Empire Earth III

Developer Mad Doc Software
Publisher Sierra
Release Date Fall 2007

“When Vivendi told us they didn’t want another game like Empire Earth II, we were happy because we didn’t want to do one,” says Mad Doc Software’s Matt Nordhaus, project director of Empire Earth III. He’s adamant that the next game in the series should live up to its grandiose name.
Empire Earth is like the frustrated little brother of historical real-time strategy games. No matter how big it gets (Stone Age to Mech Age!) or how many interesting changes it makes to its gameplay (War Planner! Citizen Manager!), there’s always someone else who pulled off that feature a little better and a little sooner. Throughout the studio, there’s a clear sense that, as well received as it was, something went askew in Empire Earth II.
“It may sound great to look at a game and see 15 factions or something, but when they’re all pretty much the same, it’s not very interesting,” says Albert Meranda, one of Empire Earth III’s designers. “It’s the same with techs. You get a slightly different swordsman when you Age up, or can get gold just a little bit faster. We wanted to get away from that.”
Empire Earth III is a radical change from the kitchen-sink spreadsheet approach of its sprawling predecessors. For starters, there are only three factions—Western, Eastern, and Middle Eastern—and each has a unique tech tree and units, as well as a single unique global power. “You can see it in how they build buildings,” explains designer John Cataldo. “The West is your default. You need builder units to get your buildings up. The East can use infantry to build structures. All of the Middle East buildings are produced by the city center and are mobile, too.”
Each of the three factions can follow different paths, however. “You might focus on Western infantry where someone else focuses on Western cavalry,” says Meranda. But staying on one military path doesn’t preclude you from being a threat. “The rock-paper-scissors is a little more flexible. So if you aren’t working on siege units, you can get fire arrows instead to attack buildings. They aren’t as effective, but it’s an option.”
Cataldo and Meranda are very aware that they are deviating from the traditional RTS model. “We wanted to get away from having to manage 50 peons to gather resources,” Meranda says. “So we took the territory system from Empire Earth II and adapted it. Each territory can produce either raw materials, population, or wealth. It adds geography to your planning. Instead of building peons, you build a warehouse and it collects the resources. You can add workers to the warehouse, but they are working in the warehouse, so you don’t have to manage them.”
But this change goes even deeper, Cataldo says. “Even if we have fewer resources, there is still a lot of gameplay going on. Some raw materials, like lumber, can be collected fast but run out more quickly. Stone is the opposite. It’ll last much longer, but you’ll get it at a slower rate.” This addition-by-subtraction attitude permeates the RTS level of the game. Air power has been simplified and the naval game focused on managing fewer ships. All this has been done in the hope that every decision you make will be an important one.
The big changes are in the campaign game. “We didn’t want to do scenarios again,” says Cataldo, “where you might play it once and never touch it again.” So, to put the empire and Earth back in Empire Earth, Mad Doc has introduced a global map that you conquer region by region, turn by turn. As you move across the planet, you may be forced to fight a traditional RTS battle. But this isn’t the straight line from other area-based conquest campaigns (like those in Battle for Middle-earth II or Rise of Nations). You may unlock optional quests that give you alternative routes to victory.
Nordhaus demonstrates a rescue-the-princess quest. Each region has native cities that may ignore you or impede you. “One village has captured the daughter of another chief. So you can choose to save her.” He stops to build a base and raise an army. “But you could just ignore the quest and kill everyone.” There are about 100 quests, each one contingent on whatever is going on in the game at that moment. “They are triggered by region, by technology, or by whatever assets you have,” Nordhaus says. “So you might not see all the quests for a while.”
Specialization also separates this Risk-like overlay from others you have seen. Territories can be set to economic or military modes, limiting what they can provide in a turn. In a nod to gameplay mechanics lifted from the boardgame world, you can target enemy territories with special powers. Play a coup card, and watch an enemy army convert to your side. Each of the three factions has one unique power at the end of the tech tree, the single nod to conformity among the three sides. “We wanted more, but they are hard to balance,” says Cataldo. “You don’t want to fill the powers with things no one ever uses.”
The designers have high hopes for the diplomatic side of the campaign. They entered with only one rule. “No backstabbing,” laughs Cataldo. “We hate it when the AI makes an alliance and then attacks you in a couple of turns for no good reason.” Mad Doc is implementing a relationship meter that tracks the profitability of your international trade, how well you have kept your word, and whether you have similar interests. “If you like cavalry, another cavalry-heavy nation might think of you as a brother-in-arms.” And there’s always the option of just avoiding the computer and playing against your friends. Though there are no random regional maps, you can generate a new world that is cobbled from the maps designed by Mad Doc’s art team.
Will this be the game that moves the Empire Earth series into the top tier of RTS titles? It’s much too soon to tell. But Mad Doc is doing all it can to make you sit up and notice it has lots of new ideas for a genre that’s moving as fast as its innovation will allow

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #196