderator ), AMeranda ( MadDoc ), Gamestop Person II Bottom Row: John ( Sierra Forums ), Greg ( Sierra ), GameSpot Winner II, Jason ( GameSpot, Not Pictured ) As you can see there were people from all over the spectrum. There were a lot of scenario designers, modders, and people who focus on the casual gamers along with a few of the competitive breed.

Greg gave us a short introduction and then Ian Davis, the CEO of MadDoc Software, took the reins. So what is the new feature that EEIII will add to the genre? Well, as the title might suggest Empire Earth III puts the Earth in Empire Earth.

When you played Empire Earth I what was missing? In the first two games of the series you command enormous armies like a Napoleon or a Nebucenezeer. You rule an empire: leading it to victory or despair. You fly above hundreds of men, who will obey your commands: whether to death or to glory. Yet there is something that’s missing: the Earth! This is brought into Empire Earth III in the form of a globe that you play in a single player campaign mode.

This replaces the standard single player campaign. Now you start in one corner of the world and over days and weeks, you try to conquer the world. One day might go something like this: you sit down at your computer and load up the game going into World Domination Mode. You’re doing pretty well and there is a small territory over near Massachusetts that you want to conquer.

The other day you set your territories over near there to be military ones. So now you receive that bonus. In your armies go as you zoom into the standard RTS bird's eye view. Everything seems to be going well until you realize they have a secret weapon: huge Hercs with some sort of black hole gun that sucks in your armies.

( Really Cool I must say! ) You loose this battle but the war isn’t over! You missed another Calculus class. Well you might as well continue playing. Some of the events and goals programmed into the globe view might put a spin on the war. Ian Davis' Preview Well that’s a fictionalized account, since we were unable to play the world domination mode during the event, but you get the idea. This is what I gathered from their presentations.

It’s like a mix of RTS with Civilization and for the single player side of the game its set to be one of the biggest features. From what they showed us and from what I gather this should be a pretty interesting component for single player. After Ian's spiel and a short dinner, we went up stairs to the QA tester’s room where we were able to play the game for a few hours. So what are the biggest differences from the first two Empire Earth's? First, many of the gameplay elements now have a deeper meaning. For instance, in Empire Earth, there were unit upgrades but they were just generic improvements that added little to gameplay. In Empire Earth III there are less upgrades but now each of them have real functionality in the game.

Many of them also have little graphical effects to add to the flavor. Similarly, Empire Earth II had what 350 units? That certainly had a profound negative effect on balance. Not to mention most of the units were just carbon copies of one another. Empire Earth III has changed this, opting for the more starcraft-ish style with a few units each with a well-defined role. As I said before the game is still early in its development so many units still need more definition. MadDoc is on the right track though, so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Preddy Grafics The economy in Empire Earth III is highly simplified, which IMHO is for the best. There are two resources in the game: raw materials and wealth. While the details of how these work are not finalized: at the event, raw materials were gathered by placing down a warehouse next to a fixed resource point.

Unlike in the first two games you do not build villagers or peons in the traditional sense. In Empire Earth III once you place down that warehouse three villagers come out of the building. You do not have control over these units: they go directly to the resource pile and start gathering. If you would like you can build 2-3 more villagers, which go to work gathering more resources. One essential point in the gameplay is that you can still raid these villagers. If you take some units you can kill the villagers gathering around the mine.

Of course, the player can also ring a bell that will cause the villagers to run into safety within the warehouse. If these villagers die you cannot rebuild them. Rather they automatically regenerate. That automatic regeneration is not a feature I like, but perhaps it will change. With the wealth resource, during the event, you would build a market, which similarly has 3 villagers auto-built, and then you can build 2 additional villagers to increase your wealth generation rate. These were not visible or raidable but from what I gather this gameplay element will change in the final game. The main purpose of wealth is for epoching while raw resources generally were for building units.

There were five epochs in the game. Of the top of my head they were Ancient, Medieval, Colonial, Modern, and Future. The transition from Colonial to Modern seemed a tad 'un-natural' but I think most games have that problem. The prevalent strategy I used during the event was a boom up through the ages while raiding a bit. I didn't find a full out rush to be very effective since someone could still epoch up while being rushed. What I did was get up a basic economy, throw down a stable, and then a few more markets.

Since the western civilization's cavalry cost only wealth, I would produce 3 to 5 and run them over to my enemies’ base. Finding the warehouse, I would do some hit and runs on these.

If the player wasn't the best, in one raid I could kill all five villagers since they wouldn't ring the bell. If they were more alert, each time I came in and hit the mine I would probably get one villager. Now I will say I think the villagers were able to get into safety too quickly. When I paid attention before one villager would die, I could ring the bell and get my villagers to safety. Anyhow, so as I was raiding my markets would now be up and I would boom through the ages till the modern epoch. Once there I would start mass-producing flame tanks, since pre-modern units do poor against tanks.

Getting the heavy tank upgrade I would soon be in the future age with hercs coming down on my enemy. Film Crew This strategy I used probably will not work in the final release since it is the designers intentions to limit one market per territory. I was building around three in my original territory so as you can guess such a limit would greatly hinder my strategy. That does bring up another point though; that point being territories. These are similar to Empire Earth II's in that they are fairly restrictive in how you can expand.

There is no forwarding building in Empire Earth III and taking additional territories takes quite a bit. If I had more time to play it would have been interesting to see how going on a military route versus a territorial strategy works out since both seemed to have interesting benefits. Territories seem a bit confining right now since they limited what you could do but I am still open to how they will finally end up. Mokon's Talking! Get a picture!

Ok, now time for my dislikes and concerns with Empire Earth III. I realize this game is very early in development, and I have tested my fair share of games so I know how games clean lag problems up before release, but since this was such a big problem in Empire Earth II I think its important to stress. ( End Run-On ) If there is a lot of lag in a game it going to fail. Casual gamers and Hardcore alike hate lag. Now I hesitated from saying that in my preview since I don't want any of you not buying the game due to lag. It's too early to say how lag will be in the final version, so don't make any judgments yet.

The other area I am concerned on is balance. Once again, it is early in the development cycle but since this was such a large problem in Empire Earth II it is important to make note of this.

I am a firm believer in balance by design, and I am not convinced EE3 has this set yet. When you balance by design units each have well defined roles. Empire Earth III seems to do this better than EE2 but I am still not sold on how well it truly does this. Also, to do well in balanace VUG needs to get professional gamers from around the world to test for those uber strategies that need a nerf. What about the good aspects in EE3? First, I think its has taken some good steps away from Empire Earth II.

Empire Earth II had major problem in balance and fundamental gameplay. I think the simplification in EE3 has greatly improved these problems. Also, I have to admit my favorite feature has to be the user interface. As you can pick off in some of the pictures above it is compact and useable. Best of all though, you can move the components of it around based on how you want your UI to look. Have you always wanted to place the mini-map in the middle of the screen? Well if you did first of all you are weird.:) But now you can do it!

It is the type of customizability that is perfect in a game. You can edit how you play the game while not altering the gameplay and fairness to other players. I hope some other games take note of the EE3 UI. One more element to the game that I should mention is the civilizations. There are three totally unique civilizations.

The Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern. I don't know to much about them since I mainly played Western at the event but each of them have some neat attributes.

The Middle Eastern civilization constructs buildings through their town center, which constructs mobile carts to deploy. They are hard to rush since their buildings have an auto-attack. The Eastern civilization constructs buildings with infantry. They start with 5(?) spearmen, which perhaps will give them an option for a little rush early on. Ok course with a little micro the other civilizations can kill the spears with their javelin thrower.

The western civilization builds it's units with a builder unit. They are the most traditional of the civilizations. Well that is all for my preview. The game looks pretty cool and it has a lot of development left to go. If you like the idea of the globe for single player I am sure you will love this game.

Well that’s all for now. Stay tuned for any additional updates about this RTS game scheduled for release in Fall of 2007.

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