STAR WARS Empire at War Cheats on PC
Empire at War has a cheat console, and it knows four codes. All four spawn an Imperial hero into a land battle. There is no code for credits, none for the Rebellion, and Forces of Corruption added nothing. Twenty years after release the game is still patched, still on Steam, and still has exactly those four. On PC the rest is a trainer, and on this one there are three switches, which is the shortest list on this site.
Takeaways Using the Empire at War cheat console
- 1 Start a game as the Empire The codes only respond in a land battle with the Imperial faction. As the Rebellion, or in space, the console takes them and does nothing.
- 2 Open the console The tilde key, left of 1 on a US keyboard. A text line appears.
- 3 Type one of the four CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Vader, CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Fett, CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Veers, CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Emperor. That is the whole list.
- 4 Do not look for a credits code There is none. Credits come from planets, and the only shortcut on PC is a trainer switch.
Four codes, one faction, one kind of battle
Empire at War came out on 16 February 2006 with a developer console behind the tilde key, and the cheat set inside it fits in one line. The Codex Gamicus page lists it in full:
| Code | Effect |
|---|---|
CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Vader | Darth Vader on the field |
CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Fett | Boba Fett |
CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Veers | Colonel Veers |
CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Emperor | The Emperor |
All four are hero spawns, all four are Imperial, and players on the Steam forum who tested the console on the current build report the same limits: they respond in a land battle when you play the Empire, and outside that the console accepts the text and does nothing. There is no Rebel version, no space version, no credits command, no fog-of-war command. Forces of Corruption, the October 2006 expansion with the Zann Consortium, added a third faction and no codes.
That is unusual for a 2006 strategy game, and it is why the console gets rediscovered every few years and abandoned again.
The game is still alive, the console is not
Empire at War never went away. Petroglyph re-enabled multiplayer on the Steam version in 2017 and added Workshop support with it. A patch in November 2023 rebuilt both the base game and Forces of Corruption as 64-bit applications, and another in October 2024 went after performance and crashes. The Gold Pack on Steam is the current edition of a game older than some of its players.
None of those patches touched the four codes. The console is the same as it was in 2006, and it will stay that way, because a 64-bit rebuild is maintenance, and a cheat menu is a feature.
The galactic map is where the campaign is won and lost, and the map runs on credits. Planets pay them, fleets spend them, and a lost space battle is a lost planet, which is a smaller income next turn and a worse battle after that. The one place the codes could help, the land battle, is the one place the campaign is rarely decided.
The trainer, three switches
The STAR WARS Empire at War trainer lists three cheats, one of them free. Of the hundred trainers on this site it is the shortest, and the reason is above: a game whose problems are credits and shields does not need a long list.
Increase Credits is the free one and the one the console never had. It moves the number the galactic map runs on. Infinite shield in space is the second, and it is the answer to the lost planet: a capital ship that holds its shields through an engagement is a fleet that is still there next turn. Godmode is the third.
That is the whole trainer, and it covers the campaign the way four hero codes cover a single land battle, which is to say completely for one and not at all for the other.
Which one
The console if you play the Empire, you are in a land battle, and you want Vader on the field for the fun of it. It is free and it is twenty years old.
The trainer if the campaign is the problem, the planet is about to fall, and the fleet holding it needs to survive one more engagement. It changes values in memory on your own PC, in single-player.
Both leave the Rebellion alone. Neither the game nor the trainer has a code that spawns Luke.
Infographic Using the Empire at War cheat console Click to enlarge What are the cheat codes for STAR WARS Empire at War?
Four: CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Vader, CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Fett, CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Veers and CHEAT_Empire_Spawn_Emperor, typed into the tilde console during a land battle as the Empire. There are no others.
Is there a money cheat in Empire at War?
Not in the game. The console has no credits command, and Forces of Corruption did not add one. A trainer's Increase Credits switch is the route, and it is the free one on the Empire at War trainer.
Do the cheats work in Forces of Corruption?
The expansion has no cheat codes of its own, and players report the base-game spawn codes are hit and miss there. If you want a hero on the field in Forces of Corruption, the Workshop is where people go.
Does the console work in multiplayer?
Do not try. Multiplayer came back to the Steam version in 2017, and cheats have no place in it. Everything on this page is for the campaign you play alone.