.TH Overview of the Empire game
.ce 1
(as of 5/78)
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The game empire is the most recent in a series of territorial
conquest games inspired by a board game of the same name played at
Reed College (Portland, Oregon).  Earlier versions have
been written at Reed by Peter Langston and
at The Evergreen
State College (Olympia, Washington) by Chuck Douglas, Peter
Langston, Ben Norton and Mike Rainwater.
The current version was written partly on the HRSTS Unix system at
the Harvard Science Center, (Cambridge, Mass.),
partly on the Unix system at Commercial 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
and others.
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Empire falls into the
broad category of simulation games, involving both military
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.
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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 games is played in a
"real-time" environment; players log on and allocate resources,
attack neighbors, send diplomatic communiques, etc. whenever they
have time and the program keeps track of their activities such that
when they are not logged on the time accumulates until they do log
on; (accumulated time is expressed in "bureaucratic time units" or B.T.U.s).
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The purpose of the B.T.U. Concept is three-fold:
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I) The fact that commands use up B.T.U.s limits the
amount of time that any player can spend developing his/her country
so that the insomniacs won't necessarily out-play (or perhaps over-play)
the players with less free time;
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II) The build up of B.T.U.s not being dependent on
being logged on at any particular 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);
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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.
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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 "creation") that places
volcanoes pseudo-randomly forming land masses, (continental
drift was too complicated), and then pseudo-randomly places
veins of gold and iron ore.
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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 system with sector 0,0 being the
current capital, a sanctuary, initially.  The initial two
sectors are always numbered 0,0 and 1,0.)
The new nation may stay in 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 sector of land that was a sanctuary can then be
redesignated as one of a multitude of other land-use types ranging from
weather stations to gold mines to munitions plants.
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For further information,
here are a few "info" command topics that are basic to the understanding
of the game:
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.NF
build           designate       prayers         update
bye             info            sector-types    weather
census          innards         spy
commands        map             telegram
country         move            time
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