                          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).  The game was  originally
written by Peter Langston during the 1970s who developed it over the course of
many years and for several different operating systems.  During the  mid-1980s
Peter distributed copies of his game in binary form for others to enjoy.

One of these copies made it to UCSD, where Dave Pare did more than enjoy it --
he  with  some  friends reverse-engineered the game, and development continued
separately on the precursor to this version known as  UCSD  Empire,  to  which
many  people  have  contributed.   A major cleanup of the code occurred in the
summer of 1989, and this latest version known as  UCB  Empire  Version  1  (so
called because it runs only on UNIX operating systems with BSD extensions) was
distributed.

This is the second revision of Version 1.

                          Concept : Empire Overview

What is Empire?

   Empire is an military/economic simulation of make-believe  countries  in  a
   make-believe world.  In this version, the military part is emphasized.  The
   economic part is still there, but as a prerequisite to a working military.

What part do you play?

   Each player is the ruler of a country.  As leader of your country, you give
   commands  that  affect  your  country.   You move people around, build fac-
   tories, navigate battleships, etc.  You also handle all of  your  country's
   foreign policy.

   Empire lets you get reports on the status of your country, find out  what's
   going on in other parts of the world, and communicate with other countries

   Although no goal is explicitly stated, most players  rapidly  derive  their
   own,  ranging  from  the desire to be the biggest, strongest country in the
   game, to reaching nuclear technology first, to accumulating the most amount
   of money by becoming arms merchant to the world!

                          Concept : Empire Overview

The World of Empire

   Empire is played on a hexagonal map partitioned into a rectangular grid  of
   M x N  sectors (where M and N are necessarily powers of two, usually 128 or
   256.  The world is made up of approximately 60% sea, 35% habitable land and
   5%  uninhabitable mountains.  This map is generated by a program that simu-
   lates the processes that may have occurred on Earth.

   Individual land sectors can be assigned  a  specific  sector  type.   These
   types  range from banks to nuclear fuel processing plants.  See ``info sec-
   tors'' for more detail.

   Your personal coordinate system is based on your capital, which is  a  type
   of sector.  Your capital is generally marked by the coordinates 0, 0.

Time In Empire

   The Empire world both does and does not  match  the  real-time  world.   To
   better explain this, let us examine the concept of an update.

                          Concept : Empire Overview

   At regular intervals the entire Empire world is updated.   When  the  world
   updates,  new population is added, ores are dug up and added to stockpiles,
   food and other commodities are distributed to sectors, the educational  and
   technological  levels  are updated, and so on.  It can be thought of as the
   minimum quantum for growth.

   While production occurs infrequently but automatically, other actions are a
   direct  result  of  real-time player commands.  These commands have instan-
   taneous effects on the state of your country.  Dedicated (or merely experi-
   enced) Empire players will connect to the game at least once each update to
   monitor their country.  Many attackers will wait until the small  hours  of
   the morning to carry out their attacks, for obvious reasons.

   If you do not log in to Empire, any automatic policies you have set up will
   be  carried  out.   All  of  your  units and sectors will defend themselves
   against most forms of conventional attack.  However, Empire will not try to
   fix  any  mistakes  you  have  made,  such as leaving a coastal land sector
   unguarded for example!  Currently the level of sophistication of  automated
   defenses  is  fairly  low,  so  unless  you  are  very  careful, relying on
   automatic defenses is probably not such a good idea.

                          Concept : Empire Overview

Bureaucratic Time Units (BTU's)

   To prevent the more fanatical Empire players from executing  an  inordinate
   number  of  commands, The number of ``Bureaucratic Time Units'' (BTUs) your
   nation has limits the number of commands you can  execute.   A  BTU  is  an
   arbitrary  amount  of  bureaucratic  bookkeeping  that your government must
   spend to perform a certain function.  Most commands  that  are  not  merely
   informative cost BTU's.

   BTU's are generated by your country's capital.   The  more  efficient  your
   capital,  the  more  BTU's that are generated.  BTU accumulation depends on
   world size, the number and the efficiency of your bureaucrats.   Typically,
   a  100%  capital  will  generate  one-half  the maximum number of BTUs each
   update.  BTUs are accumulated every update.  Once your  BTU's  reach  zero,
   you may not issue any commands that use BTU's.

                          Concept : Empire Overview

   Three things to note about BTU's:

    1)  Since commands use up BTU's, this limits the number of commands that a
        player  may  issue over a particular time period.  This has the effect
        of helping to prevent Empire fanatics from  overruning  other  players
        with less free time to log on.

    2)  The build-up of BTU's is constant and does not depend on being  logged
        in.   This  allows players to participate when it is convenient rather
        than at some fixed time.

    3)  The BTU concept helps compensate for the fact that,  in  concept,  the
        governments of each country are always ``playing'' although the player
        representing that country may only log in periodically.

Game Length

   Depending on the length of the basic Empire Time Unit  set  by  the  Deity,
   Empire  games  last anywhere from one to four months.  You should expect to
   spend one to four hours a day playing.  Actual  time  spent  each  day  may

                          Concept : Empire Overview

   vary, but if you get into combat, expect your overall  time  commitment  to
   increase -- assuming you want to win!

Starting Out

   When a new country enters the game, it starts out with an amount  of  money
   and a few starting sectors.  These sectors are sanctuaries and have an ini-
   tial amount of people and commodities.  Until  you  break  sanctuary,  your
   country  is  effectively in stasis.  Nothing will change until you actually
   log in and force a change -- breaking sanctuary.

   You should read all of the info pages, and a minimal number of manual pages
   describing  specific  commands  you will need to get going: break, capital,
   census, distribute, designate, levels, map, and move.

Tools to help you play:

   Ve, or Visual Empire helps examine your country.  Note: ve is not  easy  to
   use;  if  you  have time, paper is much better. Ve should be available from
   the same place you got your Empire client.

                          Concept : Empire Overview

A Final Note

   There are many amusing stories of people that took the game too  seriously;
   one  tells  of a corporate Vice President who walked into the computer room
   and flipped the main circuit breaker in order to  stop  an  attack  on  his
   country,  another  tells  of  the Harvard student that refused to go to bed
   until everyone logged out of Empire and of  the  other  players  that  took
   turns staying up late....

   There are as many ways to play Empire as there are people that  play;  some
   players  remember  past  games and hold grudges for life, others form alli-
   ances based on the school they attend or the company  they  work  for,  and
   still  others  prefer  to  use treachery as a weapon, making allies only to
   subsequently stab them in the back!

   Whatever philosophy of Empire play you adopt, you  should  always  keep  in
   mind  that  Empire  is  merely  an  interesting  pastime; as Peter Langston
   observes, "in the vernacular, it's just a game." So if you happen  to  meet
   your  lifelong Empire foe at the next USENIX convention, don't run him down

                          Concept : Empire Overview

   with your rent-a-car, buy him a drink!  Who knows what information he might
   accidentally spill...

