Empires is a revolutionary mod currently in development for Half-Life 2. It'll be combining the genres of first-person shooter and real-time strategy. Two key players will be present in each game, one player per team will be the commander, playing the game from a top down perspective with the ability to construct bases and give orders to his team, and all remaining players will be soldiers, playing the game from a first person perspective either on foot or in an aircraft or vehicle. The commander can choose to control his team with an iron fist, restrict his team's purchasing ability for buying upgrades and vehicles, and punish anyone who disobeys, or he can be completely nonchalant and allow his team to do what they like with no fear of reprimand. Ultimately, it is up to the commander to determine his team's strategy which will inevitably determine whether his team is victorious. There will be many forms of help when taking on the seemingly monumental task of being the commander. In-game help and NPC characters will offer advice and keep the commander aware of events on the battlefield.

Empires v2.1
January 1, 2008

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Empires 2.1 Changes:

-Added: new wall models for both teams
-Added: walls now crumble when destroyed (the debris lasts for 15 seconds)
-Added: hard coded bans for confirmed griefers; report them on the official forums with evidence
-Added: vehicle only collision meshes to buildings for optimization purposes and to prevent players from being able to get vehicles stuck in the NF vehicle factory
-Added: vehicles automatically drive out of the vehicle factory when built
-Added: support for research items to be able to modify player weapon damage via their ammo type
-Added: "Upgraded Grenadier RPG" and "Advanced Grenadier RPG" research items within the Chemistry->Improved Warhead Compounds research tree branch which upgrade the grenadier class' RPG damage (+15 and +25)
-Added: new NF voice
-Added: when both teams reach 1 reinforcement on commander maps, a CV sudden death timer (default is 5 minutes; "emp_sv_stalemate_countdown" cvar controls the time with 0 turning it off) starts and counts down to 0, and upon reaching 0, both CVs become permanently spotted and will die in one hit; this is to prevent prolonged stand offs when there are no reinforcements
-Fixed: crash when querying the player for his animation sequence and it returning an invalid sequence
-Fixed: terrain exploit where a player could wedge himself inbetween a model and a steep part of terrain and walk through the terrain
-Fixed: server crash due to a dangling pointer left behind by a destroyed spawn point
-Fixed: crash in commander's Units panel associated with a lag spike
-Fixed: engineer kit sometimes showing multiple model previews when placing an engineer item
-Fixed: on conquest maps, a team could not always recapture their first flag once it had been turned neutral
-Fixed: "O-1" (second lieutenant) and "O-2" (first lieutenant) rank titles were backwards
-Fixed: when placing a building as the commander, the preview model was more lenient in showing the build area as being ok with an enemy building nearby while actually building it would be denied due to the build function being less lenient
-Fixed: walls were reducing damage to 1/24th their original value instead of the intended 1/12th
-Fixed: when placing walls as an engineer and seeing the transparent preview walls, the first wall preview was being shown too high
-Fixed: rare crash when spectating a player and they enter a vehicle
-Fixed: the "emp_sv_kick_commander_nf" console command was missing
-Fixed: commander camera could move, rotate, and zoom into the edge of the skybox, causing all entities to disappear from view
-Fixed: rare crash with tank turrets
-Fixed: rare crash in controls panel
-Fixed: grenadier would begin reloading the RPG after 3 seconds even if a rocket was still being guided
-Fixed: minor incorrect information in the research tree descriptions
-Fixed: barbed wire on top of NF walls was not drawn correctly
-Fixed: on emp_crossroads, players could get on top of the hills
-Modified: mortar, BE scoped rifle, BE SMG 2, BE pistol 1, BE pistol 2, and NF shotty pistol sound effects
-Modified: increased maximum number of sprites from 2048 to 8192, the lower limit was causing explosions to not show
-Modified: tweaked all SMG melee animations
-Modified: increased speed NF SMG 1 is drawn
-Modified: "mp_chattime" which controls how long the server sits at the scoreboard once the game has ended before switching maps can no longer be set any less than 10 seconds
-Modified: renamed "emp_comm_fogofwar" cvar to "emp_cl_comm_fogofwar"
-Modified: renamed "emp_comm_zoom_speed" cvar to "emp_cl_comm_zoom_speed" and increased the default value from 9 to 20
-Modified: renamed "emp_comm_move_speed" cvar to "emp_cl_comm_move_speed"
-Modified: sticky stun bombs now cause a vehicle to overheat for 10 seconds (increased from 5 seconds)
-Modified: commander camera no longer collides with player clip brushes

-Modified: vehicle armor as follows:

absorbant armor, weight, from 15 to 12.5 (pair of extra plates for mediums and heavies)
reactive armor, damage modifier, from 0.9 to 0.85

-Modified: vehicle weapons as follows:

AP MG, cycletime, from 0.1 to 0.2
AP MG, damage, from 4 to 8
AP MG, clipsize, from 80 to 140
AP MG, total ammo clips, from 4 to 5
AP HMG, cycletime, from 0.09 to 0.18
AP HMG, damage, from 5 to 10
AP,HMG, clipsize, from 120 to 180
AP HMG, total ammo clips, from 4 to 5
standard cannon, heat, from 16 to 14 (to compensate for building damage-resistance change in earlier 2.0 rc's)
Plasma cannon, cycletime, from 2 to 1
railgun, heat to target, from 3 to 0.5
ranged arty, cycletime, from 4 to 3
upgraded ml, clipsize, from 6 to 5
upgraded ml, total ammo clips, from 5 to 6
Salvo homing, lock on time, from 1 to 0.5