                          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
representing 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 "crea-
tion") 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
experience  that  the people with the most belligerent countries are often the
people 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

