it doesnt matter the game, and empire earth was quite good, but they never seem to have a very good explore method, somehow, it usually messes up!
as for moding... it is a demo, is there any demo that you can mod?
steller manipulations... I have no idea, havent got that far. as I previously said, I am a little mad at the turn limit (think I may have found a work around, testing

).
the game you can play is already restricted why limit people from experimenting and trying out a full game within the peramaters like AOE3, RON, and some other AAA strategy games, it is good as it lets people have a real feel for the game within the enviroment people want. they seem to have done a restricted game within restricted enviroments. I wish they did like RON/EE2 (it was one of them!) and release the demo a few months ago with the features I say above, but say it is a beta and many features will change. I think this would of given a bigger beta test, and people would hear about the game, and like it because they would of had a few full games, all be it limited which would be a incentive to buy the game