Empire Earth

jaggeh

Watch it with this one guys it tries to connect out to some sierra marketing site, i couldnt figure out why the game wouldnt start but hobbes did, zone alarm or other such programs will shut it down as it tries to do its naughty business, so set a permission for it or disable your security while playing.

Shinji

It's registering itself online - anti-piracy measure basically, or more a piracy measurement system. I'm not sure of the details; it may be a light version of SafeCast actually, which would mean that the game data is encrypted and it needs to get permission from Sierra to decrypt it. Won't actually stop people pirating it, but at least they can compare sales against activated copies and see how much they were damaged by this piracy...

pertinax

isnt it a bit unreasonable to expect all buyers to have internet access. Would they not be cutting out some buyers by doing this?

Shinji

Not really - not any more. A few years back when games started appearing on CD-ROM only, and later when they were for machines with 3D accelerators only, some people asked if it was unreasonable to expect people to have these things... Of course it wasn't. Same goes for net access with modern PCs, really.

That said, chances are that if it detects no net access configured, it'll accept that and get on with it. Or it might not - check the minimum specs on the box. If they say internet connection required (and they probably do) then it may well only work on PCs with net connects...

OSiriS

Has policy been changed latey, because as far as I was aware it was illegal for software to send data over the information without your permission ... or have they covered themselves with fine print in the licience agreement that no-one reads?

TwoShedsJackson

What about the game itself? Is it any good - usual RTS stuff? Multiplayer any use?

jaggeh

single player is good, there are four built in campaigns

greek campaign - prehistoric -> dark ages (the fall of rome)
english campaign - william the conquerer -> waterloo (napolean sucks)
german campaign - ww1 -> ww2 (richtofen rocks )
russian campaign - modern atomic age - nano age (2100ad)

each one offers 8 missions, my favourite so far was Prince edwards battle of agincourt, all the mission script is from shakespeare's king henry V
"This story shall the good man teach his son;
and Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remember'd;

We few, we happy few, we Band of Brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother;"



my next favourite had to be the battle of troy (trojan horses rule)

the multiplayer v computer is near impossible even on easy

online is great fun and extremly varied as you can play in any 1 of the 14 epochs
prehistoric
stone age
bronze age
iron age
dark ages
middle ages
rennaisance
imperial age
industrial age
ww1 - early atomic
ww2 - mid atomic
modern atomic
digital age
nano age

each one has its own untis with different strengths, and tactics.
(over 200 units )