Greetings!
In this second of my monthly letters, I wanted to highlight the Diplomacy
System. What passes for diplomacy in many RTS games is simply choosing which
team you're on at the beginning of the game and then occasionally sending chat
messages to your team.
Where we came from in developing Empire Earth II is the rich tradition of board
games and the real world: where diplomacy is more fluid and gives you many more
tools to coordinate with your allies, and many more chances to stab them in the
back, too! Three subsystems combine to make up the Empire Earth II Diplomacy
Suite: Sole Survivor Multi-Player Mode, our Diplomacy and Treaties System, and
the Warplans.
The first feature is Sole Survivor Mode. In either Skirmish or Multi-Player this
mode is similar to Conquest, but with one caveat: only one player can win. This
means that any team that vanquishes all other teams is immediately split up and
set to war with each other. In and of itself, this creates a dynamic in which
you want to be very careful about with whom you ally and how tight the alliance
is. You know from the first moment of the game that at some point you'll
backstab your ally - or he'll backstab you!
Next, our Diplomacy System allows you to establish different relationships with
different players (either human or AI) at different times in the game. You can
establish LOS (Line-of-Sight) and border-crossing agreements, timed alliances,
tributing units, resources, and territories...it's really given players
strategic choices and opened up a ton of gameplay. The most common options to
play with are Timed Alliances and LOS. In Sole Survivor games, you can opt to
have Timed Alliances be unbreakable, which guarantees you an ally for a while,
but guarantees you an enemy after. Virtually all of the alliances I make are
timed, and I manage the timing of them so as to maximally screw my allies. ;)
Part of that is limiting the information they have, such as not giving them LOS
from your units and/or your buildings - and, if you really want to be careful,
not giving them border permissions to move troops onto your land!
Finally, the Warplan System lets you quickly draw up graphical plans of attack
(complete with arrows, Xs, Os, and text) in a little "paint" type of interface
and send them to your allies. The warplans then get overlaid onto your minimap
and fullscreen map so you can see exactly how to best help your (then) ally. You
can still handle diplomacy in Empire Earth II as you would in any other RTS
game, but if you take advantage of the new Diplomacy options in the game, you'll
be richly rewarded!
Our goal is to give fans a truly epic gaming experience. In the end, Empire
Earth II will hit gamers with new strategic choices, more realistic gameplay,
easier management systems, innovative, advanced AI, greater depth of gameplay,
and more. Perhaps we should refine that initial statement: our goal is to give
fans a truly epic gaming experience . . . while making Empire Earth II the best
historical RTS ever.
Until Next Time,
Ian Davis, Ph.D. "The Mad Doctor"
CEO & Founder, Mad Doc Software
Creative Director, Empire Earth II
