This is a little nostalgic fan art I did for the game Empire Earth, an old real-time strategy title which came out back in 2001. Designed by Rick Goodman, one of the guys behind the original Age of Empires, Empire Earth extended the concept of “advancing through the ages” to cover the entirety of human history, starting in prehistoric times (around 500,000 years ago, to be more exact) and ending sometime in the distant future. It also boasted an in-game “civilization editor” which allowed you to create your own civilizations, in addition to the map and campaign editor which were standard features for RTS games of that era. Although Empire Earth enjoyed enough success to spawn two sequels, it seems to have faded into historical obscurity relative to longer-standing series like Age of Empires or Warcraft.
Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun playing as a prehistoric tribe in the original Empire Earth, especially since the prehistoric stages had more gameplay depth to them than their equivalent in the first Age of Empires game. I also appreciated the cultural diversity added in the second despite it being over-laden with new bells and whistles (the third game, alas, was too broken and buggy to have much redeeming value). I’d love to see a remaster for Empire Earth with the epic chronological scope of the first game and the diversity of the second.
This clubman here would be based on the first game’s clubman available in the prehistoric age. However, he is Africanized in phenotype relative to his pasty-white game counterpart since the hominin lineage leading to modern humans (Homo sapiens) would still have been living in Africa 500,000 years ago.