Empire Earth

Where is the options page?

The player options page lets you configure your game and export a YAML file.

What does randomization do to this game?

Epoch advancement is taken out of your hands. Normally you advance by building two recruitment or technology buildings and paying a resource cost; here that building requirement is removed entirely and replaced by an Archipelago item.

Each Epoch: <name> item unlocks the ability to advance to that epoch. The resource cost still applies, and epochs remain strictly sequential — an item for a late epoch received early simply waits in the background until you have worked your way up to it.

Resource bundles arrive as items and are credited to your stockpile immediately, so other players can accelerate your economy.

With the optional building_unlocks setting, 21 building types and all nine wonders are taken out of your hands too. A building you haven't found the Building: <name> or Wonder: <name> item for is simply absent from its build menu. The epoch requirement still applies on top — finding Building: Siege Factory in the Copper Age doesn't let you build one until the Dark Age. The Capitol is never locked, since every match starts with one and it's what makes citizens, and neither is the Farm, which has no build-menu entry the client can hold shut.

Bear in mind that units are produced at buildings, so a locked Stable means no cavalry until it opens. The seed accounts for this — a check for a unit is never placed behind the only building that could produce it.

With technology_checks on (the default), researching a technology is a check too — a hundred of them across the fourteen epochs, at the Capitol, Temple, University, Hospital and Granary. The buttons stay where the game puts them and cost the same, but researching one gives you nothing. Its benefit arrives separately as a Tech: item, so another player can hand you the effect long before or after you press the button. Only technologies up to your goal epoch are included.

What is the goal?

Whichever the goal option asks for:

• reach_epoch — reach the epoch chosen by goal_epoch, anywhere from Stone Age to Space Age.
• wonder_victory — build the number of wonders set by wonders_for_victory.

Only epochs up to goal_epoch appear as items and checks, so a short goal produces a genuinely short game rather than a long one with dead entries.

Empire Earth ends the match the moment a wonder victory is achieved, so a seed is refused if wonders can win the game without also winning the seed — wonders_for_victory has to be 0 for reach_epoch and 1 or more for wonder_victory.

Completing the goal ends the match as a win in game, so you're not left sitting in a skirmish that has nothing left to decide.

Which items can be in another player's world?

• Epoch: <name> — one per epoch up to your goal
• Building: <building> — one per lockable building, with building_unlocks on
• Wonder: <name> — one per wonder, with building_unlocks on
• Tech: <name> — one per technology, carrying its benefit
• Food Bundle, Wood Bundle, Stone Bundle, Gold Bundle, Iron Bundle

What does another world's item look like in Empire Earth?

There is no in-world representation. Items are applied by the client the moment they arrive, and announced on Empire Earth's own message line, prefixed --AP--.

What locations get shuffled?

Reaching each epoch up to your goal is a check, as is constructing each of 25 building types, recruiting each of 237 units for the first time, and researching each of 100 technologies.

Units would normally be missable. Empire Earth withdraws one when it goes obsolete or when a later tier replaces it, so a Rock Thrower you never got round to building in the Copper Age could never be recruited again. Units still retire exactly as they always did — a build menu is a fixed row of positions showing one unit per line, and holding an old unit open just squats the position its successor wants. The check travels instead. Whatever takes a position carries the checks of everything that held it before, so a Long Bow sends every archer below it, and a Heavy Mortar sends the Viking's four epochs later because they share a slot.

Building a wonder sends no check. Under a wonder goal the wonder is the goal, so the Wonder: item is the reward and raising it is what you do with it.

Notes and limitations

• The skirmish setup — map size, resources, difficulty, speed, unit limit and the rest — is chosen in your YAML, and the client holds the setup screen at those values while it runs. Cheat codes are always disabled. Map type is the one setting left to you, and map_terrain is how you tell the seed which kind you'll pick.
• The GOG and Steam Art of Conquest builds are what's mapped. They ship the same binary. Other builds, the base game and NeoEE among them, need their own address profile.
• Single-player skirmish is what this is designed and tested for. The client writes to the running game's memory, so it should not be used in multiplayer against other people.
• Your game files are never modified.