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Game
Game2026
Empire Earth: Gold Edition
Developer Stainless Steel Studios, Mad Doc Software, Xtended Realities
Empire Earth is a real-time strategy video game developed by Stainless Steel Studios and released on November 13, 2001. It is the first game in the Empire Earth series. The game requires players to collect resources to construct buildings, produce citizens, and conquer opposing civilizations. Empire Earth spans 500,000 years of human history, which is divided into 14 epochs, beginning with the prehistoric age, and… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
175 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 6, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
88
LovedLoved
105 positive · 15 negative
95% range 80–92%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 105 | 15 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 17 | 1 | 27 |
| Mastodon * | 2 | 0 | 6 |
| Lemmy * | 1 | 0 | 1 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
123 of 138 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
88% recommend · 104 yes, 14 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 118 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (227 of 249 positive).
Players praise the nostalgic return of a classic RTS, calling it an essential purchase. [1][2][3] Some note the lack of modern features like proper widescreen and multiplayer support. [4][5][6] Several reviewers express hope for a proper remaster with quality-of-life improvements. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [6]
Multiplayer is still dead outside of community support. Audio issues with dialogue not playing as intended. As fun as the single player is, I bought this to be able to play with my friends across the world and not 5 feet beside me. Honestly needs the QoL treatment if you were ever going to remaster it with actual official server support. $20 plus tax for a 25 year old series trilogy that you don't need any …
- [1]
Newcomer or veteran, the old-school era of strategy games is officially back on track. An essential purchase and a must-have collection for your Steam library
- [4]
EE1 was a childhood favorite game of mine that took Age of Empires to the extreme with 15 ages (epochs) instead of 4. I have the NeoEE version of this game, which is far superior to this version. The NeoEE version has proper modern resolutions so you aren't as zoomed in, proper widescreen, scores, hotkeys, multiplayer, and a bunch of other QoL. Very disappointing that the paid version doesn't have anything close to …
- [10]
I remembered this game with deep nostalgia. I was afraid I would play it and not enjoy it as much as I did as a kid. I was wrong, this game aged awesomely. The campaigns are really fun, really well designed and you can end up hooked to them for days! For a 600 mb game it's crazy that the AI seems smarter than in other modern games! Really good product, absolutely recommend it. cons: the voice acting is really corny. …
- [13]
THIS IS NOT A REMASTER This rerelease is a 1:1 copy of the old game, with maybe a few bare minimum display settings updated. All it's fun and frustration is intact. The mechanics and design of this game is second to none, but the AI was primitive and heavily relies on cheating to win. Turning it off makes it feeble, but it makes it a not-so-laid back experience when they have free units, faster production, no fog of …
Summarised from 34 of the 172 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 13, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Empire Earth: Gold Edition sits at 88% positive across 120 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Empire Earth sold over 1 million units globally by 2002. In the United States, it sold 390,000 copies and earned $16.7 million by August 2006. It was the country's 41st best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. In the United States, combined sales of all Empire Earth games released between January 2000 and August 2006 had reached 870,000 units. Empire Earth received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. In Spain, the Asociación Española de Distribuidores y Editores de Software de Entretenimiento offered it a "Gold" prize, for 40,000 sales in…
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 175 · most liked firstNewcomer or veteran, the old-school era of strategy games is officially back on track. An essential purchase and a must-have collection for your Steam library
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Ignore the one on the page, the intro is the real trailer! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6ik9Stjc60 I love it, glad to have one of my childhood games, not only on gog, but now released on Steam. Now if we only could have Dark Reign game releasing on Steam too... just asking xD
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The expansion does not launch (I have tried compatability modes, launching the base game first, reinstalling, restarting comp nothing works) support told me they were unable to assist me and to ask a member of the community, not recommending this at this time till a solution is found or its fixed. Finally figured out how to get the expansion to work, had to download my gog version then move those files to the steam folder and now it works, still leaving the not recommended review because you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Multiplayer is still dead outside of community support. Audio issues with dialogue not playing as intended. As fun as the single player is, I bought this to be able to play with my friends across the world and not 5 feet beside me. Honestly needs the QoL treatment if you were ever going to remaster it with actual official server support. $20 plus tax for a 25 year old series trilogy that you don't need any maintenance on is pretty whack ngl Otherwise I would happily give money for the Steam…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EE1 was a childhood favorite game of mine that took Age of Empires to the extreme with 15 ages (epochs) instead of 4. I have the NeoEE version of this game, which is far superior to this version. The NeoEE version has proper modern resolutions so you aren't as zoomed in, proper widescreen, scores, hotkeys, multiplayer, and a bunch of other QoL. Very disappointing that the paid version doesn't have anything close to what the fan community did years ago. Game desperately needs a proper DE…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I am really glad to see this ancient RTS return to Steam. I loved Empire Earth as a kid and always preferred it over Age of Empires, so getting a chance to revisit it now all this time later was really fun. This is the first of the three games that was rereleased and so I naturally started out with this one. In case you don't know anything about Empire Earth but know Age of Empires, Empire Earth is much the same, just a lot crazier and with a much wider age progression starting at the stone…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →We are so back! Empire Earth was one of my favourite games as a kid. Really happy to see it appear on Steam. The UI might take some getting used to as it lacks a bit of modern QoL features, but once you get the hang of it again it's a smooth ride.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Remaster this already. We've been waiting for years.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I remembered this game with deep nostalgia. I was afraid I would play it and not enjoy it as much as I did as a kid. I was wrong, this game aged awesomely. The campaigns are really fun, really well designed and you can end up hooked to them for days! For a 600 mb game it's crazy that the AI seems smarter than in other modern games! Really good product, absolutely recommend it. cons: the voice acting is really corny. that being said that's probably a pro, it has it's charm
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Empire Earth 1 was amazing, 20-25 years ago i play this game (when i was 6-12 years old) it is a part of my childhood memories. I still remember spending hours in front of the computer within 6-10 hours/day just play and explore main mission, Greek Campaign Story 8/10 -- difficulty 7/10 Trojan War +The Peloponnesian Wars (vs Sparta)+ Alexander Story were memorable English Campaign Story 9/10 -- difficulty 8/10 William Campaign until - Hundred Years War Begin, (i love the knight and long…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →One of my all-time favorite games. Any news is good news. 14 ages BLOWS Age of Empires out of the water. Notoriously hard to get this game to work, surprised it works out of the box with Alt+Tab and everything. Absolutely deserves a 64-bit remaster, and hopefully a minimum viable master server. Here to show my support. Rebellion: Please listen to the NeoEE folks, open source the game files for them, then sell the remaster that they make from it. Free money.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Please add multi-player via steam, a compatibility layer using something similar to game ranger through team's interface I grew up playing this
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →1. The expansion pack will only start after you launch the original version of the game first or it crashes with an error. 2. Upon launch, the game requires OS administrator privileges to modify PC settings, and if you don't grant them, it crashes with an error. Why does it need these privileges at launch? To force-apply compatibility settings. What's so bad about that? Steam Overlay doesn't work when an application runs with compatibility settings under admin privileges unless Steam itself is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Classic strategy games Empire Earth 1, 2 & 3 arrive on Steam https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/05/classic-strategy-games-empire-earth-1-2-3-arrive-on-steam/ #EmpireEarth #RTS #PCGaming #Steam
neutral · AI labelView post →Empire Earth – Just Like We Remember It Honestly, this is pretty much the Empire Earth I remember from when I was younger. Same feeling, same campaign, same gameplay, and now it actually runs on modern systems without having to fight with it. It is very nostalgic. The game feels different from Age of Empires because it has always been slower and more focused on progression through the ages. My only real complaint is that the battles could be bigger, since the unit cap still feels pretty…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Most played game of my childhood, and honestly probably my entire life. Fantastic strategy game that I lose track of time playing.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Works perfectly on Linux with Proton. Does have support for 4K and unlocked framerates. Alt-tabbing causes the game cursor to glitch out so just make sure to run it in window mode or with gamescope to prevent this. The game is just as good as when it was first released.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →the developers are cheap and don't want to update the game the way they should ... no one today using windows 98 or XP... I'm really disappointed of the performance I'm getting...I don't want to open stupid patches every time I launch the game... just a waste of money... I had the original CD back in the early 2000 and it worked better than on my potato PC
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is absolute RTS at it's peak.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →THIS IS NOT A REMASTER This rerelease is a 1:1 copy of the old game, with maybe a few bare minimum display settings updated. All it's fun and frustration is intact. The mechanics and design of this game is second to none, but the AI was primitive and heavily relies on cheating to win. Turning it off makes it feeble, but it makes it a not-so-laid back experience when they have free units, faster production, no fog of war, etc. The game runs great even on lower-end hardware, and even has lots of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is fine to play for nostalgic reaons, it has it's flaws, but thats to be expected for an old game. The reason for negative review is that there is absolute ZERO game polish or QOL added for the digital release. Also, given how much more compute the average gamer has nowdays it's a bit sad to see the low unit cap and terrible AI.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →such a classic RTS. seems to work fine on my pc. definitely need a remaster and a lot QOL improvements.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The challenge is to choose 20 games that greatly influenced you. One game per day, for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, no particular order. Day 4 Empire Earth #GameChallenge #Games #GameDev #PromoSky #IndieDev
neutral · AI labelView post →A guide on how to launch EE AoC: - Start EE FIRST and close it - Start EE AoC only after having run EE at least once, otherwise EE AoC will throw a "missing game" error For high resolution monitors: if the game is too zoomed in, you can check the dreXmod 2.01 mod files to have further-out views. I managed to run EE AoC on Linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and patch it as above. The only issue I had was that the game wouldn't start if installed in an external mount partition, but only if the game is…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →snagged it in heart beat! this game along with rollercoaster tycoon, sims 1 and simcity were the games I grew up on! yes it is a bit dated but its still as fun as back then. fingers crossed it might get a remaster with updated graphics. now if only someone could get us LOTR battle for middle earth 1 &2 back on steam?
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Old classic. It has no multiplayer and the graphics didn't age well. If the Devs could add better camera view and Steam multiplayer, this would be fantastic. A great nostalgia game with interesting mechanics
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →An award-winning British independent studio? Puh-lease! Shame on you! You couldn’t add a couple of resolution options? Bezos is sending Oprah’s husband to Mars again next week! What’s your excuse? Early access to the kirking Hantavirus? Bloody Ebola? Empire Earth: 94 FPS cap?! Unlimited FPS in the menu screen. Vsync is available. Empire Earth II: Vsync option is gone. And no resolution beyond 1920 x 1200 is available. Empire Earth III: Vsync is back. But again unlike Empire Earth 1, resolution…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Favorite RTS from childhood.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So for the past little while I've been spending some time revisiting an old Real-Time Strategy Game from the early 00's, One of my favourites; Empire Earth. I've been designing custom scenarios and maps, and here's the general concept I'm going with:
positive · AI labelView post →it maybe old, but one of the greatest of all time.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →empire earth is basically what you would get if civilization and age of empires had a baby.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →What can I say - take a trip down memory lane with this absolute masterpiece. Despite 23 years having passed, almost a quarter of a century, I still find it thoroughly enjoyable - and not just for nostalgic feelings. However they will not do the basic task of adding steam server support like Star Wars Empire at War did. Its a shame too having a functional multiplayer browser for this game would really lead to a resurgence in popularity. With that being said I can not recommend this game as…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Glad to see this game on steam, It was good to have a quick game. This really reminded me of my late father, he enjoyed playing this game.. I was always fascinated with it especially with the modern era stages. Great game, thanks for the nostalgia
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Yes, the Computer Player still cheating in Single Player Skirmish. Open the basic version first before launching the upgraded version.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →WHAT A CLASSIC! plays and feels just like I remember! Love these games wished they was on steam years ago. Skirmish is so addictive all the ages fun to play and hope the new upcoming Empire Earth can live up to the hype!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My childhood finally on Steam Stonma Geniha Dauuda
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →better than age of empires
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game was crashing often, but I figured out how to fix it. Run it in administrator mode, with Windows XP compatibility. Totally fixed the game. Classic game, loved it when I bought it as a kid and still love it today!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hello my friends :) I stumbled upon this old gem by chance and thought, "WTF, thanks Steam"—parts 1 through 3 are back on Steam :) EE1 is by far my favorite installment, and I still love playing it to this day (I still have the original 2003 CD; you could install it, and the installation folder remained playable all this time), but I'm really happy to be able to play it on Steam now :) I've tested it on my Windows 10 PC and the Steam Deck so far, and it runs beautifully on both :) THANKS VALVE…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Long time fan of this game. Empire Earth was originally released in 2001 by Stainless Steel studios and published by Sierra Entertainment and was released on disc, GOG and now steam. My love for this game has caused me not only to buy this game on all platforms but also buy it for my friends to help boost the sale numbers. My review will be focusing on the main game and not the expansion: The Art of Conquest (AOC). I should say, my review will have moments of clouded judgement especially from…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Remake this game to HD or something similar to AOE2 already.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Literally my childhood game finally on steam
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Brings back so many good memories.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →MP nope Lan Nope Direct conn nope NeonEE mod DEF NOPE.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →atom bomb vs cavemen
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Reviving my childhood with this game and I am ready to finally beat it in Hard difficulty, it feels as all my RTS expirience can finally carry me through this game :D
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Of all the RTS games I could've picked for a "quick" pre-sleep match (Blizzard, C&C, AoE), I specifically chose Empire Earth 2. Big mistake. 2 hours later, the game is finally done and I am incredibly late for bed. #RTS #EmpireEarth #LinuxGaming #Gaming #retrogaming
positive · AI labelView post →Last night I dreamt I was playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3, but then the game turned into Age of Empires 2, and then it suddenly got some game mechanics from Age of Wonders, and then suddenly some from Empire Earth. Obviously my subconscious thinks I should play ~25 year old strategy games. :D
neutral · AI labelView post →Reading through PC Gamer US from April 2002, I noticed how many ads in this magazine boasted about awards they received. Although the biggest news for me is that Empire Earth actually got a GOTY award. Loved this game back then, but I always assumed it was a rather niche RTS. #PCGI
neutral · AI labelView post →Relatedly, AoE2 is objectively the best AoE game for sure. Hands down. But also: Empire Earth is better. Who needs relics when your prophets can cause volcanos to sprout up, erupt and destroy everything lol
positive · AI labelView post →Old school game bringing up old memories
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A pleasant blast from the past! I've been wanting to replay this game for years.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →We're Under Attack!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →i love nuking the Kingdom of Israel
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Good nostalgy, Vannila game are nice, but the AoC expansion crashes every time, maybe it's just blue ray version and you probably think that it go properly for that money and the developers didn't test it before release..i tryed contact support but they ignore me..AoC feels like larp
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Absolute classic. Used to play this so much as a kid, and it is still just as much fun as it was back then. Lost track of time and sank five hours into one session just yesterday, lol. It is a very accessible RTS, but it also has options for those looking for more challenging experiences. The scope, scale and spectacle is also very well done for its time. One of my favorite games of all time, and that has not changed one bit.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's always fun to nuke the Bronze Age back to the Stone Age.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My favorite RTS from my childhood is finally available on steam. Nostalgic.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is finally here!! Time to wrap this up!!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Finally! I've missed you old friend.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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