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[MonkeyKungFu]

Not to derail, but I'm totally looking forward to Episode 2.  And the new Farcry sounds incredible too, although I don't know if I'll be as thrilled with an african savana as I was with tropical islands.

[18Weapons]

The number of games I have seen through to the finish is pathetic:
Kid Icarus
Nobunaga's Ambition
Drakken
Super Mario World
Super Metroid
DOOM
Halo 2

Once I get hooked on these fps ones it is hard to put them down... but for some reason I never finished Far Cry or HL2 even though I had a great time playing through the first few missions....  the rest I generally finished when I was home sick. 

[MonkeyKungFu]

Crap... forgot that I did finish a couple older console titles through.. TC: Splinter Cell for example.  I tend to forget about console titles cause its more like watching a really long TV show.

[ElvisKungFu]

High school playing doesn't count.  That was like a twisted sense of time or something, or else nothing else to do.  Lest you forget 18Wpns we stayed up all night trying to beat a Mickey Mouse game which froze up on the last boss.

[18Weapons]

Lest you forget 18Wpns we stayed up all night trying to beat a Mickey Mouse game which froze up on the last boss.

Oh I did not forget that, and one day I will exact my revenge on that cursed mouse! MUAHAHAHAHA

I just don't finish games very often.  Oh I guess I forgot about beating Diablo & Diablo 2!  Those were back in the days when rpgs had an end :-P

[18Weapons]

I wanted to read the manual to EE after our game to find out the paper/scissors/rock counter stuff, but I don't have any idea where it would be.  So I looked up the basic info on the net, avoiding the lame rush and micro strategies so things would not get out of hand.  What I found are a few important things that I definitely did not know about EE. 

Important thing #1)
    *   5 citizens will turn a Settlement into a Town Center. This gives it the ability to produce Citizens and all Town Center Research. It also increases the gather rate of stone, gold and iron by 25%. i.e. A trip of 15 gives 19.
    * 15 Citizens turn a Town Center into a Capitol. Gather rates are increased by 50%. A trip of 15 gives 22.
    * 50 Citizens will fully populate a Capitol. Gather rates are increased by 100%. A trip of 15 gives 30.

NOTE: The Town Center or Capitol must be within 4 grid squares of the resource patch to give the bonus for resources gathered from it. i.e if there are more than 3 grids between the edge of the resource and the edge of the TC, no bonus is applied. 

Granaries

    * 8 Citizens will turn a Granary into an Improved Granary. Gather rates from farming increase by 25%.

NOTE: Gather rates are more or less linear between the values stated above e.g. 32 Citizens in a Capitol will increase the gather rate to 75%.

Important thing #2) Morale is very important in war. Battles can completely change with morale. EE uses this by making your towns safer from attack by using morale than being out in bare land. For troops away fromhome, EE also features special historical heroes. Heroes are very strong units, self healing when they are not under attack, that have good attack and provide troops with morale while near to them. Strategists are also
available - they, too, will self heal when not under attack, can heal other units and have a Battle Cry that demoralises enemies.

Important thing #3 which this is the only info i could find on the counter structure... i think i'm going to have to find that manual) EEA: What inspired you to create the shock > pierce > arrow method?

RG: The Empire Earth game system is somewhat more complicated than this. Nevertheless, Empire Earth is a game with many, many units. So, at the outset, we knew we needed a unit balance system which would be unbreakable even as we added our 175th 176th and 177th units to the game. This was a tall order. We needed a system that would enable us to add virtually an unlimited number of (as yet undefined) units, but which, at the same time, would insure that all units had appropriate counters. The result was a foundation within which we could create any new unit we wanted, at any time during development, and be assured that the unit would have appropriate counter units.

[18Weapons]

http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/376328/20608

ok here we go... i guess you just have to read up on all the units to understand their counters... unfortunately they do not list this in game like RoN

[MonkeyKungFu]

Wow... I knew that morale was important, but I'm always at odds over whether to build those houses...  and I knew that you could put 5 vills into a settlement to make it able to create more vills, but forgot about the resource bonus.  Apart from that, this is all news.  Time to read up, cause I'm a moron in this game at the moment, but I think it'll be a blast if we keep playing.

Only downside -- Really really bad unit AI.

[18Weapons]

i don't feel like the unit AI is too dumb... seems like the game leaves in a large margin for error.  that thing with those villagers walking around the trees was funny though... but i think before they patched they had a lot of issues like that.  I think  one of the funnier things is how if you send all your villagers on the same consumable resource it will diminish to nothing... but if you send only a few it will grow... like flocks and trees... pretty cool... though i'm not sure which way would be better to gather because once you get farms you don't need the flocks...  I didn't remember any of this stuff about morale though from the first time that we used to play... so that's good to know.  I'm still trying to work out a good balance between leveling up and defending my turf... it has been very interesting and unique thus far

[MonkeyKungFu]

Yeah, I'm definately up for a rematch or two tonight.  I've got to figure out some hotkeys and just get my general management speed up though, cause I tend to get lost in the game once the fighting starts.

[18Weapons]

hotkeys are good.  the stats at the end don't tell you how many times i pressed the same hotkey, but i know that if i've got 400 hotkeys pressed at least 100 of them is villagers "C", and i know that swordsman hotkey by heart for some reason so that's another few hundred "S"... other than that i'm just reading the hotkey in the help text as i play and using them.  "A" for archer is pretty easy too.  as far as economic speed goes the main thing is to just make villagers constantly until you have every resource saturated and also don't need anything else... minerals have caps of 6 people at a mine so i know that stuff only comes in so quick... so you have to figure these locations are eventually where the fighting is going to happen since food and wood can be located almost anywhere.  you set me back substantially with a solid opening army last game, but i figured you'd keep on pressing so that's why i built my army up so big in retaliation.  also i think forward bases are sitting ducks... you saw how easily i took down the towers and building at your forward base, but that base you had with two towers near that upgraded town center was nearly impossible to take down.  i think morale and building placement plays a major part here.  perhaps i should experiment a little with how much of a stats bonus effect is given to towers near capitols/houses.  either way i didn't really out gather you by double in that game... because after that big battle went south for you i had total control of 75% of the map so from there on out it was just end-game sloppiness/tactics

[MonkeyKungFu]

Yeah, after getting the early edge in that fight at the two gold mines I got a little complacent and didn't build the army as fast because I wanted to advance.  That was a big mistake, I should have just continually pushed instead of letting you build up an overpowering retaliation force.  I also should have turned that forward base into a TC and planted a couple houses, thinking about the morale thing now.  Either way it was a fun fight, but once one side gets into the enemy base and kills the army, the games pretty much over.

[18Weapons]

but once one side gets into the enemy base and kills the army, the games pretty much over.

hehe yeah :-P  you and i know too much about these games at this point to let something like that slide... not that either of us actually know how to play this particular rts, but there are common things throughout all of em.  i'm looking forward to actually pulling elvis in on one of these matches... that should be riotous

[MonkeyKungFu]

Well the thing I like about this game is the massive population limits.  We should play on a slightly larger map next time, just to see how it changes the dynamic.  Maybe we'd actually make it out of Copper.

[18Weapons]

with more room to grow you'd figure we'd just be handicapping our weaknesses and booming would be easier.  i say keep the map size where it is at and try to keep the fighting going as early on as possible.  in theory the only way we should be able to force a growing phase is by having a substantial enough military to check the opposition and keep them to their side of the map.  to me, that means if the pop limit is 690 then the military should reach a few hundred to make this happen...