High-Tech Games

[Gobalopper]

GameSpot has posted a great little feature entitled High-Tech Games and mentions Emperor as one of those games. You can head straight to the part on Emperor which provides some really interesting bits. Did you know that House Ordos wasn't included in the original plan?

The idea of letting players form alliances came about as a means to compensate for the lack of another technology. Originally, Emperor started out as a two-team concept--it had only the Atreides and Harkonnen houses. Early on, Westwood experienced technical difficulties in trying to add a third team to the mix. "We wanted to add the Ordos as the third side but hadn't yet worked out how best to make the campaign game reflect three sides," says Longpre. "We liked the additional choices [a] third side would bring to the player, so we came up with smaller houses--subhouses--that could ally with [either of] the two main sides and add units to the player's tech tree."

I can't imagine what EdricO would have done if they ended up not including the Ordos. :P

There is also a good part on the AI, definitely worth reading and there is a new screenshot to boot.