                          Concept : Empire Overview

A BRIEF HISTORY
The  game  "Empire"  is  the  most recent in a series of territorial conquest,
political/economic simulation  games initially inspired by a board game of the
same  name  played  at Reed College (Portland, Oregon).  Earlier versions were
written at Reed by Peter Langston and at The Evergreen State College (Olympia,
Washington)  by  Chas  Douglas, Peter Langston, Ben Norton, Mike Rainwater and
others; of particular note are the games "Galaxy" (Langston) and "Civil" (Nor-
ton).  The previous version was written partly on the HRSTS Unix system at the
Harvard Science Center, (Cambridge, Mass.), partly on the Unix system at  Com-
mercial  Union  Leasing Corporation, (New York, N. Y.)  and partly on the Unix
system at Davis Polk & Wardwell, (New York, N. Y.)   by  Peter  Langston  with
invaluable  goading  from Joe Stetson, Robert Bradbury, Nat Howard, Brian Red-
man, Adam Buchsbaum, and a myriad of others.  Since  Langston  never  released
source  code  for  his  version, Dave Pare and friends de-compiled it and have
created this version which is very different.

                          Concept : Empire Overview

THE OBJECT OF THE GAME
Empire falls into the broad category of simulation games  and  involves  mili-
tary, political, and economic factors.  Although no goal is explicitly stated,
players rapidly derive their own, ranging from the mundane desire  to  be  the
biggest,  mightiest  country  in the game and "conquer" all others to the more
refined goals of having the most efficient land use  possible  or  the  lowest
ratio of military to civilians while still surviving, etcetera.

WHY USE A COMPUTER?
The  role  of the computer in Empire is that of modeling the physical/economic
system.  Players interact through the computer rather than with the  computer.
The  game  is played in a "real-time" environment; players log on and allocate
resources, attack neighbors, send diplomatic communiques, etc. whenever it  is
convenient.  The program keeps track of these activities, maintaining a record
of time spent and arranging for time to accumulate when players are not logged
in to the game.  Accumulated time is expressed in "Bureaucratic Time Units" or
"B.T.U.s".

                          Concept : Empire Overview

BTUs?
The purpose of the B.T.U. Concept is three-fold:
I) Commands use up B.T.U.s.  This limits  the  number  of  commands  that  any
player  can give in any particular time period.  Thus the fanatics can't over-
run the players with less free time by tenacity alone.
II) The build up of B.T.U.s not being dependent on being logged on at any par-
ticular  time  allows players to participate when it is convenient rather than
at some fixed time (as in the case of monopoly, the stock market, etc).
III) The B.T.U. arrangement helps compensate for the fact that in concept, the
governments  of  each  country are always "playing" although the player repre-
senting that country may only play periodically.

GEOGRAPHY
The geography of the game is embodied in a rectangular  map  partitioned  into
M x N  sectors (where M and N are typically but not necessarily powers of two,
usually 32, 64 or 128) that is approximately 50% sea, 45% habitable  land  and
5%  uninhabitable  mountains.  This "map" is generated by a program (the "cre-
ation") that places volcanoes pseudo-randomly, lets large  meteors  and  small
meteorites  impact  the surface, strews gold deposits and oil deposits around,
covers the planet with water, dries some of the water to form  seas  and  land

                          Concept : Empire Overview

masses, runs rivers from mountain peaks down to the seas, allows sedimentation
to create oil and fertility, and uses simple tectonics to expose oil and ores,
etc.

WHERE DO THE COUNTRIES COME FROM?
New  countries  may join the game at any time.  Upon entry into the game a new
country is given two adjacent sectors.  These sectors are initially designated
"sanctuaries"  and are inviolable.  (Each country uses its own coordinate sys-
tem with sector 0,0 being the current capital,  a  sanctuary  initially.   The
initial two sectors are always numbered 0,0 and 2,0.)  The new nation may con-
fine itself to these two sectors for any length of time and  thereby  be  safe
from  attack.   However, in order to build or expand, it is necessary to leave
the safety of the sanctuary.  The sectors of land that  were  sanctuaries  can
then  be  redesignated  as  any of a multitude of other land-use types ranging
from weather stations to gold mines to munitions plants.

FURTHER READING
For further information, here are a few "info" command topics that  are  basic
to the understanding of the game:

                          Concept : Empire Overview

   bye      designate  map           spy       update
   census   food       move          syntax    distribute
   nation   info       sector-types  time      {commands}

A FINAL NOTE
It  should  be remembered that Empire is merely an interesting pastime; in the
vernacular, "it's just a game".  There are many amusing stories of people  who
took  the  game  too  seriously;  one  tells of a corporate Vice President who
walked into the computer room  one  Saturday  and  flipped  the  main  circuit
breaker  in  order to stop an attack on his country; another tells of the Har-
vard student who refused to go to bed until everyone logged out of Empire  and
the other players who took turns staying up late...

While  many  players take Empire very seriously an equal number of players use
it as a safe environment in which they can act out fantasies.  On occasion the
fantasies involved are remarkably aggressive or hostile.  It has been my expe-
rience that the people with the most belligerent countries are often the  peo-
ple  with  the  kindest  hearts; the anti-social game play doesn't necessarily
reflect the "true" being underneath (or else I have some _v_e_r_y weird  friends).

                          Concept : Empire Overview

See Also: introduction, bugs, commands, hints

