If you wish to shift citizens from gathering one resource to gathering another, all you need to do is pick them up from one resource and drop them on the other, and they'll automatically shift around on the map.ĭrawing Arrows The other interesting new feature is the war-planning system. Micromanaging all these citizens would be too distracting-since you're usually busy crushing your opponents-so the citizen manager is a single screen that you can call up that details all the resources available to you, in addition to revealing the number of citizens tasked with gathering each resource. As the maps in Empire Earth 2 will be larger than in the original game, you will eventually have dozens, or maybe even hundreds, of citizens gathering the resources you need to run your empire. The first is the citizen manager, which is just what it sounds like. To this effect, Mad Doc is incorporating a couple of new features never before seen in a real-time strategy game. One of the major goals for the game is to make the gameplay much more accessible, especially for beginning gamers and newcomers to real-time strategy. This way, someone can develop unused resources on your territory, and you can benefit from it.įuture military units include these powerful robots. In this case, you can give unlimited rights, or you can choose to "tax" a percentage of the resources gathered by this other faction. For example, you can offer to trade territory in exchange for peace or an alliance, or you can grant harvesting rights in a territory to another faction that's looking for specific resources. You'll also be able to use territory to great effect in the game's deep diplomacy system. The maps will be pre-divided into a set number of territories, and if you capture one, it can tip the balance of power in your favor, because you'll then have access to all the resources in that territory.
The game will also have three single-player campaigns-covering early Korean history, middle German history, and modern US history-with more than 30 missions.Įmpire Earth 2 will introduce the concept of territory to real-time strategy games. And when you begin to rub against your neighbors, you can deal with them militarily or diplomatically. You'll start off with a small tribe, and you'll have to gather resources, expand your territory, and research new technologies, which will let you survive and advance through the ages. You'll pick from between 14 different civilizations, with more than 370 unique units and 320 buildings. Empire Earth 2's epic game will run from 10,000 BC to about the 23rd century, with more ages-or eras-than the original game. However, we've gotten ahead of ourselves. Additionally, the game will incorporate advanced, new artificial intelligence as well as new kinds of single- and multiplayer gameplay. Empire Earth 2 will feature a new 3D graphics engine that will support all the latest DirectX 9 hardware features while also scaling down to support older machines. According to Ian Davis, Mad Doc's CEO, the development team has started from scratch. So, in other words, the graphics engine and other features are usually recycled to save development costs and time. (Goodman's Stainless Steel Studios is working on a new project.) In the gaming industry, an even-numbered sequel tends to be an enhanced version of the preceding game. Modern-era tanks take on infantry in a lopsided matchup.Įmpire Earth 2 is being created by Mad Doc Software, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based development house that worked on The Art of Conquest expansion for the original game. Naturally, Vivendi has commissioned a sequel, and we were the first outsiders to be given a look at the game in development. This formula proved popular to gamers, and publisher Vivendi Universal touts that it has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide. You could usher a nation from the Stone Age to the futuristic robot age in the epic game, or you could choose a single epoch to play in, such as the age of Napoleon or World War I.
Only, instead of focusing on just one part of human history, the game encapsulated all of it.
And in some ways, Empire Earth resembled Microsoft's Age of Empires games. Designed by Rick Goodman, one of the creators of Age of Empires, Empire Earth basically took the huge scale of the classic turn-based strategy game Civilization and essentially translated it to real time. Empire Earth was a strategy game destined to do well.