body{ color:white; word-wrap:break-word; } function setHeight() { parent.document.getElementById('walkthroughframe').style.height = ( document['body'].offsetHeight + 25 ) + 'px'; } Empire Earth - Strategies _____ _ _____ _ _ | ___| (_) | ___| | | | | | |__ _ __ ___ _ __ _ _ __ ___ | |__ __ _ _ __| |_| |__ | __| '_ ` _ \| '_ \| | '__/ _ \ | __|/ _` | '__| __| '_ \ | |__| | | | | | |_) | | | | __/ | |__| (_| | | | |_| | | | \____/_| |_| |_| .__/|_|_| \___| \____/\__,_|_| \__|_| |_| | | |_| ____ _ _ _ / ___|| |_ _ __ __ _| |_ ___ __ _(_) ___ ___ \___ \| __| '__/ _` | __/ _ \/ _` | |/ _ \/ __| ___) | |_| | | (_| | || __/ (_| | | __/\__ \ |____/ \__|_| \__,_|\__\___|\__, |_|\___||___/ |___/ 0. WHAT IS THIS FAQ? ............................................. By Oblivion 1. SQUADS .......................................................... by Ueriah 2. EE OVERVIEW ..................................................... by Ueriah 3. SNIPER RUSH ..................................................... by Ueriah 4. RIDERS ON THE STORM ............................................. by Ueriah 5. THE FINE ART OF WAR : A LOOK AT TACTICS ......................... by Ueriah 6. CONTRIBUTION TO MANKIND ...................................... by Buttfreek 7. EE BEGGINERS GUIDE ....................................... by Introspection 8. UNDERSTAND MORALE ........................................ by TheShadowDawn 9. PRE-SPACE CIV* ...................................................... by DJ 10. DM DRAGOON FLOOD .............................................. by EE Talon 11. THE BASIC STARTUP .............................................. by fissh_e * - EE: Art of Conquest Expansion Pack Only Guide. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0. WHAT IS THIS FAQ? by Oblivion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is version: 1.0 (11 Guides in Total) Greetings fellow Empire Earth players and EE:Art of Conquest players, this FAQ will give you hints and tips for online play for the average player. It also offers tricks that some experts don't even know. So its useful for everyone. These guides were made by some of the BEST players of the EE Community. So every aspect of them should come as an award to any player. __________________________ | Authors | |Ueriah (5 Strats) <--he rocks ;) |Buttfreek (1 Strats) | |Introspection (1 Strats) | |TheShadowDawn (1 Strats) | |DJ (1 Strats) | |EE Talon (1 Strats) | |fishh_e (1 Strats) | `--------------------------` If you want your guide added, removed, edited/modified you can email me I'll get back to you ASAP. All guides have been spell checked to the highest quality possible. Note, I don't accept poor, vague, non-English, copied/forged, or any other objectionable content strategy guides. My Email: Oblivion_ee@hotmail.com (remove ) ;) o.bliv.i.on (e-bl1v8-en) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. SQUADS by Ueriah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: January 29, 2002 -Epoch: Atomic (World War I) through Atomic (Modern) -Rating: 4.6 out of 5 Ah, the infantry... perhaps one of the most underestimated units in EE once WWOne hits. I guess that's understandable, once people have the ability to create tanks and other such several ton metallic devices, why should they worry about the plain old solider? There's a couple of reasons to give infantry the time that they deserve. First of all, infantry primarily require gold and food to create, leaving your metal free for those "backup" weapons to travel with your squads of infantry. Anti-tank guns, Flak Halftracks, Artillery, and the occasional tank or howitzer "sprice up" your forces, but it surely shouldn't define them. Secondly, infantry are cheap by comparison. A good tank rush in the WW1 epoch will drop 2 or 3 tanks in a base pretty quickly. In the same amount of time, you can have either a handful of machine gunners and an AT gun or some other such combination that will not only throw off the early rush, but allow to return the favour to an opponent now on the deficient side of the kill:lose budget. I started noticing the infantry tend to die rather quickly when you send them out on a "rush", which is possibly why I don't often see a lot of infantry rushes. However, if you wait until a small group, or Squad of infantry is produced, the squad has a much higher lifespan then the individual soldier, is more prepared to deal with adversity, and is more versatile as well and therefore able to adapt for various roles "on the fly". So what separates a "Squad" from sending a couple of doughboys out scouting? Well, Squads are created according to their needs. Instead of putting all your eggs in the same basket and wincing when your 3 tanks run into 3 AT guns, you bring soldiers to fit the needs you feel you will be addressing. To figure out what to bring, address the function of each soldier according to his best use: Machine gunners; Best suited for shredding infantry and citizens. The staple of a solid infantry force. You want max damage, max range, and a hit point upgrade, unless you are a speed freak with your infantry, in which case I'd say take speed over range. Grenade Launcher/Bazooka; Best for blowing up armour. Damage isn't too impressive but the rate of fire is good. The trick to blowing up stuff fast with these guys is having enough of them to shred something in one volley. The problem is you need a lot to do that. With max damage upgrade and range upgrade, it' a little more reasonable, but I feel you are better to bring a AT gun or two along to expedite the process of destroying armour. Doughboys/Marines; Notice that these guys cost Iron instead of gold. If you don't have a Siege Factory or Tank Yard draining the Iron out of your economy, make HERDS of these drones instead. Make them bulky in HP use them to control Artillery, Canons, AT guns, and the like. Be careful about keeping them too close together or a good volley of artillery will lay your soldiers out. Snipers; A good sniper is worth the 150 gold and 150 food you pay for him, and will cost the enemy many times his cost if you deploy him properly. I like keeping snipers mobile ahead of the rest of his squad, set on Recon behaviour so he will observe without being giving away his position with gunfire until I decide when. that you can still attack with units on Recon, they just won't autoattack. Scout ahead and pick off the citizens, two things a sniper is really good at. Put him in a safe place, switch him to Stand Ground or Defensive, then go move in the rest of the Squad. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trench Mortars/Heavy Mortars; They are useful in conjunction with Bazookas and Grenade launches in taking out vehicles. They have splash damage for shelling mining sites and farms. They can shoot over walls. They are good for shooting areas where your sniper is perched in recon mode. This is a really underused strat that's sometimes tough for even an intermediate player to spot right away. Stinger Soldiers; In Modern eras, you simply need to have Stingers in with your ground forces or helicopters and bombers will beat you back every time, regardless of how good you are at playing your infantry with overlapping zones of fire in small groupings. Your halftracks are going to be the first targets, Stingers are a little harder to spot. I keep them behind the main body of the squad alongside the Medic. Partisans; The Stingers of WW1, these guys have the additional advantage of being able to move through trees. They can also be kept on Recon to not shoot people right away, therefore making them good scouts as well as being great raiders against lumberjacks. Might not sound like much, but drop a couple partisans in the trees where the enemy is cutting down lumber, set them to stand ground, and engage him with the rest of your scout. Chances are he won't notice until his 'jacks are dead. Flamethrower; Burn down buildings. Good for taking down high HP airports. Woosh. More studies under way... Medics; The 2nd most important unit in your squad should is the medic. I never keep the medic in the front ranks, keep her towards the rear. As units are injured, pull them back to where she is and let her patch them up. Bringing a Medic gives you much longer durability. Combining that with more HPs for your troops through upgrades and you have real staying power for your ground forces. Citizens; The most important unit in your squad. Keep your Citizen with your Medic in the rear. This guy has to stay alive. He creates hospitals, towers, and anti-air guns when the squad "digs in". He can build Barracks or walls (walls make good trenches). He can even build a Temple to bring a Prophet along... the role of the citizen with the squad is sort of as a "combat engineer". There's also the matter of ive vehicles. Halftracks; Great for keeping the skies friendly. Since I started concentrating on infantry I don't often bother with the skies. Much cheaper to have good AA then to have a good air force, which is where it seems the majority of players seem to focus their money on, and that leaves the gold and iron available for more infantry. Transport helicopters; These are the way to travel for ultimate hit-and-run raiding ability. Touch down in a farm sector with three snipers, three flamethrowers, and four machine gunners. Shoot everything that moves until defenders appear, then load back onto the helicopter and pull back to safety. Keep a medic on the copter to heal units as you go en route to the next raid. AT guns; The bane of infantry is armour and bombers. You have Stingers and Halftracks to help with the skies, but the Bazooka guy just doesn't always cut it, even with the help of a few machine gunners giving ive fire. So make life easier on yourself and bring a couple AT guns with. Keep em in the back by the Medic, the Citizen, and Stingers. Here's a couple cost comparisons: 4 HE tanks = 400 food, 400 iron 2 AP tanks = 260 food, 260 iron 2 Halftracks = 200 food, 200 iron ---------------------------------- 860 food, 860 iron 4 machine gunners = 380 food, 340 gold 1 medic = 75 food, 50 gold 5 doughboys/marines = 200 food , 200 iron 3 stingers = 180 food, 150 gold --------------------------------- 835 food, 200 iron, 640 gold It's a comparable cost. The difference is that the infantry will kill soft units much faster, making the squad a preamble approach to raiding as it impacts damage over a greater number of targets faster. If you replace the doughboys with 3 AT guns your squad will tear through armour nearly as easy, and your iron is still available for other applications or tribute to your partner. This one gets their tears flowing: the Aggressive Recon - 1 sniper 150 gold, 150 food 1 medic 75 food, 50 gold 5 marines/doughboys 200 food, 200 iron 1 citizen 50 food --------- 550 food, 200 gold, 200 iron Makes for an efficient rush. You can usually have this while they are building the start of their own military. If they have tanks defensively, split up and use the ensuing confusion that follows (if you are really fast, set waypoints to have each of your guys reconverge someplace safer)to allow the sniper to pick off as many citizens as he can while the tank chases your grunts instead. Meantime, your citizen is happily building a Barracks or Siege Factory ( for AA guns) nearby while your Medic waits to heal any survivors. You get the idea. FOX AND HOUNDS 4 Partisans 160 Food, 160 Iron 1 Sniper 150 Food, 150 Gold 1 Medic 75 Food, 50 Gold ------------------------- 385 Food, 160 Iron, 200 Gold Another nice rush grouping, but lacks the staying power of the group above since the partisans aren't quite as sturdy as the doughboys. Give the partisans speed increases ASAP and keep the medic and sniper safely off to a concealed location. Zig in and out of the trees to ambush lumberjacks and pull out before any serious damage comes to your troops. The sniper will whittle down soft targets as they try and chase you. You might notice that these squads of infantry can be send out one after another for maximum effect. While the next lot is building, queue up another lot and use what's out there. Periodically regroup and reassign to new squads as you fortify the ground that you take. With infantry, variety is the key. Bring troops for more occasions then the one that you will be initially going into. Bringing a Hero along with a Squad of Infantry makes it so much more impressive. ________________, Religion and War: ----------------` A lot of people give up on Priests in the later age. That's terrible. Priests can covert buildings so that you don't need to destroy them. Prophets are not as devastating as they were earlier, but still remain useful, particularly with defensively used Malaria, a good Disease, or a Hurricane in a Naval Battle. Keep all religious types with the Medic nearby. And preferably some guards... Happy grunting! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. EE OVERVIEW by Ueriah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: March 13, 2002 -Epoch: All -Rating: 4.7 out of 5 Overview One of the features for Empire Earth that I feel is a welcome change to the RTS genre is the sheer magnitude of versatility that is available for players in accordance to their own individual style of tactics and strategy. Or to put it simply, there is just no one build order that people can follow to insure a swift victory. For some players, if you hit them with a rush you can expect almost no resistance. Other players will eat your same rush with a successful defence, and losing a forward army can be an event that encumbers your economy and allows your enemy to advance technologically or by methods of territorial expansion. This guide is a commentary on various segments of game play, and may serve to teach newer placers or perhaps even allow more skilled players to compare notes. As such it's worth noting that I play primarily RM games. I would imagine that some of what applies to RM would carry over to DM (deathmatch) games as well. Economy One difference between Empire Earth and other RTS games that I'm used to playing is that the resource allocation spots do not exhaust themselves. (At least not during an 'average' game...) This is a little different from some other games, where you build bases until a resource patch is depleted, then move on in a hunter-forager style. During warfare, the country with the best economy will generally have the upper hand. A strong economy allows the construction of a strong army, and a strong, well-equipped army will generally have an advantage over an army put together by a civilization that is having a shortage of one or more resources. Also, a strong economy is essential to advancing through the ages faster then the opposition, which will ultimately result in your forces having a deciding edge in technology. You don't have to be Sun Tzu in order to realize that means that if you have 100 troops in battle and they are an age ahead of the other army's 15 troops, you will probably win the battle. With this in mind, maintaining a strong economy and continually expanding your economy should be your number one priority. The resources in Empire Earth are as follows: Food: It is essential to have a good supply of food. From the copper age forward, players can construct granaries. Each granary s eight farms. In addition, eight people can be populated into a granary to increase the amount of food that each citizen carries back to the granary. Food can also be found in 'harvest patches'; or by hunting groups of animals. Food is needed to advance through the epochs of time. Food is also used in the production of 'soft units' (i.e. citizens and military personal). Wood: Wood is used in the creation of buildings, as well as the formation of naval units and 'ive' units (cannons, siege weapons, archers, etc.) As a citizen chops wood, he depletes the forests, but at a very slow rate. Forests impede movement of troops, though there are some troops that can move through the forests. Wonders also require a good deal of wood. Wood is taken to settlements/town centres/capitals where it is stored and added to your stockpiles. Stone: Stone is a very useful resource. It allows the construction of certain buildings as well as many of the defensive structures in the game. Walls and towers are essential in controlling the movements of enemies within your boundaries. Stone is also required for the creation of Wonders, and for the upgrading of certain unit attributes (such as the range of the towers). Stone is taken to settlements/town centres/capitals where it is stored and added to your stockpiles. Gold: Gold is a precious metal that is used in the creation of many various troops types. It is also used to advance through the epochs and research many technologies. It is also an important resource if one wishes to take advantage of the production of priests and prophets. Gold is needed for the creation of a Wonder. Gold is taken to settlements/town centres/capitals where it is stored and added to your stockpiles. Iron: Iron is a precious metal that is useful in the creation of weapons. The value of Iron goes up as the ages advance, and it's never a good thing to get caught without ample supplies of iron. Iron is also used in the creation of Wonders. Iron is taken to settlements/town centres/capitals where it is stored and added to your stockpiles. There's really no 'one right way' to proceed, which is another huge improvement from previous games in the RTS genre. Nor is there really a specified number of citizens to have in order to have a 'strong' economy. EE has many variables that depend on which type of game that you are involved in, and what might be a decent start for an epic game that spans from Pre-History to the Nano age might turn out to be a poor opening sequence for a game that begins in WWI. You have a healthy economy when you can queue up large groups of troops while expanding the defences of your empire, and still manage to stockpile resources to advance to the next age. Most of the resources in your economy are controlled by the proximity of said resource to the nearest Settlement/Town Centre/Capital. A Settlement turns into a Town Centre once it is populated with 5 people. A Town Centre turns into a Capital when it has 15 people. From there, another 35 people can be crammed into the Capital. There is a direct correlation with the number of people that you have in your Settlements to the number of resources that you get from it. When you have 50 people living in a settlement, you double the production of everything within a two-square radius. If you get really lucky, you might some spots where one Capital covers two resource patches. That means that if a miner hauls back 15 iron to a Capital with 50 people inside of it, the treasury of the kingdom is credited for 30 instead of 15. If all other aspects of you and your opponents are equal, and you take advantage of the above fact and fill your Capitals to 50 whereas he leaves his as Town Centres, you will be out producing your opponent by a ratio of 30 to 16 in stone, iron, and gold. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hunting Early in the game, particularly if you enjoy playing epic battles that start from the prehistoric ages, you may find it useful to send out some hunters to gather meat. This is a pretty good idea, since you won't always have ample patches of pumpkins nearby. Herds of animals can reproduce if only one animal in the herd remains alive. Instead of focusing my initial attentions on the animal herds, I usually dispatch my people to the pumpkin patches. Once I get six people working a patch, I'll hotkey them to a hunting party and send them away to kill nearby animals. This has another cool advantage early in the game, namely, if your opponent sends a lone scout or a very small scouting force, you can make short work of the scout with a hunting party of six. Unfortunately, cannibalism doesn't seem to be a permissible game feature, so your hunters can't go out and grab enemy citizens for stew-meat. Maybe in the expansion. Again, there is no 'perfect'start, but I generally try to have a few hunting parties set up like that. It's also advantageous to sometimes send hunting parties out to kill the animals that are a little further away to give the ones that are right by your starting settlement a chance to multiply a little before getting hunted to extinction. The 'thin' animals, like deer and giraffes and such, reproduce twice as fast as the smaller herds of larger animals (i.e. Elephants, Walruses, etc) and the larger animals should be hunting in parties of at least three or four to make sure that the animal doesn't get the upper hand with a lone cocky hunter. The 'thin' animals have half the meat of the larger animals. Fishing The seas are another source of food, and for only 50 wood a pop. This is a great way to establish wood for food in the stone age! However, it's also worthy of noting that fishing spots last significantly shorter then the harvesting patches on land, and if you are planning on any amount of fishing, you will want to make sure that you have a few warships to defend your fishermen. If you do plan on creating a fishing fleet, it's best to start with one or two fishing boats and have them scout about the nearby shores in search of fish. If you find some suitable fishing waters, you can right click on the fishing spot with the Dock selected and you will set up a waypoint so that your fishing ships will be created and head off to the selected area in order to fish. Foraging Foraging is one way to gather food. As with fishing, once you have selected your Town Centre/Capital you can set up a waypoint and queue up multiple citizens to be built. Each patch can up to six gatherers. If more then six are at the site, the extra gatherers will remain idle until one of the gatherers gets up to bring the food back to the storage facility. Farming The forth, and perhaps most efficient way of maintaining a stable food intake, is the use of Farming. In order to farm, one must built a Granary first. Eight fields will be automatically created in a perimeter around the granary. Granaries can populated in a similar manner to citizens populating Town Centres. Eight citizens in a granary will increase the size of the loads of food from the surrounding farms. Also, it is worth mentioning that various technology improvements become available throughout the epochs. In order to research these, which increase the rate of which your farmers collect food, one must check the Granary as the new epoch is attained. You can set a waypoint for a farm once the Granary is built and your new citizens will automatically being constructing farms. You may also set a waypoint on the granary itself by placing the waypoint directly on the Granary. When the new citizens arrive, they will automatically populate the Granary with up to eight citizens. When farmers are beset by attacking forces, they will usually flee in terror. Sometimes they only run so far as the next field over, though, and a casual observation won't always pick up on that It does pay to check your farms after each enemy raid to make sure that they are still producing at maximum efficiency, as one single farmer that is not toiling in the fields will reduce the output of that granary by 12.5% (100/8=12.5%). Mining In order to gather iron, gold, and stone, you will have to send citizens out to mine these resources. A single mine, or 'supply pile', will up to six workers. As mentioned above, if you wish to optimize your resources, you will have to make sure that the supply centre near the mine is within two squares of the resource and holds as many citizens as possible in order to get the most out of your mine. It is also worth noting that, much like fishing and farming, it is possible to spend food on new citizens and have them head directly for the mines by use of the hotkeys. By establishing a way point on your resource site, the new citizens will come into existence and report immediately to work at the mines. Base Design Before you begin placing buildings, you need to consider a few things; What are you looking to accomplish? If you are looking to rush your opponent with Calvary, it only makes sense to put up a series of Stables instead of one stable, one archery range, and one barracks. What are your expectations for base defence? If you want to have a stronghold that is difficult to razed, you will need to build plenty of towers, good housing coverage and aa guns (epoch permitting). - Good house coverage is defined as having the maximum houses within the radius of the dotted line that appears when you click on your town centre. In tournament game play, you will want at least 2 houses territorially for maximum morale bonus. In standard game variant, you will want to have four houses. The housing raises morale in the same manner as a Warrior Hero, which is that it reduces damage taken by X%. Full housing is 40%. Have a designated farm area. I usually strive for about 6 full granaries, 3x2, and surround the farmlands with walls, towers, and AA if appropriate, as well as a few troops. Undefended farmland will be laid to waste if you are attacked by fast units, that can rush in, slaughter some farmers, and run back out before other forces are brought to bear against them. The more wood you collect, the more military production buildings you can build. If you have six barracks and double click on one of them, you will select all six at once, and if you queue up units all six buildings will produce them. This is a great way to make squads of troops fast so that you can pay attention to other aspects of gameplay with greater scrutiny. Consider this: Double clicking one building in the above example then hitting �Shift-Unit type' will create thirty units (assuming of course your economy can meet your demands!) in a much faster fashion that building 10 troops in three barracks. Also, you can easily convert wood to food, whether it's for fishing ships or farms. If you are playing the earlier epochs, especially before the invention of gunpowder units, Temples are essential, if nothing else to make sure that enemy prophets don't lay you low with calamities. I'd strongly suggest them for any island board as well, as a well placed hurricane can destroy a navy if it catches the commanding naval opponent unaware. Towers are a great way to discourage land units from standing around slaughtering your people. I try to build a few of them in a triangle around my farmland area, and a few around the resource sites as well. Towers seem most useful Pre-Dark, and then they seem to enjoy a comeback from WW1-Nano. WW1 brings the introduction of AA guns, but by WW2, they are a necessity. Hide your AA in between buildings, amidst trees, etc. and since AA is so vulnerable to fast Marine raids, make sure to post either a couple of towers or couple of guards, or better still, both. Much like troops can be upgraded, so can AA encampments, for damage, range, and hit points. If you are going to spend the resources to defend an area with housing, it might be worth it to build a couple of hospitals so that your troops can last longer. Having at least one hospital is essential� send the troops back from the front line and get them healed, as opposed to building new waves and not having any survivors. The First Ten Minutes, or "Rush vs. Boom" One observation of the EE multiplayer community is that the first ten minutes of game play seem to signal which direction the game will go in. One extremely useful tool in the first ten minutes of game play is to hit f11 as soon as the game begins. This will show a timer. I�ve found that regardless of your style of play, the ability to see the timer elapsed helps you meet your goals that you define for yourself. The concept of �rushing' is to hit your opponent with the intention of damaging their economy to the point where it costs them more resources to recover then it cost you in the expenditure of their attack. Simply put, him them fast, hit them hard, and while they struggle to recover, keep pounding them down. The concept of �booming' is to focus on the defence and growth of your economy, and to outproduce other players, hopefully culminating in either having a larger military, a more advanced military, or in some cases, a military with an epochal advantage. A good player will do both of these things, finding a balance between �fast attack' as well as territorial defence is one sign of growth as a player in of skill development. Let your intentions dictate your actions, especially in the first ten minutes of the game. If you are planning on a tank rush, for example, why devote early attention to harvesting gold or stone? At the end of ten minutes, evaluate your position. Have you already hit them? Do you need to really dig in and prepare for the counterattack or do indications suggest now might be a time to get some military production buildings placed closer to the enemy? Are you producing troops steadily? One good rule of thumb- try to have a military production building up no later than the 2nd building to facilitate a troop type that your civilization enjoys at least one natural bonus in. The Mid-Game Following the initial skirmishes of the first ten minutes or so of the game, the roles of each player becomes a bit more defined in of aggressor and victim. A defensive player that resigns himself to playing exclusively defensive has resigned himself from territorial expansion, and therefore with all other aspects being equal in of skill, will face extinction sooner or lately. Or, to put it more simply, if you find yourself entering the mid-game of the defensive, you need to be able to not only defend yourself against the current attack, but launch a counter attack as well. Following the opening of the game, territorial expansion begins, based on resources available. If adequate scouting was available during the opening phase of the game, you should have no problem advancing to needed resource sites. �Forward Building' occurs when you build military production closer to the enemy for purposes of avoiding those long marches, particularly on larger maps. Some players choose to try and strong arm a resource pile that is unattended relatively close to enemy land as to deprive them of a resource as well as expanding your own economy. When you are forward building, it is of the utmost importance to have a populated settlement and housing. For the cost of 100 wood and 250 food (or less) you almost double the lifespan of all troops stationed at the forward lines of battle! A hospital and a few tours makes a great addition. Another interesting take on forward building is to pick an area close to their base with no resources nearby. Even better, do so as a backup in case your forward base is destroyed; a handful of troops might still be enough to turn an aggressive army away from your territory and bring them back to the defensive of their homeland. One of the most difficult questions is when to advance in epochs during multi-epoch games. It has been my observation that players who hoard resources to try and advance rapidly through the ages will find themselves defeated at the hands of enemies who devoted their resources to the production of military units instead. The general trend seems to be that the best time to save for the next epoch is following a successful military conquest, when your opponent is using his resources to renew production and rebuilt lost troops. Boomers use the mid-game section to secure their economy, and allow it to continue to expand. If they are able to continuous produce greater and greater amounts of wood, that trickles down instead greater food production which can be used quite easily to fortify iron, gold, and stone deposits to 50 people each, effectively doubling their production. Communicate with allied forces regularly! Learning to coordinate attacks with different groups of available troops is essential to the successful conclusion of any military advance. Faster units can draw the attention of defending forces while follow-up forces strike now-exposed targets. Some units, such as Artillery, Bombards, or Cannons, can be used to lay in wait and dissolve pursuing enemies. All players will benefit from upgrading their military units, and will enjoy the benefits the greatest if they choose their upgrades in accordance with their personal playing style. Upgrade your units according to their use. The End-Game If you are on the offensive, the end-game generally stems from the your opponents inability to respond to your military advances. If there are other players remaining on the enemy team, it is a time to regroup your forces and make a final march on their alliance. It is also a good idea to try and make your final assaults from multiple directions, as well as leaving a few troops scattered along the perimeter to pick off citizens that they might be trying to regroup elsewhere on the board. If you are on the defensive, try to get a few citizens over to one of your allies territories. Even if you can only contribute marginally, you have your attention to devote to the team. One good scouting unit, for example, doesn't cost a lot, and yet lets you keep track of troop movements for your allies. There is a certain point where it becomes apparent, particularly in single player games, when one player is going to win. There is no clear way to say when is the time to offer to wave the white flag, but I have witnessed sometimes players will misjudge the situation and surrender when victory was much closer at hand then they may have realized. However, if you do surrender, it's generally frowned upon to simply drop out without at least saying "I surrender"; or "GG"; or something to that effect that acknowledges that you are opting out. If you win, don't gloat. Each person having a little bit of self-control goes a long way towards improving the quality of the EE community. If you do suspect a player of cheating, as there is currently the possibility of someone enabling a trainer and giving a large tribute to his allies, it is probably better to first investigate the final screens and compare tributes with resources collected and spent. If something is way out of whack, work from there and take screenshots. Don�t just assume that if someone is faster then you that they are cheating. Becoming A Better Player As with anything else in this life, the more one practices and the more new things one attempts, the better that one will become. Don't limit yourself to the same old strategy each game, try mixing things up all the time to learn from a variety of conditions. Stick out games until you are absolutely done. The longer you are around, the more you learn about the later parts of the game. Pay close attention to the resources collected at the end of a game. Take screenshots and review them to notice trends. Are you finding yourself low on gold on a regular basis? Or are there aspects of battles that you'd like to concentrate on, such as a better kill to loss ratio? Learn from what works. Learn from what doesn't work. Try to play as many games as you can with people of equal or greater skill so that you can learn from what they use. Keep confident, but not cocky. If you really want to get focused on your game, keep notes on what went right/wrong during each game. Identify and utilize those trends and apply that to your own style of game play. Learn to communicate with your allies. Build a rapport throughout the game. If you have a surplus of a resource, offer it to an ally who is using that resource for production. If you have a few extra units, send them to an allies battle lines. If you need help, make a request. It's much better for an alliance to have one member ask for help as opposed to remaining silent and getting defeated early on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. SNIPER RUSH by Ueriah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: January 25, 2002 -Epoch: Atomic (World War I) through Atomic (Modern) -Rating: 3.9 out of 5 A word of warning. This one isn't like my usual "Have Fun with this Strategy!". Nope. This one is, in my opinion, kind of cheap. I wouldn't advise it if you are looking to play one of those "let's-have-fun-and-play-EE" games, but it might be appropriate for that game with the roommate for fifty bucks. Or tourney play. The Premise: To kill your opponent before they know what the #@*&^ is going on. My preferred Civ for this strat is . However, any Civ with good bonuses for Food and Gold will work equally well. If you have Custom Civs for this... go for Faster, Longer Range, More Damaging, More Hit Point, Faster Build, Cheaper Cost ranged infantry. If there's still points for an economic edge, take it in Gold. This works best in a small map, but Medium also usually works nicely. The premise of this strat, quite simply, is to produce a Sniper and kill the enemy before they have a defence up. This is a WW1 rush. To produce a Sniper, you will need a Barracks, so if you don't start with enough wood to build a Barracks, use your Starting Citizens to go get it. Then, you will need 150 Gold and 150 food to start making your Sniper. With your Sniper made, send him off towards the enemy. Start with his resource piles, picking off people. You will do best if you have 1-shot kills, otherwise you will have some very wounded peasants. One of two things will happen at this point: 1. You get attacked, either by Peasants, Towers, or Military Units, or... 2. The other guys sits there and takes it. You'd be amazed how many times 2 happens. In my "testing" games, every time but one people sat there and took it. If you can wipe out 6 or 7 people that quickly, you have dealt a CRIPPLING blow to their economy and if you can keep any kind of pressure on them at all, you should have the game in the bag. The reason being is simple: at that early stage, if they have less people on resources, their economy is THAT much weaker. A good variant is to have a Doughboy or Marine (or two!) produced while Gold mining for the Sniper. This way, if you really hurt a peon but don't kill it, the other unit can blast it away. If they attack, no biggie. It means you are playing someone worthwhile. Hurt them as much as you can, build defence back at _your_base for the counter rush. Although this isn't a 100% strategy, and can be stopped quite easily by a player with very good defensive positioning of towers OR their own sniper rush (keeping theirs on D until it kills yours, this works good as a counter rush), it seems to do quite well and makes a competitive start to any WW1-Modern game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. RIDERS ON THE STORM by Ueriah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: January 22, 2002 -Epoch: Middle Age -Rating: N/A Ah, the proverbial joke about Custard's last words being "Hey, where'd all those Indians come from?" THE STRATEGY: I'm talking about the joy that is Calvary Archers. I'm well aware of the Unit Relationships and how some units seem to be geared for fighting other units, but I've found that wise Civ picks on the attributes that affect Ranged Calvary will give ya something to play with right up until the birth of tanks, and in a game that spans from Pre-Nano, that's a hell of a good edge. I like the Assyrians for this, with a bonus to Hit Points, Range, and Speed for Ranged Calvary. Having thus said, I've been playing around with the concept of Horseback Archers, and I've found that they seem to have a true lust for carnage. Even with longswordsmen and their shields don't hold up well to long lines of Calvary Archers, and with their speed maxed out they can outrun any Calvary sent at them. This tactic can be used to lull their Calvary into any number of fun ambushes (i.e., pull your Calvary archers to retreat past trees filled with barbarians, then have them jump them as they pursue.... or replace barbs in trees with pikemen and a prophet with enough mana for Malaria... you get the idea). A couple of knights and Cataphracts make sure that if they can catch you, you can still fight as furiously as you can fast. Burst a hole in a wall and outrun the defenders to that tender farm/ore community, kill 'em all, and pull out before they can corner you. You will wreck players that don't keep their farms/ore sites guarded with towers and have housing nearby with your superior speed. COUNTER : The easiest counter to the Horde of archers seems to be the clever placement of defensive structures, having a lot of towers with tight overlapping ranges, having a solid coverage of your territory with Temples to avoid having said tower coverage torn asunder by Prophets acting as scouts for the Hoard. And I do mean a lot of towers. The Horde will kill your farmers/miners, and the towers will drop the hoard. Fortunately, citizens are cheaper to replace then Calv Archers. If you happen to have a Prophet of your own from one of those defensive Temples you have, and you can throw a Malaria at the Horde, it's another fast way to turn horsemen into softer targets. Don't waste your time with Pikes, as they will be outrun, unless you can someone "catch" them at a bottleneck. Happy hunting! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. THE FINE ART OF WAR : A LOOK AT TACTICS by Ueriah ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: December 16, 2001 -Epoch: N/A -Rating: N/A Howdy everyone. I'd like to take a second before I get started and say a big THANK YOU to the makers of this wonderful, in depth RTS. This game absolutely blows away the "old staples" in my collection... Warcraft 2, Starcraft: Brood Wars, Age Of Empires, etc. As such, I've had to rethink many of the strategies and it took a while before I could beat the computer AI, even at an easy level. I figured I'd chime in my two cents worth of strategy based on what I've learned from these first successful battles against the AI (as well as being a casual wargamer over the past ten years). The games against the AI that I usually play are set at Standard with Low Tournament resources. I begin with Prehistory and end in the Nano Age... assuming that it takes that long to achieve victory. PART ONE : THE EARLY GAME The first portion of the game is a structured race to get food built up so that you can advance. I don't bother collecting resources such as Gold and Iron and Stone until I arrive at the Stone Age. I build six peasants on each of my harvest patches. Then I build two or three guys and have them set cutting wood. Then I pull the first six guys off the harvest patch and have them go hunt animals. I repopulate the harvest patch with more workers, and then I do it again. At this point I have 12 harvesters and 12 hunters, and a few guys chopping wood. You need to build two buildings, and then your society of hunter-gathers is ready to begin advancing epochs. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT IN THE EARLY GAME TO USE WAYPOINTS ON YOUR SETTLEMENTS so that you don't have to worry about running each one of your guys around individually. If you click the "Make Peasant" button six times with your waypoint set on a specific resource, you'll send six peasants to gather it and you can "forget about it" for a while and move on to something else, whether that happens to be setting another queue or what have you. You can set a waypoint on a settlement and then click 5 times and that 5 peasants will arrive and AUTOMATICALLY POPULATE the settlement so that you can bring peasants out two by two. In the Stone Age I usually try get a few settlements into Town Centres. Base design is really important. Spend a little bit of time making sure that your bases are well defended and that effort will be rewarded many times over should you find yourself under attack by an enemy. The cool thing about tactics and strategy is that it's totally possible for you to beat back a much larger attacking force by making use of a good tower architecture that has multiple overlaps in the range of the tower. This is a concept that is known as "Turtling". The advantage of being a Turtle is that you can slaughter army and have minimal casualties. However, defensively, Towers are NOT ENOUGH to withstand attacks, and a human player can chew through Turtle designs much more efficiently then the AI. Instead of placing one tower, for example, place three or four towers. Build wall between the towers so that you can control the "flow" of the offensive. Keep your resources safe by having a garrison patrol the grounds. Give Archers or Ranged Infantry units the order "Hold Ground" (which tells them to stand put and fire on enemies that come within range) and place them in areas where they will do some damage to an advancing fort. Try to build a Temple and a University within the borders of your civilization to keep the opponents from invoking disasters or converting your peons. I usually try to construct Fortified Areas, provided I have enough Stone. If not, it's better to have a piece of wall that they can go around as opposed to no wall and they go straight through. Your home base usually has pretty good resources around it. It's worth defending. Once you hit the Copper Age you can build six or seven granaries, populate them fully with 8 workers each, and you won't be worrying about food for quite some time. However, that leaves wood, iron, gold, and stone. Chances are that if you are to have a truly mighty economy, you will need more of these resources then are provided near your home base. PART TWO: EXPANSION Once you have some semblance of order around your home bases, perhaps during the construction of the granaries, it's time to get some exploring in. Some people build a dog right off from the get-go. I used to, but then I switched to peasants because I felt I got a little faster for it by having one worker working food earlier. Anyways. Make five or six dogs. Set them to explore. Sending out one dog just takes too long. Having scout dogs always running out is a great way to keep track of enemy movements, as well as being able to find enemy settlements. The Library of Alexandria is a great wonder to have for that reason. I usually have anywhere from ten to twenty dogs running around, and I make more to replace them as they perish. Every so often I stumble across an enemy army, and the knowledge of the location of that is usually enough to surprise it with an army of my own. I send a group of peasants and combat personal out to make little "resource towns" a good deal away from home base. For each "town" I make sure that they have a bunch of walls with towers built into them, and a small garrison of defenders to hold back raids and invasions until your larger armies can arrive. Here's where some of them-there newfangled tactics come into play. I have several "Armies" at a time. There is no solid "what is an army" aside to say that it's not Age of Empires, where a group of 12 horse archers could rein fiery death upon a castle. Army size is totally dependant on what you can afford, and once you have established mining sites at five or six areas and have five or six areas for gold and a few for stone and wood as well, you will find that it's remarkably fast to build up a GLUTTONOUS economy. It seems to me that is the key to the game. Even if you are constantly getting beaten back in open field battles, if you have a really good economy, you will have new conscripts ready in no time. Armies vary in tactics from Epoch to Epoch. This is pretty true historically. When I get beat it's usually by someone who advances faster then me. I used to think that the AI was always behind you in technology, but that's just sadly not the case. Regardless of what Epoch your in, there are some "Must-Know" keys. If you "lasso" a group of troops, and click on where you want them to go, you will form a formation facing the direction that you pull to. THAT'S REALLY USEFUL.It enables you to fight in lines, which is a strategy that works well in ANY epoch. Another hot key that's really worth knowing is that if you lasso a group and then click on the boxes in the lower portion of your screen, you will make a hotkey to that group. What I usually do is hotkey all of those keys to one given "army" at a time. I'll have 20 guys with spears or pikes or whatever it happens to be all facing one direction, and when they advance I keep them all in tight formation, usualy set to "Guard". I try not to set Melee units to anything other then Guard. I'll have archers in another macro, and siege equipment in another macro and I'll advance steadily. Battle is really nothing more then the organization of your forces against that of an enemies. If you keep your troops organized and move them in an organized fashion, you will find yourself doing pretty well in battle. By "organized fashion" I mean keep your units in formation where they can be most effective, and don't be afraid to move them to where they can do the most good. Keep backup units! Set up Barracks waypoints to where you wish to have recruits deployed to and keep resupplying the lines. It's worth it to build military bases with five or six barracks, a couple siege towers, some archer ranges, etc. If you find that battle is going really poorly, it's much better to order a retreat then it is to have your army decimated to the last man. Fall back and get the injured healed. It might mean watching the battlefield very closely, and whenever a unit is hurt past a point, you send him to the rear and send a fresh recruit from the back to the front. That's an awful lot of micromanagement but it's worth it. And when the fighting is done, don't be shy about sending your troops back to regroup. I've been able to successfully save about 60% of an army by doing this. This saves you money. (btw - one thing I'd love to see is "Veteran" units, i.e., units that have been injured and sent back, or have beaten X other units, etc.) There is a fine art to Sieging. If you have Siege Equipment, well, that's what it's there for. Keep a force of fast, mobile units (be it Calvary or armour) that you can use to zip around the field of battle to guard your siege equipment. A wall of pikemen in front of your siege gear makes a fine deterrent, and a long line of archers behind your pikemen will further discourage the enemy from advancing without fearing heavy losses. Infantry are best broken into companies. The size of your companies will vary in accordance to your economy. For me, an average company is fifteen men. I enjoy being able to field considerable sized armies of including three or four companies of infantry. I enjoy keeping them in tight formations, although that seems to work best before the advance of Gunpowder, where a few cannon shots could tear through half your company. When you are able to create Medics, make a few of them and send them along with your army. Keep the medics in the rear of the Army and you can pull units back to get treated, then back up to continue the efforts on the front lines. Bring along civilians and build walls and towers and antiaircraft guns, depending again on the Epoch. There is a lot of good things to say about Calvary. A Calvary Charge is quite effective, but take care not to engage spearman/pikemen. Calvary are generally fast enough to close with Archers, and it is this speed that makes them equally useful in reducing enemy siege engines to scrap wood. The custom civilization I've been playing a lot of lately excel in Archers and Helicopters. Each one has soaped-out armour, attack, range, etc. The Archers are around all the way until gunpowder, and I find that they are just deadly in tight formation behind two or three ranks of infantry. I order the infantry to advance one company at a time, followed by a rank of the Archers. The "sides" of your "line" are commonly known as your Flanks. It's best to have highly mobile units along your flanks. Units that are fast. If you get "flanked" it means you get attacked from the side in such a manner that your line formation is rendered mostly ineffective . It usually doesn't take two long to adjust to getting flanked, but be sure that you DO adjust. I've seen some people who just allow themselves to be flanked and it costs them heavy casualties. Part of the ability to win stems from the ability to multitask, or do many things at the same time. If you are flipping your attention successfully between setting up resource points, creating and manoeuvring armies in formation, raiding the peasants in an opponent's iron camp with a group of raiders and pulling away before he can despatch adequate garrison, fortifying new areas... you get the idea. YOU SHOULD NEVER BE "BORED". If you are "BORED" start clicking Tab and going through your idle peasants to make sure that things are still getting built. If you are still bored, start another resource camp. You get the idea. In general, it's better to be on the offensive then it is to be on the defensive. Sure, defenders dish out heavy casualties, but they don't ALWAYS win... and when they lose, you sometimes find yourself losing precious ground. Use TERRAIN TO YOUR ADVANTAGE! For example, keep Archers on Hilltops since units slow down as they walk uphill. I've some battles with archers on high ground where they drop LINES of elephants into hamburger. It's also usually better to "route" your armies then to lose them to the last man. As for your garrisons for each settlement, again, it's pretty much what you can afford. You should try to maintain high numbers of troops. It's hard to win battles without any troops there, so keep those bases defended. I enjoy keeping a couple companies of Calvary for running around as they are needed. I've found that the Ponies save the day quite often, which perhaps has something to do with the old slogan of "Saved by the Calvary!". PART THREE: THE ENDGAME If you are battling against the AI, you basically have to push your way through all of his ground. With players, you will find it much more profitable to strike at mining camps and starving out their resources as opposed to trying to push their army back with your army. The AI is a lot of fun, incredibly challenging. I attack it's resources and try to push through his armies on open field as much as possible. Fighting human players is much more challenging, in my opinion. THE BEST WAY TO REALLY LEARN TACTICS IS TO PLAY THE GAME OFTEN AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS. Learn from other players. If you find yourself getting owned, think about what you could have done differently. Are you finding that your settlements keep getting overrun? Perhaps you are not having large enough garrisons, or perhaps you are not building your armies large enough and marching them to the site of the battle. I've had games where I'll have three "Armies" of 150 troops each. One of them will be a "fast" army, having only Calvary or something to that effect, and I'll use that to defend mines and raid the enemy. It's discouraging when 150 calvarias kill every peasant in the Capital and pull out with 130 left before the defending player can bring arms to bear! Try new stuff all the time. Keep an extra rank of forces out of sight behind some cover. Have what appears to be a line of infantry with archers in the trees behind them as to not be quite so visible! Learn to use Elephants to crush the skulls of your enemies. In the later game, Air Superiority becomes SUCH an issue. If you control the Skies, well... it's awfully hard to damage a city when they bomb an advancing army. Make sure that you have a ridiculous amount of Anti-Aircraft guns and Halftracks. Assign fighters to waypoints in the sky to maintain air superiority for your bombers. Above all other things, make sure that you develop a solid sense of sportsmanship. Always be civil in your messages to other players. Thank them for having played against you, if you beat them perhaps give them a little advice on what they might have done, if they beat you, don't consider such advice to be a personal attack on your ego. Don't accuse someone of cheating just because they beat you. I usually send a message to either enemy or allies forces every so often. Allied messages are good to let each other notice things. I enjoy sending the enemy little messages from time to time, sometimes just as I am moving into position I'll send a message like "The Emerald Rat Calvary is on the offensive against you!" just to freak them out. :P Sometimes I'll forecast actual attacks like that for three or four times in a row and then I'll forecast a false one to see if I can get him to pull his defences away from a certain vulnerable point. (I call that "Drawing 'Em Out") ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. CONTRIBUTION TO MANKIND by Buttfreek ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: December 6, 2004 -Epoch: Middle Age -Rating: N/A There are many arguments to the best counter of the sword/archer boom strat, even more troubling is countering a sword/archer rush, which is even more unstoppable. To counter a sword archer rush, making houses around your base will be more valuable to you than towers, but towers WILL buy you time to get out military units. I'll start off with the big mistakes that many people make early in the game, then explain what they should do. Then I'll explain the mistakes that people make later in the game, and explain what they should do. Early in the game: Your rushed with swords/archers, you're massing swords. He has an equal amount of swords as you, and he has just as many archers. You have 1 tower up. Should you charge him? Hell no... Get up 4 houses, upgrade your sword armour, call for ally help, and defend your base. If he tries to eco raid you, mix your army with your cits. So, now that you've held off his rush, it's time to attack him, however, it's most likely that he was prepared to be doubled, and has 4 towers up around his economy, or if he's stupid, his army. Don't worry about being called an eco raider, he invested 800 stone into protecting his eco, maybe he should have invested more resources... There's a difference between running away from 5 swords with your 20 to eco raid, and using your 10 swords to damage his critical economic centres. Target his food, and wood. If you're playing an advanced player, it might do you well to even leave his mines alone, since most advanced players have no idea how to convert cits to other tasks. When you think you've killed as much as possible, don't just stand there watching your swords get hammered away by his towers, retreat back to your base, build a hospital, and heal. Prepare for your next attack, this time with a trebuchet. He won't attack you for the next 5 minutes, he'll be focused on attempting to rebuild his eco. Put 6-9 cits on gold, make a siege factory, and get 1-3 trebs. Once you have a sizeable force of trebs and swords (3 and 20), attack his base. Put your swords on GUARD mode, protecting all of your trebs, and direct your trebuchets attacks at his towers. When his towers are out, take out some of his cits with his trebs. He only has four options now: to retreat his cits, and let you destroy his military buildings slowly, until he's forced to retreat. To attack you right then, to protect his economy. To use his cits as a distraction for your trebs while he assaults, or to get an ally to come, but we're assuming that both of your allies are of perfectly equal skill, cancelling each other out. In either of these situations, he's pretty much rendered fucked, but the smartest choice would be for him to assault you, since the chances that his army is larger than yours isn't out of the question. Even if he kills your army though, you should have a sizeable army waiting at your base, and an economy, something that he doesn't have. Another Mistake I see is people making Vikings at the first sight of archers. The beauty of sword/archer is that the swords protect the archers from almost everything, and the archers protect the swords from almost anything. 2 swords can take out probably 10 Vikings, making them useless...If you're more skilled than the player, go ahead and make barbarians, as you can overwhelm him with numbers, and even beat crossbows. The Late Game: If you know that your pocket is going to boom with sword archers, with no siege, then you should use the most underrated unit in the game: The ballista. The ballista is a unit that in small groups, added to a force, can wipe out ANYTHING except trebs. And in some cases, even trebs. The cataphract is the unit in the game that can take the most damage. Hence the Cataphract+ballista combo. At 20 minutes, when your opponent attacks, and you have 10 ballista�s and 30 cataphracts, he's fucked. Because he only has 3 choices: to use the normal sword archer tactic: putting swords near archers and having archers attack, which will let the ballista�s lay him to waste, charge with the swords, and be obliterated by the ballista�s, or to retreat, but then you can attack and beat him. The most common mistake I see late in a game versus a sword archer is someone making trebuchets instead of ballista�s. Trebuchets, except in large numbers (15 or more) are useless later in the game, and especially against sword/archer, ballista�s are 10 times more effective. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7. EE BEGGINERS GUIDE by Introspection ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: August 19, 2002 -Epoch: All -Rating: 4.0 Before you even start a Ran-Nano game, make sure you're armed with at least four civilizations ("civs") (one for each time the unit relationships get more complicated [one for pre-middle, one for ren-ind, one for atomic, and one for digital-nano]). Each civ should have attack, hit points, range, armour, and more importantly, cost reduction upgrades for the units corresponding to that era. Focus on cheaper units (e.g., footmen rather than cavalry) as you will be able to build more of them faster. Some other general recommended civilization upgrades are building and tower cost reduction, and if possible, although expensive, citizen cost reduction. The Importance of Game Settings Once you are in the game, take note of the settings (is "Reveal Map" on?, Can I use my custom civs?). Noting what the game settings are beforehand can really help, as you can plan what you will do when the game begins. Let's quickly go through the game settings. The game variant can be set to either tournament or standard and effects only the quantity of resources required to advance (to the extent of my knowledge, anyway). Tournament mode will require a smaller quantity of resources to advance each epoch, while if the game is a "Standard" game, many, many more resources will be required for you to advance (To advance from Pre to Stone in standard mode requires 1122 food, while in tournament mode, it requires only 170; to advance to Copper from Stone in standard mode requires 1584 food, and 844 of both iron and gold, while in tournament mode it requires a mere 350 food and 200 iron and gold). The map size can make rushing a difficult or easy task for you and/or your opponent. A small or tiny map means less distance to travel for rushers, and thus there will likely be more rushing with these size maps - especially if there are more than two people. A medium or large size map means that you will probably have to spend a small amount of time finding your opponent before you can rush him, unless the map is filled with a complete eight players. Rushing is less likely, although still very possible in these size maps. In huge or gigantic maps with less than eight people, it is much wiser to focus on a more economical playing style, as it will days several minutes for your opponents to get to your base. A good strategy here is to build a small army at your home base and create a second base closer to your enemies where travel time decreases for your forces. Resources and Tournament - Low. If they're not, then don't follow this guide. This means that you'll start with 200 food, 175 wood, 210 stone, and no gold or iron. 200 food is enough for four citizens (or five with the civ cost reduction), which you should start building as soon as you�ve picked your civ. 175 wood is 50 short of the standard 225 (16 short of the 191 if you have the civ upgrade, which is a huge help) required to build a barracks or stable, which you will be doing as soon as possible. 210 stone is enough to build one tower (again, a civ upgrade can make it cheaper [don�t �155 or something]), which you will also be doing. Having no gold or iron means you will have to mine it (duh!), and lots of it because all military units require either one or the other, or both. The map type should be either plains, highlands, or continental. The ending epoch is the Nano Age. The starting epoch is random, and can be any epoch including the Nano Age (if they�re not, ignore this guide). The game type should be random map (if it�s not, that�s weird). The unit limit should be 1200 (if it�s not, ask the host to change, and if he doesn�t, make sure he�s not trying to screw you with it somehow), but as long as it�s above 400, you�re fine. I�ve never had a unit limit problem in one of these games. The difficulty level does not matter, as it only applies to computer players. The game speed should be above normal, or else your just wasting time. �Very Fast� may seem a little fast, as it�s two and a half times the normal speed, but if you play it often, you�ll get used to it. Wonders for victory should be off. As you�ll learn if you plan to read the rest of this guide, �Reveal Map� is actually quite important, as it determines how you should begin the game. My theory is that �true experts� should play with it off. If �Custom Civs� are on, use your custom civ. If they�re not, quickly choose a civ corresponding to the starting epoch, keeping the game variant in mind (my recommendations being Byzantine Rome, England, United States, and Rebel Forces). Teams and speed should be locked, and there is no cheat codes option if you�re playing online. The Very, Very Beginning If "Reveal Map" is off, the second the match begins, grab your citizens, press "ctrl+1", and hit the "L" key to make them explore while you choose your civ. When your done choosing your civ, queue up as many citizens as you can at your Capitol, take three-fifths of your citizens and put them on the nearest forage patch, and send the other two-fifths to the nearest tree. TIP: Always take note of what age you started in and what resources are nearest to you before picking your civ, but don't waste any time doing this, as time is of the utmost importance. If "Reveal Map" is on, the second the match starts, take three-fifths of your citizens and put them on the nearest forage patch, and send the other two-fifths to the nearest tree, then pick your civ. After you've picked your civ, queue up five citizens at your Capitol. Make your Capitol really point the forage patch, and after the first citizen has been built, switch it to the tree. This way, you don�t waste any time selecting the citizen and telling them where to go. Do this until you have six foragers and four lumberjacks. As more citizens get built search for an iron or gold patch and assign them to mine it.. Always keep some citizens queued up at your capitol. Once you�ve gathered enough wood to build a barracks, build one (or an archery range or stable depending on the resources you have available) with two lumberjacks. One that is complete, take one of them and build a tower, sending the other back to his former job. Once you have enough resources to build a military unit, do so, even if it requires cancelling the construction of a citizen. Once you have three to five units, attack. As more citizens are constructed, send some to hunt animals, mine, or chop down trees. When you have enough wood, build a settlement next to your mine, if you think it�s necessary. Continue to expand your little town economically while you rush your opponent. Attacking When rushing, aim for your opponents economy and avoid towers like they�re the plague. Towers are often placed in the front of an enemy base, so going around the back could be the key to snapping the backbone of their economy. Killing off three or four of his or her food gatherers can really damage them because they have now lost three citizens, lost the food they had gathered, and lost the food the could have gathered. Killing citizens on their way back to the settlement/town centre/capitol can really be a great feeling, because that�s fifteen to thirty (depending on the population of the structure [when a citizen brings fifteen of any resource to a full capitol (a settlement populated with 50 citizens) thirty of that resource will be added to your stockpile]) of a resource gone down the drain. When you are moving your troops into position, don�t just move them, attack-move them. To do an attack-move, select your army, and hold down the control key when you move them. You�ll know you�ve done it right when instead of green, the positions which you told them to go to will be shown in orange. The advantage of an attack move is that your troops will attack anything that gets in their line of sight as they move. This way, if your opponent is sending a rush to you, and you see them on your way to his base, your units will automatically stop him and get the first shots off. The idea is not to leave long periods of time between your attacks. Try to make them frequent and small ones, as opposed to one massive assault. Set your barracks rally point in their base if you have to! Just be sure to keep up the pressure and leave no time for recovery. Economic Growth I cannot stress how important it is to have a constant flow of citizens working on the constant expansion of your empire. As you get more citizens, populate your settlements into town centres so that you can build more than one citizen at a time. Find, claim, and guard as many mines as you can afford to control. Gather tons of wood and use it to build farms as your forage patch depletes and all the animals become extinct. When you can afford to do so, build a second barracks, or a new military structure and pump out double the units. Get stone, build towers, and surround your city with walls to prevent infiltration or surprise attacks from behind. It is these kinds of growth that make a good player a really, really good player. With a strong economy ing a large army, you�re virtually unstoppable. Advancing Epochs When deciding whether to epoch up or not, I recommend doing so just after a failed enemy attack when you have at least one and a half times the necessary resources (standard game variant) or two and a half times the necessary resources (tournament game variant). This will assure you that you will not be caught lacking resources to build units required to fend off an enemy attack while advancing because the enemy is not likely to attack and you have plenty of leftover resources. Conclusion Press F11 to see the game clock. See how quickly you can muster up a decent army and try to beat that time the next time you play. If you can do it within five minutes, then you know you�re really good. Personally, these RMs are my favourite type of game to play on Empire Earth as deathmatches seem like the only strategy involved is military, and not economical. A player who can find a good balance between economy and military is definitely an expert player and you just can�t learn that by playing a deathmatch. A player who is prepared to start in any epoch is an expert player (or a player with lots of time to make custom civs) and again, you just can�t learn that in a one epoch deathmatch. I hope this guide will not only increase your skill level, but increase your desire to play RMs, too. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. UNDERSTAND MORALE by TheShadowDawn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: February 01, 2002 -Epoch: All -Rating: 4.3 out of 5 ______ Morale ------ Morale is an attribute of Empire Earth that can allow one player to make his units significantly more powerful by exploiting houses and warrior heroes. As a strategic element of the game, it's important to know how it works. Each morale point a unit has decreases the damage they take from enemy units by approximately 10%. So a unit with one point of morale being attacked by a unit with 20 attack takes only 18 damage, one with two points of morale takes 16, one with three takes 14 and so on. The morale a unit has is indicated by the green dots at its feet. The number of green dots indicates the number of morale points, from one to five. ______ Houses ------ As indicated in the manual, morale can be attained in two ways. The first is building houses. A single house in the area of influence of this town centre grants all units within that same area one morale point. You can determine the area of influence of a town centre of capitol by selecting the building and looking for the green and blue flashing line that forms a square some distance out. All units in this area receive the morale bonus the house gives. Likewise placing two houses will give two morale points. A town centre�s area of influence will give a maximum of two morale points on tournament mode, and four morale points on standard mode. You can build more houses than the game mode s, but the morale level will stay the same until you build a capitol, no matter how many houses you build. A capitol can two more houses than a town centre, on tournament mode that is up to four houses and on standard mode up to six houses. These in turn distribute up to four or six morale points to all units within it's area of influence. Additionally, the Capitol has a larger area of influence than the town centre, and thus affects more units. If two town centres or capitols have an area of influence that overlaps, houses will only contribute to both, but the morale of two town centres/capitols near each other is not cumulative. Nor is a warrior hero's morale cumulative on that provided by houses. ______ Towers ------ Morale also affects towers, in a way. Towers built within the area of the influence of a town centre or capitol have the equivalent of 5 morale points, and thus they take half the damage they would ordinarily. Towers are not affected by houses but this bonus is in place whether you have houses or not. ______ Heroes ------ The second way to provide units with morale is by using a warrior hero. Heroes are built at a town centre or capitol from the Copper Age onwards, and come in two varieties; Strategist heroes heal units around them and have the ability to temporarily weaken a group of enemies, Warrior heroes are tougher combat units and give morale to units around them. You can only train one hero at any given time during the game, and you can't train another until that one meets its demise. The Warrior hero has a range of around 6 tiles laterally and four tiles diagonally. They provide the same amount of morale in both standard and tournament mode, five points; enough to reduce damage to all surrounding units by 50%. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. PRE-SPACE CIV (AoC) THIS GUIDE IS FOR AOC ONLY by DJ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: July 23, 2004 -Epoch: Prehistoric -Rating: N/A Special Powers: Expansionism Cavalry Sword: Cost Reduction Citizen: Cost Reduction Buildings: Cost Reduction Economy: Farming and Hunting and Foraging Religion-Prophets: Build Time Decrease. that is the civ. pretty basic and pretty powerful. the starting out strat I use is... if the map is not revealed, 1) select cits and put on explore 2) choose civ 3) take 6 cits and make a TC at forage patch #1 4) take another 6 cits and put it on forage patch #2 5) take 6 cits and put on animals (make TC near it) 6) take remaining 2 cits and use 1 cit to make a TC next to a gold mine, and the other civ to make a TC at an iron mine. 7) create 5 cits for each of the iron and gold mines to mine using the capitol, forage patch TC #1 and #2, and the TC near the cits gathering animals, create 8 cits to put on wood. 9) look for animals in the centre/sides of the map and gather from them, the more food you can get the better. 10) when the forage patches run out of food, move those cits up north (near enemy base) and make 1 archery range and 1 barracks with 1 tower, 1 TC and 4 houses. create clubmen (shock-hotkey S) and archers (arrow-hotkey A). make more archery ranges and barracks if you need to, but a small army will take out an enemy base easily if not met with enemy troops, which in pre space, is a rare thing to find an army big enough to counter yours at an enemy base around 30-40 F11. 11) when the animals become extinct from gathering food from them, move all idle cits to wood gathering. 12) when you get to copper, make cits to make farms, don�t pull them off of surrounding resources. 13) when your army is big enough (20-30 units strong) go ahead and attack the enemy. avoid towers and go for his resources. yes its ECO-ing, but he�s an enemy you want him to be strong enough to defeat you at some point in time? 14) upgrade iron/gold/wood/farming rate and pop increase (hospitals) from TCs/capitols/farms. 15) when the enemy is destroyed, and you have enough pop, go into his destroyed base and start gathering from his mines. build towers, houses, TCs, barracks, archery ranges, farms (if needed)...constantly build up defences, but don�t do it so much it hurts your economy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. DM DRAGOON FLOOD by EE Talon ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: January 24, 2002 -Epoch: Industrial -Rating: 4.0 out of 5 Start a Deathmatch in the Industrial Age (preferably on a land map, or at least not an islands map). Immediately start building a few stables with some villagers, make a few villagers from your Capital, and select the Ottoman Empire as your civilization. Continue building stables until you have about 12 stables and 4 siege factories. You should be making dragoons and bombards from some stables and siege workshops while the others are being built. Upgrade your dragoon's attack twice, their HP twice, and their range once. Upgrade your bombards range twice, attack twice, and HP once. Build lots and lots of towers, and hospitals that you can retreat to near the front of your base. Build a Temple of Zeus wonder. Put a lot of villagers on this, as it should be built before the enemy attacks. Create whatever Hero you have the resources for, and spend the rest of your resources on Bombards and Dragoons. Send an Observation balloon over the enemy army, and pound them with your bombards from far away (they have 13 range now). Then charge with your cavalry and hero. Move your bombards closer to help you out with any massed enemy units. If your enemy doesn't just resign after they get crushed in a matter of seconds, just send your bombards and dragoons into their town. They should be defeated or close to it in a few minutes. If you're having trouble catching the remaining units with explore mode, build a Library of Alexandria (you should have been gathering resources since you finished the Temple of Zeus). There is one good counter to this strategy... but I'm not going to tell you what it is! You'll have to figure it out for yourself. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. THE BASIC STARTUP by fissh_e ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -Date: January 28, 2002 -Epoch: All -Rating: 3.8 out of 5 Introduction The purpose of this guide is to help new players distribute their economy in a more efficient and productive way during the first few minutes of a game of Empire Earth. The first minutes are crucial in every game, and the right start-up can determine the outcome of the entire game. This guide will specifically focus on island vs. land maps, deathmatch vs tournament-low or tournament-defensive resources, as well as provide a general idea of what an efficient start-up is for almost any settings. Note: Iron and Gold are resources which are equally abundant on the map, and you will need some of either resource to build an army (but usually not both). Therefore, they will be referred to as iron/gold in this guide. Startup - the General Concept The key to a good startup is speed and efficiency. Speed is fairly simple: click faster, learn and use hotkeys, and never just sit there and watch ively. With good speed, you can make sure your citizens are not standing idle, are working at the right resource, and you will be able to better judge your surroundings and how you should react to them. Efficiency is more complex, and has many elements to it, which I will discuss in detail. Gathering the correct resource. It is of particular importance in the startup phase of the game to know how much of what resources you will be needing at what time, which involves a general knowledge of and experience with the game. Here is a basic rundown of resource allocation over time, assuming the following settings (which are pretty commonly used, by the way): tournament-low or tournament-defensive resources, tournament variant, land map 1. Send your initial 5 citizens and citizen #6 on pumpkins (or hunting if it's closer) 2. Send citizens #7-12-ish to a nearby tree. Basically, you are sending all newly created citizens on chopping wood, until you have enough wood for the military building of your choice (after building 1 settlement) 3.a. If you plan on making archers: Take some of your woodcutters and send them to gold, and leave some for the wood your archer require. Build an Archery Range with a citizen. 3.b. If you are not making archers or other military units that require wood: Take ALL of your woodcutters, and distribute them between hunting and iron/gold. Take one of the woodcutters and build a military building (usually stable or barracks), and then send that citizen to either hunting or iron/gold. 4.a. If you are making archers: Every new citizen should be sent to balance out the wood-gold-food ratio. If you have the required wood and gold to maintain production of archers, send new citizens on food (hunting). If you are short on either gold or wood, send new villagers there. If you begin to accumulate a surplus of wood or gold, remove some citizens. If you are running short on food, you will want to sacrifice military production for citizen production. 4.b. If you are not making archers or other military units that require wood: Every new citizen should be sent to balance out the iron/gold-food ratio. This is basically balancing between two resources, and should be easier than 4.a. You should definitely lean toward food here. 5. When you start running out of animals to hunt, send new villagers and existing hunters over to wood. Don't be afraid to pile up wood at this point, as it will all be spent on farms when the animals are depleted. Well, now you've seen a typical, efficient build-up order. Notice how I'm not going into details too much, as your circumstances WILL require you to make adaptations on the spot. The importance is to know ahead of time what you will be making. And another importance is to START MAKING MILITARY AS SOON AS YOU CAN AFFORD TO. This usually means that you should have a military unit DONE by 7-8 mins game time on tournament setting, low or defensive resources. What you should after that is that the top priority is to keep making citizens, and the second priority is to keep making military units. And this of course requires efficient resource allocation. Maintaining a constant production of citizens. Like I've said, maintaining a constant production of citizens is your top priority. Citizens are the units who gather the resources, construct the buildings, and run your economy. Without them, you are dead. If you don't have enough, you will be dead. If you don't keep making citizens, your opponent will get an advantage. To be able to keep making citizens, keep an eye on your food supply. Assign more citizens on food as necessary, and tell your food gatherers to dump off their load if you just need a little extra food for the next citizen. Of course, after a few minutes, maintaining a constant flow at your original capitol will not be enough. That is why you need to populate your settlements, turn them into Town Centres (TC), and continue pumping out citizens from both your original capitol and your newly created TC's. Knowing when to populate settlements. There is no simple answer to the question "When do I populate my settlement?", but there are some guidelines and points you should keep in mind. They are all based on the fact that populated citizens are not doing anything, just sitting in the Town Centre, and you can't get them back. They will not gather resources for you, so don't just populate unless it will help you increase the output of citizens (at least in the startup phase of the game). - Don't populate if you can't maintain a constant flow of citizens from the new TC and other TC's or capitols. That would be wasting precious citizens. - Don't populate less than, or more than 5 citizens. 5 citizens are required for TC's, and you don't need to a capitol in the startup phase. Also, populating less than 5 citizens means losing the work power of those citizens while not gaining anything. - Populate settlement near a gold/iron site, not ones that only have a forest or pumpkin patch nearby. This is because pumpkins will run out, and forests are not as scarce as iron/gold. You must think in the long run, and populating settlements near iron/gold is beneficial. Reducing walk distance for citizens. When your citizens are gathering resources, there is always a certain distance they must walk to the deposit site and back. Of course, while they are just walking back and forth, they are not benefiting your economy, and that is why you want to reduce the walking distance as much as possible. Although this isn't really that much of a crucial thing, it does make a difference to some extent. There are two ways this guide will focus on for reducing walk distance: settlement placement and animal luring. When placing settlements, you want them to be no more than two tiles away from an iron/gold mine, as that will give you a gather rate bonus. It is important both to place settlements so they are close to the greatest variety of resources, and to build new settlements to reduce the walking distance. Animal luring is not a major thing, but it will help your economy get on its feet in the first few minutes. The following animals will attack you, and therefore can be lured: hippo, walrus, and elephant. Basically, you want to send one or two citizens to attack the animal, then walk back to the nearest settlement and let the animal follow. Then use some more citizens to kill it. This way, you won't have to spend so much time walking back and forth, because the animal is already close to your settlement. Finding the correct balance between economy and military. This is a tricky issue, really, and you can only do it well with experience. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind. Empire Earth is a fast-paced game, and you can't just sit back focusing on your economy. You need real troops to defend your base. Therefore, you want to raise a military building as soon as possible (this is usually after laying down your first settlement), and then try to maintain a constant production of military units. This of course must not delay your citizen production, which is your highest priority. Therefore, you should only mine resources that you need for citizens and a single military unit type - at least until about 12-15 minutes into the game. The key to Empire Earth is BALANCE - I can't stress this enough. Island vs. Land Maps There are a few important differences with island maps compared to land maps. First, the reduced threat of an early attack. Second, the ability to make fishing boats. Third, ships instead of land units. Reduced threat of an early attack. This gives you more freedom in the early game. No longer can the enemy just send its troops into your base, he must now build both a military building and an extra dock and transport to do it - unless of course if he uses planes. In any case, you now have more flexibility and less need to start training your military as early as possible. This is not to say that you should forget about military, as an early misbalance between your and your opponent's military can give him an edge, although only somewhat later in the game. But still, if you are an economy boomer type, you can safely concentrate on booming from two town centres for a while, and make some ships to defend your coastline. The ability to make fishing boats. Fishing is a good source of food and should definitely be considered in the first few minutes of an island game. If you decide to do fishing, you better make many fishing boats, at least 8 of them. Because fishing boats cost wood and get food, you should move some citizens away from food and to wood in order to maintain fishing boat production. You will need to figure out how the citizen allocation between food and wood works best, taking into your civ choice, the map, your long-term strategy, and anything that might come up. Ships instead of land units. Ships generally cost much more than land units, about twice or three times as much. This means that you will have a smaller navy than you would have an army of land units for the same price. Ships usually cannot attack an enemy's base, and thus can't hurt their economy much. The best you can do with a superior navy is kill off his fishing, and maintain a blockade so that the opponent can't rebuild his navy. Also, defending with ships is easier than defending with land units, because docks will heal your own ships provided they are within range. All this must be taken into consideration when planning your military strategy on the sea. Deathmatch vs. Tournament-Low or Tournament-Defensive Resources Deathmatch is a whole new picture compared to Tournament resource games (the former are often referred to as DM, the latter, RM - as in Random Map). DM games give you considerably more resources to start with - so much that in many games you won't even have to worry about your economy at all! A typical DM startup will be extremely military-oriented. Start by continuously laying down a bunch of military buildings, at least 15-20 if them, not too far from your original Capitol. At some point, perhaps at the very beginning, you should peel off 5 citizens, have them build a settlement - preferably at a gold/iron mine, and populate so you get a TC. Now you can produce citizens twice as fast, or go for he immediate epoch jump while making citizens at the other TC/Capitol. Basically, you'll want to keep making military buildings, and keep making military in those buildings, until you reach your max population or you are starting to run out of resources. If you are starting to run out of res, start to establish an economy by making many citizens and settlements, starting up a farming operation, and mining whatever you need. If you fill up your pop cap, you should send your forces in search of an enemy while you build up defences, such as walls, AA guns, and towers at home. DM is very fast-paced, especially the first few minutes. It's entirely different from RM, at least the startup, but later you will be making use of the same tactics and strategies. 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