February 7, 2008 - I am so tired of playing this game.

As I write this first paragraph, I have a campaign battle going on in front of me. My trebuchets are running in circles, my archers can’t get the hint that when I tell them to move to point A, I mean that I would like them to move to point A, you know, now. The enemy’s AI is, honestly, not doing a damn thing, and so I actually have time to write this as my units slowly decimate the opponent, one building after another. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t the twentieth time this had occurred.

An opponent, who apparently ‘loves’ me, has refused to take my simple alliance proposal, which means I will have to dismantle his empire, which is scattered like birdseed across the map, useless fortresses that serve no purpose but to sit there, fire arrows, and be a royal pain in the neck. So I do not look forward to this, and as I set my units to a search and destroy routine, I have some moments to write down a few words of thought.

Oh wait, the game has frozen (again), looks like I have more time than I thought.

The original Empire Earth was a fairly original game for its time. Instead of focusing around a particular period and group of units, like many other real-time strategy games of the time, it encompassed multiple epochs of history, from working with cavemen and clubs to mechanized warriors with laser beams. Frankly, the idea of fighting colonial infantry using fully-powered up laser cannons set my young mind aflame with interest. The game delivered on this promise, though at a pace as quick as the ages themselves (not fast).

After a change in developers, Empire Earth 2 came and went without much attention, mostly due to the overcomplicated nature of the title. So perhaps this was the driving force behind the nature of Empire Earth 3, the simplest title in the series, and by far, and in fact one of the simplest RTS titles I have played yet. This is not a good thing.

Empire Earth 3 is, essentially, what I have described above. Epochs of ages, colonial forces, mechs, lasers, explosions, etc. But, instead of the numerous ages afforded to you in previous titles, the entire history (and future) of mankind has been condensed into just five ages: Ancient, Medieval, Colonial, Modern, and Future. But that’s not all that’s been dumbed down.

First of all, there’s the resource gathering, or lack thereof. Sure, there are two resources to gather (well, three, technically, but we’ll get to that in a bit): there’s ‘Raw Material’, and there’s ‘Wealth’. To gather raw material, you don’t, say, cut trees or mine rocks, you merely build a warehouse next to a designated resource collection point, and watch as workers mine it without your input. To accumulate wealth, build a market, and watch as caravans autonomously move between it and a town center, also without your input. It’s all been automated and it all feels too simple.

What’s worse is the concept of territory control in the battles: each map is divided into multiple parts, and building a town center on one part effectively claims it as your own (only one town center per portion). Then, you can build just one market in that territory and only one warehouse per resource gathering point. It feels far too formulaic and repetitive, as all you’ll be doing is building a center, a market, a warehouse (or two), invade the next area, rinse and repeat.

“But good sir,” I hear you say in a Shakespearean accent for some odd reason, “doth this not grant us the privilege of sending forth our units in great battle (forsooth)?” Yes, is what I would say, which would be great if the actual combat was anything more than dull and tiresome. It’s not. Battles usually consist of sending one large group of units against another, watching them collide in a hectic mash of limbs and weaponry, and seeing if there are any left. Sometimes arrows fly into the fray, but I’ll be damned if I can tell who they’re hitting. This does not become better as the game progresses, it merely becomes army men running into each other instead of swordsmen. The last parts of skirmishes can get particularly tiring as two groups just throw countless units against each other, unfettered by bottomless resource points and cash reserves.