LordDz i'm sorry i never replied to you years ago when you posted in a topic i'd made about a large outdoor map. You offered to port it to Empires and I totally forgot to reply. That woulda been cool! Maybe we should collab on a project together? I'd love to make a huge Empires map, I just dont have extensive knowledge of the game to make a good layout. Do you still play?
Yeah, it's still alive. It's currently being ported to Source SDK 2013. A simple way of telling how the gameplay plays out: Each map has refinery nodes, that allows you to build refineries on them which give you money. A map has about 6-10 refineries. A map will take the whole grid.
Buildings require flat land to be built on, they can be placed anywhere on the map, you can use nobuild brushes if you wish to deny Engineer or Commanders from building on specific areas.
This is a relative quick game from one of the "Pickup games". Shows the view from the commanding mode.