First of all, obviously, I love ror - I've dedicated way too much time over the past 4 years or however long for that to be at issue. And, I've read a lot of the posts about ee. And now, I've prob. played ee, mp close to 100 games - long enough to form an opinion. So let me break down some of my opininions on the matter.
RTS games are always gonna be similar in some ways, and rts good players are gonna be good at all of them in a short period of time. But, it's the differences, obviously that makes people gravitate towards one or another. I say to each his own. But I've been hearing ee is not that different from aok or ror & also that it's not enough like ror or aok. Well, which is it? lol. For one thing it's gonna be simmilar cause it's an rts- i.e. collect resources- build buildings and milt units and go kick ass. Another, why should it play exactly like it's previous incarnations. Now that really would be boring! Take aok for examp. I really can't put my finger on any one reason why I didn't like aok, but I just couldn't get into the game play. But I never put it down or anyone that plays it, cause just cause I didn't like it doesn't mean that thousands of other people are screwed up or wrong. Plus the more people playing rts games the stronger the rts community will be in the future.
EE myth: game play is slow at first. Not so at all! For one thing, playing in tourney mode greatly reduces the cost of epocing up. But even in standard mode you should be starting to produce milt units by between 5 and 10 minutes depending on the hunting unless your in pre or stone(it's trickier if you start with these ages). If you start with a prehist standard setts, then yes it will be slower than ror (still not that bad though if you like ecos). My favorite setts though are random epoc start thru nano either standard or tourney. It's way fun starting in a different epoc and your attacking much faster than in ror if your on a front and any good. I'm actually liking standard more now cause u play the epoc more and the use of heroes is more important. In tourney mode, once u start crankin you can barely keep up with your resources you can epoc so fast + it's tough to keep up with your hero upgrades much less make em. Also, an upgrade u just got a minute ago isn't all of a sudden outdated.
Resource collection isn't an exact science as it can be in ror. I say, who cares? I like the fact that u don't have set rules on how many peons here or there- makes you adapt to each game.
Best thing: the units rock!!!
Early units aren't that exciting, but anything after copper is just cool(zoom is a cool feature when you are just overwhelming someone, hehe). Guns are cool. Tanks are rad. Planes are just a blast and look damn cool!! One of my favorite strats is to go into someones town with tanks, some aa, artilliery in the back and maybe some antitank guns - then take out thier aa and send in tons of fighter/bombers with a few atom-bombers - weeee! When that first nuke goes off, you'll be hooked too!
Yes the sierra web site sucks but the lag is much better than it was since upgrade and there are no more synces than any other games. We do like to sit in ror rooms and chat between games - that's what I'm doing if my zf's is off and my room says away at moment. Zone messages screws with my ee chat for some reason so I have to turn it on dnd
is my only real gripe so far, lol.
Bottom line: EE rocks and you should buy it or obtain it somehow with a keycode ! That way we can play online together.
Btw, my sierra name is Kevlarious (old ror name too), and I play with Kronic_KMM, and Basic(Exige, Devilz_Exige, Devilz_Meridean.... - really some of you have too many damn names to keep up with ;p) a lot.
CU online,
Skier