Yeah, you can use one of several programmes to create your model, but once you want to get it into EAW you need the ALO plugin which is only available for certain old versions of 3DS Max.
I know little to nothing about EaW modding but when I was searching up some of work done by a 3D Artist in EaW I saw that someone was using Autodesk 3ds Max 8 SP3. I hope this was the information you were looking for.