The Art of Conquest (AoC) is an expansion pack that requires the original Empire
Earth game to play. So how do you expand upon the game that covered all of
human history? Extend it into the future and move the civilizations to the
stars, adding new future-tech units and space combat. AoC also adds three
new campaigns which take place in Ancient Rome, the Pacific Theater in World War
II, and a future history conflict involving a new Asian hegemony.
The campaigns
are each six missions in length, and you must complete the current mission
successfully to advance to the next. Six missions might seem short at
first glance, but all of the missions are challenging. There aren't any
transitional or warm-up missions, so there is more gameplay here than you'd
think.
The first campaign takes place in ancient Rome and follows the events
surrounding Caesar's rise to power. You begin play as Caesar's uncle Gaius
Marius and later Caesar himself. It's good to see the game provide a Roman
campaign. It seems like an obvious campaign setting for a game that covers
the entire history of man, but it was conspicuously absent in the original game.
The Pacific campaign opens with the Battle of Midway, and follows the US
island-hopping campaign through the invasion of Iwo Jima. Needless to say
this is a very naval and transport focused campaign, and as such is hampered by
the game's poor ship pathfinding. Ships will sometimes get stuck trying to
get past each other, so you'll need to keep an eye on your fleets to ensure that
they arrive at their destination.
The final campaign is set in the future, and centers on the new United
Federation of Asian Republics. As leader of this new federation, you must
squash rebel resistance and expand you influence into space with the founding of
off-world colonies. The campaign opens in the digital ages and
progresses to the new space age, giving you the opportunity to make use of the
game's new spaceship units and related structures.
Unless you jump right into a space age random map game, the wait for spaceships in
the UFAR campaign will be a bit of a letdown. The spaceships in the game
are essentially naval units, with planets as islands and space as the sea.
Spaceships are built in structures that can only be placed at the 'edge' of
planets, and they inexplicably can not fly over land, er, planets. If you
were not a big fan of the original game, you shouldn't let the addition of the
new space age alone affect your decision of whether or not to buy this
expansion. While they do add more variety to the original game, the
spaceships do not represent a new dimension of gameplay.
AoC also adds a few tweaks and enhancements to the original game. The
first is the inclusion of a unique unit, structure, or bonus to each of the
built-in civilizations. These include an SAS unit for Great Britain that
can swim and detonate charges to bring down structures, and Italy's ability to
use gold and iron interchangeably for building costs. This is a nice touch
that adds some variety to the civilizations, but it doesn't alter the game's
balance or gameplay significantly. Other tweaks include graphical touches
that include new terrain, animations, and environmental effects, but like all of
the other changes do not have a noticeable effect. The game still looks
very similar to the original and suffers from some very blocky graphics when the
camera is zoomed in.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
74%. If you are an Empire Earth fan, then you'll more than likely
enjoy this expansion and appreciate the gameplay provided by the new campaigns.
If you were not taken with the original, though, there's nothing really here
that will change your mind.
System Requirements: Pentium II 350; 64 MB RAM; 4 MB
Video RAM; 4x CD-ROM; 450 MB Hard Drive
Space; Mouse; Empire Earth.
