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Empire Earth 2 demo

After playing only briefly the game seems very complex, but promising. The citizen manager will definitely be nice once I figure out how to use it. The picture in picture viewer will be helpful (and pretty cool), and if it works the war planner can only be a good thing. They obviously didn't skimp on the economic part of the game, as there are numerous resources to gather. As I was building a muskateer I noticed that saltpeter was a required resource for its construction.

This is not command and conquer- this is a serious RTS player's RTS. The technology trees are obviously very complicated, and with a dozen or so epoch's I can only imagine how many units are in this game. If you like RTS games that are as much about strategy as they are about fighting, this demo is worth a download. I can't wait to be spending five hours trying to complete one battle, just like in the original. There will definitely be a lot of playing time in this game.
 
Originally posted by: globalcitizen
Servers at 3dgamers at max capacity. Guess I will have to wait. 🙁
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Registration at fileshack is free, and I highly recommend it. Last night I downloaded the demo at 350+ kb/sec. Generally the waits are less than five minutes, and unless the file is new, they're usually shorter than that. I used to get everything from 3D Gamers, but now I find it almost impossible to even get a download started there.
 
Update: The AI is extremely aggressive. You get attacked constantly, even on easy difficulty. Literally within a couple of minutes the enemy is bearing down on you with 2 or 3 cannon and a swarm of infantry. You really need to be military minded from the get go. The "rock paper scissors" structure needs to be taken into account as well- I was getting slaughtered by cavalry.

The citizen manager is extremely useful, so much so that it's amazing it isn't already a standard RTS feature (though it soon will be). Clicking on the manager displays a list of all the resources, your current stock of each commodity, and how many citizens are currently mining/harvesting it for you. The cursor has a small number displaying the number of available or idle citizens. From there it's just a matter of right clicking on a resource to reduce the number of gatherers or left clicking to increase the number of gatherers. It makes keeping track of all the different resources (food, gold, iron, stone, wood, saltpeter, etc.) much easier.

I am a little disappointed that the view can't be rotated, though other than that the graphics engine is nice. It won't blow you away a la AOEIII, but it's nice.
 
Aggressive AI is a good thing. But the question is, how does the AE handle turtling? Can it get through walls? Does it build siege when it needs it? AOE and EE both suffered from massive problems handling base defenses. Also, the enemy would often times give up after awhile.
 
Originally posted by: skace
Aggressive AI is a good thing. But the question is, how does the AE handle turtling? Can it get through walls? Does it build siege when it needs it? AOE and EE both suffered from massive problems handling base defenses. Also, the enemy would often times give up after awhile.
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I haven't been able to play it that extensively, but it seems to handle walls better than it did in EE. Back in EE the best (sometimes only) way to win was to successively wall off any territory you've gained. I think you're going to have a harder time doing that in EE2. Again, I haven't play that much, but generally each enemy wave has included a couple of cannon, and in one instance they attacked with 5 bombard cannons. Needless to say, they were doing some damage. Unfortunately for me they went around the one side of my base that was walled off. I can't remember ever being hit that hard early on in an EE match. EE AI was never that aggressive late in the matches either.

And remember, these attacks all occurred with easy enemies.
 
took me an hour to beat easy.

i suck at rts but i love em. its pretty decent but i did not like the performance.

at 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF i was getting average ~20fps.
 
Originally posted by: Tyrant222
took me an hour to beat easy.

i suck at rts but i love em. its pretty decent but i did not like the performance.

at 1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF i was getting average ~20fps.
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Well no $hit sherlock.

 
Originally posted by: CubicZirconia
I haven't been able to play it that extensively, but it seems to handle walls better than it did in EE. Back in EE the best (sometimes only) way to win was to successively wall off any territory you've gained. I think you're going to have a harder time doing that in EE2. Again, I haven't play that much, but generally each enemy wave has included a couple of cannon, and in one instance they attacked with 5 bombard cannons. Needless to say, they were doing some damage. Unfortunately for me they went around the one side of my base that was walled off. I can't remember ever being hit that hard early on in an EE match. EE AI was never that aggressive late in the matches either.

And remember, these attacks all occurred with easy enemies.
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Hahaha! We used to do that too. We'd have intricate walls all over the map with insane gates 3 walls deep. We'd wall off resources if they were out in the middle of nowhere also.
 
wow I was expecting alot more than this, after playing AOM and RON ... this is it ???
Ok I have to agree there are some minor differences and it goes a little more deep than those mentioned but still, and yea this is geared towards the real RTS player but I still don't get what the big deal was with this one.
 
Originally posted by: NicColt
wow I was expecting alot more than this, after playing AOM and RON ... this is it ???
Ok I have to agree there are some minor differences and it goes a little more deep than those mentioned but still, and yea this is geared towards the real RTS player but I still don't get what the big deal was with this one.
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What were you expecting? This is at least as good as either of those games. It's not revolutionary, but it does incorporate some unique features and seems to be a pretty solid RTS.
 
Originally posted by: Kasper4christ
dam snow..
lol, coulndn't see a thing..
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The blizzards are definitely a bit on the obtrusive side. They're enough of an annoyance to delay an attack, that's for sure. I'm conflicted as to whether or not that's a good thing. On one had, it's a pain- but they did say that the weather engine was supposed to affect combat and be more than just window dressing. Who knows, maybe it will make things interesting.
 
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