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Star Wars: Empire At War


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Guest Grayfox

man i love star wars rebellion. havent re installed it since i upgraded to xp... i wonder if it would even work... prolly not

man that game rocked.

force commander wasnt too bad either, except they kinda forced you to play both sides. i spent most of my time playing MP with bots instead of the single player version.

as for empire at war, im definitely going to look into it.

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Its probably going to end up somewhat similar to the Command & Conquer Series. Almost the entire team is from the disbanded Westwood Studios.

Maybe we'll actually see a decently fun RTS for Star Wars. Force Commander was kinda weak IMO; it was so buggy that if it wasn't CTD the AI just pissed me off (horrible pathfinding). Battlegrounds would have better just been released as a AoK mod.

Rebellion was great, but it fell more under the 4x genre of games rather than RTS.

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Hey Grafox, Rebellion works fine under XP, just played it this weekend.

4x game in a Starwars universe, that's the ultimate force, lol. However, Rebellion had a ton or roleplay to it, with all the characters and special events depending on who the characters meet, and what not. Hopefully this Empire at War will live up to Rebellion, if you read their forums, tons of people are just raving about that. If it will end up being just another RTS with pretty graphics, it will flop, simple as that.

Star Wars Rebellion is still active like you wouldn't believe, after all this years.

http://www.swrebellion.com/

Maybe developers will actually pay attention as to why Rebellion community is still active, and what made Rebellion such a great game, and inocoroporate those elements into Empire at War.

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Guest Grayfox

heh every time id go to the zone to play online, there would be no one there.

i used to love using the noghri to kidnap people... just send a bunch of decoy operatives along with them.

even built a deathstar... then went from planet to planet wiping them all out... when popular support for me would drop on a planet, id pull my troops off and nuke them too

thanks for the info soback!

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quote:

Originally posted by Soback:

Hopefully this Empire at War will live up to Rebellion, if you read their forums, tons of people are just raving about that.

Thats part of the problem I see developing. Half of the gamers interested in it, the fans of Star Wars, want it to be like Rebellion, and then the other half, fans of the developers, want it to be more like Command and Conquer with a Star Wars twist.

Personally, I'd like it either way, as both would be interesting. I don't think it will be a flop either; it has the potential to completely set the new standard for 3D space real-time strategy. The scale of the capital ships is amazing, and this would be a very welcome refresher for the sub-genre of RTS that Homeworld 2 is beginning to stretch its welcome for some.

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Yeah I can see how RTS Star Wars would sell. Too bad they will not be aiming for it to become more like Rebellion in 3D. Maybe the next hit 4x game will be Master of Orion 4, LOL.

I guess reality will be the final arbiter when the game comes out.

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Guest Grayfox

quote:

Thats part of the problem I see developing. Half of the gamers interested in it, the fans of Star Wars, want it to be like Rebellion, and then the other half, fans of the developers, want it to be more like Command and Conquer with a Star Wars twist.


i wouldnt mind that either. C&C is one of my all time favs. however lucas arts did try the star wars RTS once before. anyone remember Force Commander? that had alot of potential, but the storyline forced you to be both sides instead of choosing which side you want to be... i hate that. besides that there were tons of small probs that ate this one up.

but i am waiting... semi patiently for this one to come out.

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I remember Force Commander, not too bad a game but I'd prefer a game that lets me play though an entire Imperial campaign. It seemed like for a long time Lucasarts like the formula of 1/2 played as Imps, 1/2 played as Rebels.

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  • 5 months later...

Time to give this thread a bit of a bump.

Lucasarts just released a demo for Star Wars: Empire at War. It looks really good, I can't wait to try it out.

Links to the demo can be found at the game's official website (www.empireatwar.com). Or you could just head on over to filefront here .

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Thanks for reminding me. I downloaded the demo the other day. Very nice. Typical RTS control and gameplay and the graphics are really good. I can see myself hunkering down to this game. One caution though. I was having some trouble with the downloaded demo off of various sources and turns out I wasn't the only one. I ended up at 3dgamers and tried the torrent download option and the downloaded demo worked fine.

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I managed to download and get the demo running after downloading it from filefront.

I am really impressed with the game, even though it isn't quite what I expected. The graphics and shear number of controls it offers is unlike any game I've played before. And, actually, it slightly hints of Rome - Total War (to me) because of the possibility of pirates on planets as well as some of the general gameplay used in the demo and hinted at in the tutorials.

I was dissapointed though, to find out that the game won't be going all the way through the original movies as far as technology (no SSDs, TIE Defenders...etc). But it doesn't detract from the game, from what I saw in the demo.

Overall, this seems like a great game. I can't wait to pick it up when it's released.

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I was dissapointed with the demo overall. The ground combat was weak. The space combat was weak. The interface is a prettied up version of Rebellion.

For lack of a better way to put it, the 'feel' of the game was off for me. I like RTS games, and I dig Star Wars, but this one was bleh. For example, the rock-paper-scissors style of this kills that but is weaker against these is present, but is difficult to utilize. The combat is a big hairy jumble with little overall ability to affect things once opponents meet. No base building is no fun, especially considering some of the cool structures and such that have been featured in the movies (think the Hoth battle). Certain units in the demo were waaaay overpowered as well. Take the Empire's Speeder Bike. It has a special ability that drops a thermal detonator. This thing will wipe out a ton of troops and damages vehicle, but the troops are too slow to get out of the way. Even if you concentrate fire on the speeders when you see them, it is difficult to destroy them before they can get a detonator off. In the demo, X-Wings are the only spacecraft worth bothering with. Cheap and effective, they beat the other ship types hands down against enemy fighters and capital ships.

For the demo, you get the tutorial and a single galactic conquest/campaign mission. The first planet you have to capture, via a space battle, was obscenely easy. Send in 8 X-Wing squadrons and you win without doing much of anything except pointing them at the target. Total cost of destroying two capital ships and a full space base? 8 x 250 = 2000. Cost of the capital ships and the base? Not sure, but the Correlian Corvette runs about 1250, and it's supposed to be cheaper and weaker than the Star Destroyer.

The second planet you have to conquer in a land battle. You buy whatever reinforcements you want before you go into battle. The Empire has a ton of top-notch forces: AT-ST's, an AT-AT, heavy turrets, speeder bikes, and stormtroopes. You get some 'native' forces, Jawas and the like, and whatever you bring as reinforcements. One trick to this was to re-start the game until you figured out where the enemies base was so you could destroy his barracks and vehicle factory, thus depriving him of further units. Otherwise he just keeps getting more forces to replace losses, while your reinforcements run out all too soon. Once engaged, a tactical retreat was almost always fatal so it was all or nothing. Throw in one of the Empires' plentiful speeders dropping detonators in the midst of my troops every few seconds and it got ugly quick like for the Rebellion.

I figure it's a demo and chances are some things will be changed in the retail version. However, other posts I've seen are so overwhelmingly positive that maybe it's just me. For comparison, RTS games I like are Total Annihilation, StarCraft, Dawn of War, Command & Conquer: Generals and Warcraft II. For turn based games, I like Age of Wonders 2 and Kohan 2. EaW tries to mix both styles, but doesn't do either well in my opinion.

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I have Rebellion installed right now, with all the hints and a mod with better graphics (pictures). You can't beat Rebellion, well you could, but Empires at War is just not it.

Will it make money? Sure. Will it be played 7 years later like Rebellion is right now? No.

It's easy to tell which games are good. Just take a look at Vampires Bloodlines. The company went under, so players took up the responsibility of making patches, they are on patch version 2.0 now (the official patch was 1.2). Then there's Freelancer, still being modded and added to on www.lancersreactor.com And then there's the Neverwinter Nights, HUNDREDS of player added items, quests, creatures, ect....Hearts of Iron I/II, Silent Hunter 3, IL2 Surmovik, Falcon...All those communities alive and playing those games.

Empires at War seems like just another RTS with a little bit of spice thrown in. Kinda like those other RTS games came out where you could fight on the surface and under ground. That novelty waned real fast.

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quote:

Originally posted by Soback:

1: I have Rebellion installed right now, with all the hints and a mod with better graphics (pictures). You can't beat Rebellion, well you could, but Empires at War is just not it.

Will it make money? Sure. Will it be played 7 years later like Rebellion is right now? No.

2: It's easy to tell which games are good. Just take a look at Vampires Bloodlines. The company went under, so players took up the responsibility of making patches, they are on patch version 2.0 now (the official patch was 1.2). Then there's Freelancer, still being modded and added to on
And then there's the Neverwinter Nights, HUNDREDS of player added items, quests, creatures, ect....Hearts of Iron I/II, Silent Hunter 3, IL2 Surmovik, Falcon...All those communities alive and playing those games.

3: Empires at War seems like just another RTS with a little bit of spice thrown in. Kinda like those other RTS games came out where you could fight on the surface and under ground. That novelty waned real fast.

1: I have to check that one out. I never have tried it. Not partial to RTSs myself. In fact, I try to avoid them. The only RTS I've played with any fervor is the Homeworld series. That reminds me, I should check out if anyones done anything with the Knights of the Old Republic series. I loved those ones. Though I did like the first one much much better.

2: Don't forget modders are still doing things to Freespace2 and even Privateer. The more current Privateer mod I've been playing is the total 3d conversion one.

3: Yup, you pretty much nailed it on the head.

My only wish from Lucasarts is that they make another Jedi Knight but not with that damn Quake engine. God, I hate that engine. Never did like it. I've said that many times before. I even prefer their own engine they used for the first Jedi Knight(Dark forces II)/Mots(mysteries of the sith). I really liked how they implemented the force powers in Dark Forces II. You can/could actually target weapons and pull them from players hands. Once someone made a grappling hook mod for that game the fun only got better. Example: Bespin Gantry Level. Grapple your way up to the top of the wing struture and just wait for someone to come up too. Wait till they get close to the top (you can hear the grappling hook) then when the time is right use the pull command pull the hook gun from their hands and it's all the way to bottom for 'em while they type a text message "B$%^#". Ah, so much fun. I still play that one. I've also done some modding on that myself. Not much. I use a program JED (Jedi Knight Editor) mostly to make tweaks to the map. Like the gantry level I took out the Dead Zone. When you fall off the gantry towards the bottom, the default is that when you go about halfway the screen just fades and you regenerate. I took the dead zone out so when you fall you fall all the way to the bottom. Or, you could use the grappling hook and go down there and pick up goodies that people have left behind from their death falls or just go down there to hide out for a while. Also, if you turn on the map you can see where everyone is. If you notice them hanging out at the tip end of the gantry you can use deadly sight and kill them all the way from down the botton. Ack, I didn't mean to go on and on about that. But that is the definition of a long lifed and fun game.

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