1 – Empire Earth: Gold Edition
I don’t think that any other game has managed to capture the feeling of “surpassing” Age of Empires II in all aspects as much as Empire Earth. Back then, in 2001, it really felt like the team took everything that made AoE II great, and just added more on top. The reason why is pretty obvious now, and that’s because the team was composed of some Ensemble Studios veterans. Empire Earth embraced 3D graphics, ditching the Medieval-era exclusivity in favor of having 14 total epochs, going from the Stone Age into the far-flung future of humanity. Each Age had its own unique buildings and units, and what a feeling it was, starting up a skirmish match at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon as a kid, and at 6pm you were fighting in the Imperial Age, and by 10 your civilization was fielding nuclear bombs, Pandora’s robots, and your soldiers had traded clubs for futuristic lasers. Even in 2026, Empire Earth has no equal, and I have been waiting for so long for someone to just remaster this one and bring it up to modern standards. It truly deserves it.
Conclusion
I don’t think we will ever see a new RTS game come into the scene and leave as big a mark as Age of Empires II did. It’s the RTS to rule them all. AoE II is to the RTS genre what Doom is to FPS, Dark Souls is to action-adventure, and Super Mario is to platformers. Fortunately, Age of Empires II is still very much alive and in active development in 2026, and if you really want to pick it up and play, there’s a community of hundreds of thousands of players waiting for you. However, if you want to try something similar but different, any of the games in this list will do. Who knows, you might even find your new favorite RTS.
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