Empire Earth: The Art of Conquest

"Hmmm...not quite what I was expecting..."

Empire Earth started with some really good ideas, and the expansion, Art of Conquest, merely took those ideas and placed them a little further ahead. While the game play of Art of Conquest is the same as the original Empire Earth, there are a few noticeable difference that you’ll find with the way that the game looks. The overall game play has changed just slightly to add some new material, and you should find plenty here that will keep you gaming well into the night. If you liked the original Empire Earth, then you’ll enjoy the expansion, and for the cheap price that you can pick it up for, it is well worth buying to continue the conquering.

Conquest…Such A Thrill…

The key to this is to have your workers find and harvest just enough of the resources that will allow you to build bigger and better units to send into battle. A challenging computer will constantly test your skills throughout, so you might want to practice on the random maps for a while before trying to tackle a human opponent. You have to be careful though, because the computer is exceptionally skilled at rolling over you. With the different difficulty levels, you can make your game easy or extremely hard, though the recommendation is simply to start out easy and work yourself into a heavy battle. A scenario editor allows you to create your own maps and terms to play with and even play with online against other Empire Players. This is probably one of the more interesting parts of the game, and you’ll find that with enough thought and creativity, your map can be used on the Net to not only battle, but recreate some of the more interesting sequences.

Some of the differences that you’re going to find here is that there are no longer single civilizations that you can play with. This time around, you’ll find that the additions of countries and different points in war have been added while other portions of the game have been taken out to allow these sequences to be played. The English campaigns are gone while the addition of Japan and the new Epoch that allows you to travel into that age. While the thought is interesting, that portion of the game has a high learning curve and can be extremely difficult even for strategy veterans who have played this title and many like it before. The additional countries that have been placed in the game such as the United States and Austria really give the game a more well rounded feeling rather than simply sticking you in one time frame and having you deal with it.

As you progress through the game, the ability to play random maps is what you will need to do in order to practice. With the addition of citizens that can keep your stockpiles high, you also have to worry about defenses against your opponents and the weapons that they bring with them. Building onto the game is the addition of the Epoch, which allows you to change ages at the simple click of a button. When you get into the different time frames, you’ll be given different units that you can build as well as different buildings and creations that can help you greatly in later battles. One of the best features is that the additions of different wonders allow you to work in different aspects in a God-like fashion that wasn’t readily available before. You’ll find these additions to be helpful and cool to mess with, though they do happen to take forever to create.

The interface that you have at your disposal really isn’t all that hard to work with, and most of what you have is done with a simple right click of the mouse. Directing troops through the battlefield takes little more than ten minutes of practice and all of the different elements in the game play are explained in a training mode. Once you’ve gotten good enough with the mouse, then you can assign numerous hotkeys to speed up your playing. These come in handy when trying to get numerous characters and units to move in the direction that you want them to. Probably the most impressive part of the control is that you can stack up units and then send them out on an all out destructive wave with a simple click of the button, allowing you to keep working on your civilization.

Earth Never Looked So Good…

When you look at the visual presentation of Empire Earth, you’ll find that there are some pretty interesting designs and animations for your armies and your holdings in general. Workers will swing axes at trees and drag meat from freshly slain animals to a town center. All of these small details add into the really epic battle sequences that can have up to hundreds of units fighting at once with little or no slow down. When you go through the different ages, you’ll also find that the game includes differences in the way that the buildings look and even the units and how they upgrade from the previous age. All of these details with the scenario cut-scenes really make up for a visually impressive game as long as your video card can handle it.

Additions to the visuals come in the form of tread tracks from your tanks, explosions that rock the landscape and even craters with some of the more powerful weapons. The addition of new units gives way to more animations and more event cut-scenes that were not in the original game. Most of the visual presentation has been cleaned up as well, which allows you to view the overall battles with much more clarity than before. With that in mind, the most impressive battlegrounds that I’ve seen thus far in both games has to come with the Art of Conquest and the space areas where you can send ships blazing off to do battle.

Nothing Special…

The audio in Art of Conquest is the same key as the first Empire Earth with most of the music in the game being the same musical tracks. The only differences that I’ve found in both is the addition of the new scenarios and what the stories behind them happen to be. Aside from that, the same music comes through with little or no difference and the upgraded units have their own set of sounds to go along with them. One of the problems here though is that in the futuristic scenes, there are cases where you might have a little problem getting all of the audio to come through in clarity. The excessive blasts and explosions is enough to make you mute the game or turn off the speakers completely for threat of blowing them.

The Conquest Continues…

Art of Conquest is about as good an expansion as any for strategy games except that they have substituted some of the more interesting sequences in favor of different units. While the overall presentation of the game in audio and even game play functions has been changed, the same base that the game was founded on still remains. For strategy gamers who are looking for the expansion pack of their dreams, this is one that is worth picking up if you have the original title to begin with and want something a little new. For those of you who are simply casual gamers, you might want to stick to the mainstream strategy games and leave this one be.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/09/03, Updated 02/09/03