                      Introduction : Advice for Novices

NAME
   Novice - Advice for Novices

Level: Basic

                                  A Preface
                                by Ken Stevens

       While most of this document applies to the game of Empire in its
current form, it is important to keep in mind that the sections  which  follow
this  preface  were written long before missions or land units were introduced
into the game.  The main impact that missions and land units have had  on  the
game is that they greatly strengthened the defense.  Here are "ten easy steps"
for setting up a strong defense in the new server:

   (1) Build 100% forts and put 10 guns and at least 100 shells in them.
   (2) Put at least 5 mil in all of your coastal sectors.
   (3) Build infantry units, put them in the forts, "fortify" them, and
       put them on "reserve" mission (info mission).
   (4) Build battleships and artillery and put them on "interdiction"
       mission.  Put the artillery in forts and fortify them.
   (5) Put infantry units in your banks and capitals, fortify them, and set their
       reaction radius to 0 (info lrange).

   ---later in the game---

   (6) Put lots of land mines in your ground (info lmine).
   (7) Build fighter planes.
   (8) Always guard your ships with destroyers (or other kinds of ASW ships).
   (9) Build some ASW planes and put them on interdiction mission.
   (10) Build lots of sam's and abm's.

A Treatise of Advice on War and Peace for Budding Empire Players by Dave Pare

This article contains advice for beginning  players.   It  deals  mainly  with
staying  alive  and not economic development, because staying alive is tougher
for beginners than is playing with the various Sector-types.

The most important thing I can say is  that  beginners  should  remember  that
Empire  is not realistic.  There are dozens of tricks to learn; until you mas-
ter them, you will lose because of small oversights Beware of patterning  your
Empire actions after real-world strategies; they may not work as expected.

When you start, grab as much land as  possible.   Locate  and  identify  other
players,  and  get  an  idea  of  the  size  of your land mass.  Send them all
telegrams.  Everybody likes to get telegrams; the telegram facility gives  you
the  chance  to make friends, influence people, and have fun role-playing your
country.  If you get to know somebody, you may not  be  attacked  because  you
come  across  as a nice guy.  Of course, if you sound like a bozo, you may get
stepped on.

Establish a definite border with your neighbors by inhabiting sectors with one
civilian.  This establishes your claim to the land behind these outposts, even
though you don't actually occupy it yet.  It also prevents your neighbor  from
discovering  where YOUR capital is.  In Empire, it's very important to protect
the location of your capital; likewise, it's quite nice to know  the  location
of the neighboring capitals just in case!

If any of your neighbors attacks your outposts, that gives you a valuable clue
to  their  intentions,  while  not  costing  you much in the way of resources.
Also, an attack on a remote outpost may give you enough time to  prepare  your
country  for  the  possible invasion to follow.  You may not want to claim too
much land though, or the outposts will get overrun by people who  are  fed  up
with your obvious land-grabbing.

Basically, try and be fair about land distribution, but make sure  you  get  a
good deal for yourself.

Empire players go to war for many reasons.  One is lack of resources; you have
land, and they want it.  Another is safety; your troops or ships are perceived
as menacing, so they are destroyed by your adversary.  Another is because  the
attacking  player  really  enjoys  attacking people!  Still another is boredom
and/or curiosity -- Just how do nukes work anyway?  Hey, I know, I'll try them
out on Freedonia!

In Empire, wars are generally won by people who attack first.  Because  mobil-
ity  can  be  saved  up  your  attacks  can proceed while the hapless enemy is
asleep.  Many Empire attacks have happened over the weekend, or at 2:00 in the
morning.   It is quite difficult to defend your country when you're not logged
in.  The auto-defense features of the game are minimal at best.

The whole philosophy of First Strike holds true from early  land  warfare,  to
naval warfare, to the philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction.  If you strike
first and your attack is well-planned, any retributive strike of  the  enemy's
will  be  ragged  at best.  If it's a land war, all of the fighting will be on
the enemy's territory, not on yours.  Your industries will be  fine,  and  the
battleground will be the enemy's.

Having mentioned the advantages of pre-emptive strikes, I must caution against
spur-of-the-moment attacks.  I've noticed that many wars tend to occur because
some country sinks your battleship; you get mad and  decide  to  attack.   I'm
just  as guilty of this as anyone.  Spending a few days marshaling your forces
can mean the difference between a long, drawn-out slugfest, and an  overwhelm-
ing  2:00 blitzkrieg that blows away half the enemy's army and navy within the
first few hours.  While it's nice to have instant gratification (seeing  enemy
troops  die  right  after  you read the telegram describing the destruction of
your poor, defenseless battleship feels SO good), a hasty  counterattack  will
alert  your  enemy who will mobilize forces and retaliate accordingly.  Things
will escalate, and you'll be in a full-scale shooting war before you  can  say
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution!  And you will have lost the advantage.

Going first only counts if you have marshaled your forces.  A scattered,  ill-
planned attack will net you nothing but a little instant gratification, at the
cost of a long drawn-out war in which your neighbors who aren't  fighting  are
the  only  winners.   Once  two  countries are at war, it's much harder to win
overnight.  Vietnam is a good example of what you shouldn't do.  Gradual esca-
lation just gives the enemy time to prepare.  A sudden, overwhelming attack is
far better and will achieve your goals much more cheaply.

Knowing where the enemy is located is absolutely critical to the planning of a
successful attack.

War takes up a lot of resources; your  personal  time  is  the  most  precious
resource  of all.  In a war, your time, energy, and creativity will be devoted
towards destroying your adversary.   This  leaves  little  time  for  economic
development.   In  war,  the  home front stagnates, or goes to seed.  Only the
bare necessities are produced for the civilians at home, technological innova-
tion  and  new  land  development ceases, and your country will generally fall
behind in the global race for technology.

Therefore, if you decide to go to war, you'd better win  quickly  or  else  it
will  take  a  lot of time, and your country will go downhill fast.  If you're
just punishing someone for doing something nasty, offer nice peace terms after
you've  meted  out  appropriate  punishment.   If you aren't attacking because
you're bored, other players are likely to agree to peace because losing a  war
is  unpleasant.   I've turned enemies into allies often enough; they are happy
to survive, and if your attack was relatively justified,  they  are  happy  to
have you as a friend.

You'll notice I didn't give any advice to responding to an  attack.   I  think
being  attacked  is  generally  a  losing  proposition  because  in Empire the
attacker generally has the advantage unless fighting with greatly  lower  tech
equipment.

As soon as ships start appearing on the power chart,  make  sure  each  sector
bordering  water  has  at  least  five  to ten military.  When more ships come
around, beef up the coastline defenses even more.  Put  tons  of  military  in
your capital.

To summarize, if you go to war, strike the first blow -- preferably at 0200.

Remember the cost in your own personal time investment.  Once the ball  starts
rolling,  you  won't  be  able to call it all off and go for a vacation.  Your
enemy will want to kill you, so you'd better be prepared to  spend  plenty  of
time in solid play.

                           Humble Additions to the
                              Treatise of Advice
                                by Tom Tedrick

In addition, keep mobility in mind.  In many of  my  low-tech  wars,  superior
mobility was decisive.

Combining these ideas gives you my basic opening strategy: take as  many  sec-
tors as is possible, as quickly as possible (I will take 300 sectors the first
day if I can), and designate them highways, leaving one civilian in each  sec-
tor.  (You may need to leave one food in sectors with zero fertility.)

When my country first reaches 100% efficiency, roughly two-thirds of  my  sec-
tors  will  be 100% efficient highways.  This allows me to shift my forces all
the way from one border to another in a single move.  I  once  had  great  fun
smashing  three  countries that attacked me simultaneously from three sides by
shifting all my forces from  border  to  border  to  border,  achieving  local
superiority in each case, and annihilating the enemy forces in turn at updates
(this is related to the theory of the advantages of interior lines worked  out
by the Germans).

If the enemy runs out of mobility you can sometimes catch  the  main  invasion
force helplessly immobilized on the front lines and annihilate it.

                              Hints to the Wise
                               by Shelley Louie

Since this is an advice note, I'll refrain from being too specific about  tac-
tics.  You'll just have to learn them yourself.

Building the Perfect Beast: (Country Construction)

   The first thing you want is land.  Lots of land.  A whole hell of a lot  of
   land.  You should try to expand your country from the very beginning.  From
   there, you'll meet your neighbors who are doubtlessly doing the same  thing
   you're  doing.  Expanding wildly.  Now comes the first of a series of deci-
   sions you have to make.  Do you want to  become  a  raging  power-mad  war-
   monger?   If  you  do, be sure to have built your army beyond the basic 100
   troops.  The earlier in the game you find someone,  the  easier  it  is  to
   crush them into oblivion.  If you feel peaceful, see the diplomatic section
   of the text.

   Another difficult decision is designating your sectors.  A  good  beginning
   mix  is  two  mines  per light construction and heavy construction factory,
   about 20% agribusinesses (later dropping to 10%, 5%, or even none at all!),
   and  a  few  schools,  research,  parks, etc.  to fill up some of the other
   space.  The most important thing to have is a good transportation system in
   the  form of your highways.  Anywhere from 20-40% of your country should be
   highways.  You'll find them infinitely useful in moving food to a  starving
   sector,  taking  people  to  a  new settlement, or transporting troops to a
   local revolution, highways are vital!

   Another important consideration is do you want really want  to  win?   This
   implies the idea of competing in terms of building technology and research,
   and being able to get supplies to continue to produce both of  these  vital
   products  plus happiness, a high (greater than 10) education, maintaining a
   military force, etc.  Winning means succeeding on all fronts.   I  play  to
   win,  but find that I can't devote the time or effort to winning, so I usu-
   ally end up playing for the pure enjoyment of the game.  Ask Tom  [Tedrick]
   how many hours he puts into playing, and you can figure that is what you're
   going to have to do to win.  A final warning, if you play  seriously,  your
   grades  will  drop.   No  if's, and's, or but's about this.  You can't just
   throw three to five hours a day away and not have your schoolwork suffer.

Happiness is a Warm Gun: (The Art of Diplomacy)

   No one trusts anybody in this game unless you know them personally  outside
   of  the  limited scope of Empire.  Of course, this limits you a lot, so you
   break the rules and make alliances with people who you have no relation to.
   And they in turn backstab you and devastate the country you so meticulously
   built for the last few weeks.  Oh well, that's what you deserve...

   Just kidding.  Most of the people you will play with are rather trustworthy
   souls.   At  least  they  are  until it becomes burdensome to them.  A good
   relationship (as all those sex manuals will tell you) is based on trust and
   respect  for  the  other person.  What does this mean to you?  Build enough
   military to be a pain to invade.  Military power insures respect.  Trust is
   up to the two people involved.

Night Moves: (The Art of Empire)

   Empire is a skill.  Never forget that.  You will learn as you play that you
   may  have  to  stay  up for that 3:00 AM update to completely surprise your
   unknowing victim or even just to maximize your country's  potential.   Also
   never forget that someone may be up at that time waiting to pounce all over
   you too.  Pleasant dreams.

Running on Empty: (Losing and still having fun)

   Okay, you've tried to keep up with Tom [Tedrick], Chris [Guthrie], and  all
   those  other  experienced  people, but it just isn't going to  happen.  You
   are not going to win the big win (i.e., become world  dictator).   What  do
   you  do?   Give  up  and watch your country go to pot?  Give all your stuff
   away to another country and resign?

   No!  You can have fun even after you can't win.  Make small wars with other
   small  countries.   Try  to  get a hold of nukes to devastate them.  Form a
   cartel with other small nations and try to run over a big country.   As  in
   real life, the possibilities are endless!  Look at the Middle East, they're
   having fun, right?

   This is just a game, and from this point on, you don't have to worry  about
   watching over your nation too closely.  Play for the enjoyment of playing.

   Which, of course, is the intention of Empire in the first place.

                      On the Distribution of All Things
                              by David Bleckmann

The reader here is assumed to have read the information pages  on  distribute,
threshold, and level.

To use distribute, it is a good idea to have a warehouse.  You don't have  to,
but  this  is how the command usually works.  If for some odd reason you don't
use a warehouse, you will have to use some other sector  as  your  destination
sector,  as  mentioned in info level.  For novices, just build a warehouse.  I
will refer to warehouse instead of distribution sector for the  rest  of  this
text.

You should place your warehouse in a spot that can be reached by all your sec-
tors  via a low mobility path.  That is, for each sector you own, there should
be a path along which you could move  goods  at  very  little  mobility  cost.
Since  100%  efficient  highways don't cost any mobility to move across, roads
that come close to each of your sectors and lead to your warehouse are a  good
idea.

Now for each of your sectors you must set up a  distribution  path.   Use  the
distribute  command.   This  is a path from each of your sectors to your ware-
house, along a low mobility path as described above.  For example, if you have
a nation that looks like this:

             j j m + c
            m + g * +
             h + w + k
              m + + g

And you wanted to set up a path from your capital, you would give the command
   [##:##] Command: dist 0,0 bbg

Note: the path can only be so long, and as your country gets larger  you  will
need more than one warehouse.

Once you have done this for all of your sectors, you are ready to  start  dis-
tributing.

Now you will probably want to have food on all your sectors, and if one sector
has  a  lot  of people on it, you may want to have a bit more on it.  You will
not want to have to monitor the food levels for all of your sectors.  This  is
the process that is automated by distribute.

Using food as an example, you can go through all of your sectors and  issue  a
threshold command, such as:
   [##:##] Command: thresh f 0,0 40

This will set the threshold for food at your capital at 40.  You can  do  this
for all of your sectors using a command like
   [##:##] Command: thresh f #

And give a threshold for each of your sectors as prompted.

Now at each update, Empire will move food to and from  your  warehouse  in  an
attempt  to satisfy all your threshold requirements.  If for example a certain
sector has more than its allotted threshold of a  certain  product  (e.g.,  an
agribusiness  producing food), food will be moved off it to the warehouse.  If
a sector has less than its threshold, and the warehouse has any of that commo-
dity,  the  product will be moved from the warehouse to the needy sector in an
attempt to satisfy its threshold.  If a certain sector has a  threshold  of  0
for a certain product, no distribution takes place.

Therefore if you wished to move as much iron as possible  from  an  iron  mine
every  update, you would set its threshold for iron to one.  If somewhere else
you had a lcm factory that can use 45 iron a turn (found out through the  prod
command)  you  would  set  its  threshold  for iron to 45 (or greater) and its
threshold for lcm's to one.  Then, on each update, Empire would move all  iron
off  your iron mine (except for one unit), try to put 45 iron on your lcm fac-
tory and take all lcm's (except for one) off your lcm plant  (possibly  to  be
used somewhere else).

Note: the order in which this happens is predictable, but  not  always  desir-
able.   Thus, if you have no iron on your warehouse to start with and your lcm
factory gets updated first, it won't get any iron even though  there  will  be
some  in  the  warehouse  in  a few seconds.  It is always a good idea to keep
surplus goods in your warehouse.

The end result is that you can set up  your  country  to  move  your  products
around  without  you logging in.  It also doesn't cost as many mobility points
to move things as distribute, and it costs no BTU's!

                         Some Further Clarifications
                       on Distribution versus Delivery
                            by David Muir Sharnoff

   Secondly, I am still a little confused  about  distribution  and  delivery.
   When  I  designate a distribution route, does that mean that things will be
   delivered from the point of distribution to the warehouse?  Or  do  I  also
   have  add  the  delivery route on top of the distribution route in order to
   get things moving?  And how do I get the visual route of  the  distribution
   route?  I can get delivery routes by doing the route command.  Thanks.

The  two  methods  of  moving  commodities   (distribute/threshold/level   and
deliver/cutoff/route) are completely independent.

Delivery is most useful for short, one-sector, movement of commodities.   Dis-
tribute  can  be used in conjunction with highways and distribution sectors to
provide low-cost, long-range movement of commodities.  There is no  analog  to
the route command in the distribute paradigm.

Here are some examples of commands:

   [##:##] Command: distribute -2,0 jjjh
This command sets up a distribution path from the distribution sector in  -2,0
to sector 4,0.

   [##:##] Command: thresh food 4,0 400
This command sets the threshold on sector 4,0.  Sector -2,0 (the  distribution
sector  for 4,0) will attempt to keep 400 units of food in 4,0 by importing or
exporting as necessary.

   [##:##] Command: thresh oil 4,0 100
This command is the same as above, but will instead attempt to keep 100  units
of oil.

   [##:##] Command: level -2,0
This command will report the distribution routes  and  thresholds  for  sector
-2,0.

   [##:##] Command: deliver food -2,0 (384) y
This command will deliver all food from -2,0 in excess of 384 units to -3,-1.

   [##:##] Command: deliver lcm -2,0 b
This command will deliver all lcm's from -2,0 to -3,1.

   [##:##] Command: deliver lcm -2,0 +30
This command will deliver lcm's in excess of 24  (deliver  uses  multiples  of
eight).

   [##:##] Command: cutoff -2,0
This command will report what commodities are being delivered  from  -2,0  and
what their cutoffs are.

   [##:##] Command: route food -20:20,-10:10
This command will graphically report the food delivery paths  in  the  sectors
from -20:20 to -10:10.

                        Some More Hints for the Novice
                                 by Jeff Trim

Tech levels are very important in this game.  You cannot produce uranium, guns
or shells until you achieve a tech level of 40.

Choose your friends carefully.  I was talking to Lewis  from  Cornell  College
and  his  comment  was  the best I'd heard in a while: Never ally with someone
that doesn't have a  definite  interest  in  seeing  you  survive.   Don't  be
deceived  by  the  treaty command; treaty violations will show up in the news,
but that is not going to stop the aggressor from wiping you out, no matter how
bad it looks in the news.

Nuclear attacks can cause a lot of damage, but no one has ever been taken  out
of  the  game by a nuclear attack.  The damage from a purely nuclear attack is
recoverable.  It takes conventional forces combined with nukes  to  really  do
damage.   (Of  course  I  won't fool you either; it doesn't hurt to have a few
nukes either.)

Beware of running low on BTU's.  I will recount one story of a player on  this
site that was running low on BTU's.  His enemies launched a nuclear attack and
hit his capital!  Unfortunately, he didn't have enough BTU's to redesignate  a
new capital.  The moral of the story is that you should plan an alternate cap-
ital at some point in the game.  These are generally not needed at the  begin-
ning  of  the game, because you need to effectively deploy your sectors in the
early going.  But later, it wouldn't hurt to have one or more alternate  capi-
tals.

Empire is a game of perception.   If  your  adversaries  think  you're  tough,
they're  probably going to pass you and head for easier prey.  But the reverse
is also true; if you look weak they might try a few  tactics  on  you  --  and
depending  upon your response, they'll either back down or fight it out.  Bar-
gain from a position of strength.  You could be the  weakest  country  on  the
planet but still look so tough that no one would bother you.  It's all percep-
tion.

Weak countries have an added advantage: gun running!  If a country is  heading
out  with  his  fleet to attack another country and you happen to be along the
way, you could cut a deal with him and you could make a deal  and  allow  that
country  to  attack  a  coastal  sector and turn it into a harbor.  You've now
placed an obligation on that country, who will be very  careful  to  keep  you
happy  so  you  won't  grant similar privileges to that country's enemy.  Weak
nations can be quite powerful if you handle the diplomacy  right.   The  tough
players  like  blowing  away  their tough adversaries and as long as you stand
idly by and watch those two countries blow each other to little pieces, you'll
be left intact and growing richer off their little war.

                                   SEE ALSO
   Overview, Hints, Expert, Introduction

