Category: Empire Earth

Streaming Empire Earth on Twitch

Twitch is an intriguing little site. While it isn’t little in its cultural impact on the internet, there is something to said about how “media” ignores it. There are so many users who spending time on Twitch who have audiences in the tens of thousands and yet because it is not something that the older generations understand, they are not picking up on it and trying to understand it. In some ways, I like how Twitch is popular yet hidden away. Unlike YouTube, there is no presence of the old brands trying to muscle their way onto the site. YouTube basically gave up on its own userbase in favor of propping up TV stations that had their start in the 1950s. Linear Television should remain where it is; YouTube is its own thing and that’s better for the internet as a whole. However, in the rush for ever greater profits over building the internet into something useful, they have flooded YouTube with all these useless recommendations and taken away its creativity. I still use it as there are redeeming qualities to it, but there needs to be more competition here.

Here are some screenshots of the session that I streamed on Twitch. I realized that I was playing without the right output at the time but I still count it as a stream.

The screenshot below is from a successful stream. I decided to test out whether my settings were correct and whether the video was playing back to any viewers. Sure enough, it was. I did a quick random match on a continental map. Empire Earth’s AI loves to cheat so I didn’t want a stream where it was a difficult game so I had an AI ally with me.

It was an enjoyable experience but I need to do more streams before I get a handle on this site.

Empire Earth: The War of the Walls

This is a gallery of a recent Empire Earth skirmish that I had with two medium level AIs.

I made a choice to have the era start in the Dark Age and only let it progress towards the Middle Ages. I wanted to see how the AI interacted in this match.

The AI at Medium Difficulty was still cheating in Empire Earth.

The AI is alot more competent at this difficulty level here. They use the unit upgrading system in Empire Earth unlike in the Easy mode where they do not use it. This means that the AI tends to be better at tactical movements of their units.

They are also better at using their naval power in this game. In this particular match with the AIs, the Carthage AI was sending ships to my port and harassing me. My ally helped me with this, allowing for my fishing ships to deliver food to my empire.

However, I generally go for Wonder Victories in Empire Earth.

The Wonder victory in Empire Earth was analogous to the Wonder victory in Age of Empires games. These wonders take time to build, so I recommend having many citizens to build it and do it when you have strong economy and military in place.

The AI, as soon as you build the wonder, immediately starts beelining for the wonder with huge armies, sending everything to the wonder to prevent you from winning.

Of course, the AI has full view of the map. There is no fog of war for a smart computer. The AI also has huge resources and can just send tons of troops and ships to the location.

When one looks at the AIs towns and cities, alot of the citizens are not farming or mining. Often times, I will see them moving in straight lines, getting harassed and taken down by soldiers.

The match was somewhat annoying but I bulit strong walls and chose Byzantine Rome as my civilization. This meant by walls were strong and I had no issue with winning this wonder victory. Carthage was getting really aggressive at the end but my team was victorious.

Empire Earth: The Rare Case of a Video Game showing the future of Naval Warfare

Empire Earth Nano Age Aircraft Carrier Nexus.

In Science-Fiction, space is the great frontier that every author focuses on. However, the waters are as important as the deep expanses of space. Empire Earth clearly shows that the battles in the oceans of Earth will be as important.

In one of my games that I started as a skirmish on a Mediterranean map. I was engaging a rival computer player with my computer ally. This was on Easy and yet the AIs were acting in their usual dumb ways. They would have moments of brilliance but then spend time attacking walls slowly instead of building their economies.

Empire Earth Battle

I took a leisurely pace with the game, not spending too much time worrying about the AI.

When I was ready, I began preparations to strike.

The Naval battles in the Nano Age are quite exciting and have some weight to them. The developers really put effort into this section of the game, giving the ships a distinctive look in comparison with what we know in our current age.

When you see the submarines in the Nano Age, they are sleeker and have more angular structures to them. Most science fiction has a tendency to ignore the submarines also.

The inclusion of blue water ships in science fiction is something we should see more of in video games. It helps to revitalize a genre that sometimes get too stuck with space.