e m p i r e e x p l a i n e d From the manual pages that accompanies the client. DESCRIPTION BSD Empire is a global economic/political/military simula- tion game wherein players, representing national govern- ments, make "real-time" decisions concerning resource allo- cation, national goals, international diplomatic efforts, etc. Extensive records are kept for all players. WARNING -- This game is not only addictive but often peels back the thin veneer of civilization that hides the maniac within. This description is a pretty brief summary of what happens in an empire game. Including the maniac stages that eventually show up in all people that play the game. This document will only discuss BSD Empire. There is another document posted to this newsgroup (Versions of Empire - Monthly posting) that describes the other versions. BSD Empire is the version of empire that rec.games.empire was created to discuss. This document will also only discuss the theory of empire and the basics of how the game works. For details on empire, there is a file available by anonymous FTP on ftp.cis.ksu.edu in /pub/Games/Empire/docs/UsersGuide. This file will give you many, many helpful hints on playing empire. The author is Geoff Cashman. This FAQ document will also not discuss specific commands or even tools. For information on those, see the above document or the online information pages. Also, documents discussing anonymous FTP are floating around all over. See the newsgroup news.newusers.questions. Basicly, in Empire, you are the dictator of a small country. All of your decisions are made to further the goals of your country. The goals of your country can be widely varied. Maybe your goal is to conquer the world, or to have the best technology, or to have the biggest country, or to be on the winning team, or just to stay alive. A game of empire usually lasts from 1 day of continuless playing (blitz game) to 5 months of light, but continuless playing (Oakland University game). Time is a big consideration in playing empire. As somebody's signature says; Surgeon General's Warning: Playing empire can lower your GPA by 2.00 points. More on the types of games later. Next. Empire is InterNET based. In order to play empire, you must have access to a computer that is directly connected to the InterNET. Many educational institutions have this feature (note the .edu in my address). Some businesses are big or rich or crafty enough to have a direct connection, and you can play empire from these organizations, too. Empire comes in 2 parts. The first part is the empire client. Clients come in many shapes and sizes. First, there is the standard client. It works on pretty much any UNIX computer that exists (as far as I know). It is compatible with pretty much any terminal, including dumb terminals. The standard client simply prints the information on the screen one line at a time. Used in conjunction with redirection to files and piping to standard UNIX utilities like more and grep, the standard client can serve you well for a long time. The other 3 types of clients that I know of are eif (Empire InterFace), the X terminal version, and the VMS version. Eif is a more modern standard client. Because it is brand new, it has it's share of bugs to be worked out. On the Sun that I use, eif is only 25% larger in size than the standard client (108Kb vs 75Kb). I have gotten the X terminal version to work correctly on a Sun SPARCstation SLC running X11R3. I do not use it because of disk quotas. The X version is over 800Kb of executable binary plus data files versus about 75Kb of executable for the standard version. I have never used VMS empire client, but in a letter from one of the authors he writes: | From: "KIENENBERGER MIKE L" | Subject: Re: Empire question | | I'm one of the people who wrote a VMS client. I will be keeping the | most current version of it on anonymous ftp at | paranoia.uafcs.alaska.edu. My address is | FXMLK%alaska.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu. Also, the VMS client I wrote | works almost identically like the unix version. Setup is the only | difference since Unix and Vax/vms don't work the same. The second part of empire is the empire server. Most people will never have access to an empire server. Empire servers are set up and run by people we call deities (deity is another name for a god, by definition; it is probably appropriate that the people that set servers up are called that). The server is basicly a large database and software to drive it. The client uses the internet to access the computer on the other end that is running the server. The computer that the server is running from can be across the room or across the world. The server then verifies who you are by using a password, mistakenly called a "representative name" by the documentation. The empire client is then allowed to alter your section of the database according to your wishes. Moving people around is a common enough action to do. The server monitors this and can update the database itself. Example. Moving people takes mobility, a price to pay for telling a person to get up and get his/her feet/horse/cart/wagon/automobile moving and go to another location. The server recognizes this action and immediately lowers your mobility left in that sector. Your country is a series of sectors laid out in a hexagonal fashion inside of a computer/deity generated "world". Most worlds are from 32 by 32 sectors to large 256 by 256 sector "worlds". You can build on land sectors and sail ships on sea sectors. Planes can fly anywhere as long as they can land somewhere (airports and carriers). Missiles are the highest tech way of moving things. The only problem is that missiles only move satellites or nuclear bombs. Back to building on land sectors. There is only 1 type of sector that you must have, and that is a capital. A capital is where you are (in theory) when you run the country. If you do not have a capital, you must pick one. Other types of sectors include iron mines, gold mines, roads, gun and ammunition plants, schools and universities, hospitals, radar facilities, harbors, and other sector-types that can be found in the on-line documentation. The documentation also explains what each of these do. This is nice, but the most important thing a server does is called the update. The frequency that a server does the update is complely up to the deity and the type of game that the deity wishes to run. Every once in a while, the update occurs and thing actually get done in your country. Babies are born, food is grown or fished, iron is turned into steel, steel is made into guns or ammunition, steel, oil, and gold can be combined to make technology, and a host of other things are done at the update. The server uses information from the database to control the update. If you havn't changed the database since the last update, the game just uses the old information and goes on without you. ETU's (Empire time units) are the amount of work that goes on between an update. The more etu's, the more babies are born, the more iron is mined, etc. Blitz games have high etu's (60+) and can update every 10 minutes. Average games have medium etu's (16-32) and update every 3-8 hours. The Oakland University game has high etu's and updates 1 time per day (giving it about the same speed as an average game). Remember: THE EMPIRE CLIENT IS COMPLETELY USELESS WITHOUT THE EMPIRE SERVER. So look for empire games that are starting. Most will be posted on rec.games.empire. Blitz games are also announced on a mailing list. To get on this mailing list, send a letter to blitz-list-request@bbn.com. The article will give you more information about that particular game and its specifics. If the game posted is for you, send in your desired country name and password to the deity. If you get in the game, then get your client from an anonymous ftp site. ucbvax.berkeley.edu has all 4 clients. The directory is /pub/games/empire/bsd. Good luck playing empire. Remember, see the file /pub/Games/Empire/docs/Users.Guide.Z available on ftp.cis.ksu.edu. Also see news.newusers.questions for info on anonymous FTP and uncompressing stored archives.