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date     93.07.01.08.22.07;  author bill;  state Exp;
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WHAT IS EMPIRE?

  Empire is an military/economic simulation of make-believe countries in a
  fabricated world.  In this version, military actions tend to be emphasized
  although economic simulation is also a major part of the game and is a
  prerequisite to maintaining an efficient military.

  Each player runs a country.  There is no formal objectives, though most 
  players set goals for themselves.  Highest technology, largest populous,
  most efficient production, etc, are all reasonable goals.  History has
  shown, however, that in the long run, heavy-handed rulers with the most
  military might often squash out the weak, and it is not uncommon for a
  long running game to end in a nuclear blaze of fireworks.

SOUNDS LIKE FUN -- TELL ME MORE

  The world is divided into sectors, which are arranged in a hexagonal
  fashion to form a map grid of, typically, 64x64, 128x128, or 256x256
  sectors in size (other sizes are possible).  A typical portion of a 
  map might look something this:

      [0:255] Command : map -2:13,-3:4   The horizontal and vertical
           --00000000001111              borders of an empire map label 
           2101234567890123              the x- and y-coordinates of the
        -3  . . . . . . ? ? -3           sectors represented on the map.
        -2 . . . . . ) f ?  -2           Note that because of the hexagonal
        -1  . . . . . a f ? -1           nature of the map, for each y row
         0 . . . h k e + f  0            only every other x-coordinate is
         1  . . j + + + + f 1            valid (e.g., 5,3; 7,3; 9,3; etc).
         2 . . m + w l ^ ^  2            A 128x128 world then, for example,
         3  . . p + * c ^ - 3            contains (128/2)*128 or 8192
         4 . . o + % . . -  4            sectors, ranging from -63 to 64
           --00000000001111              in both the x and y directions.
           2101234567890123              

  Through each country's development efforts, each sector takes on a type
  designation (see `info sector-types'), indicating the primary function
  of the sector.  Sectors, in turn, will contain, consume, or produce any
  of a variety of commodities (see `info products').  The above map
  actually shows a small working community nestled between the ocean (.)
  and some mountains (^).  You should spot a capitol, which produces
  necessary BTUs (Bureaucratic Time Units) -- the "fuel" that you, in
  turn, consume by issuing commands.  An agriculture center (a) produces
  food, which, through a warehouse (w) distribution network, keeps the
  people in all the other sectors fed.  An iron mine (m) creates iron ore
  which is consumed in the heavy (k) and light (j) manufacturing centers,
  which in turn produce heavy and light construction materials (hcm's and
  lcm's).  A park (p) consumes lcm's and increases national happiness; a
  library/school (l) consumes lcm's and increases national education.  For
  defense, an enlistment center (e) converts civilians into military; a
  radar station ()) lets you keep an eye out for foreign ships; an
  airfield (*) and a harbor (h) are places of construction and homes for
  your planes and ships; a line of forts (f) defends your border with an
  unknown neighbor (?).  Fuel for ships and planes comes from the refinery
  (%) at 6,4, which is supplied with raw crude oil from the oil well (o)
  at 2,4.  Finally, a network of highways (+) provide fast, efficient
  pathways for moving commodities from sector to sector.  There are a few
  unowned wilderness (-) sectors on the other side of the mountains.

  There are no "turns".  As you give commands, you dynamically change the 
  configuration of your country (ie, move people around, redesignate 
  sector types, etc).  At regular intervals, whether you did anything or
  not, the world "updates" (sectors perform production, people are born
  or die, etc).   This happens ever x hours where x is usually a constant
  between two and eight.  The `version' command will show you update size
  and frequency; the `update' command will tell you what time it is,
  and when the next update will happen.

  The game goes on even when you don't play; if you ignore your country 
  it will gradually collapse.  Depending on the game configuration, there
  may be a limit on how much time you can play each day; the number of
  BTUs produced by your capitols (you can have more than one, but only
  one is the "real" center of government) determines how many commands
  you can give between updates.

  Depending on the frequency and size of updates, a typical game will
  last from one to four months.  You can typically expect to spend at 
  least one hour a day playing.

WHAT SHOULD I READ NEXT?
	
  Empire has online documentation for (almost) every concept and command.
  Type `info' for a complete list, or `info' followed by a particular
  subject from that list for more information about that topic.  For example,
  `info sector-types' will tell you about the various sector designations.

HOW DO I GET STARTED?

  The absolute first thing you need is a copy of the "empire" client
  program.  This is your INTERFACE to the game, NOT the game itself,
  and it is all that you need.  The actual game runs on just one host 
  system; all players connect to the host via their own copies of the 
  "empire" client.  A copy of the client source code should be available 
  via ftp from the system hosting the game.  It is a relatively
  simple program that should be little or no trouble to compile.


     __ EXAMPLE _________________________________________________________
    |                                                                    |
    | If a client is available via anonymous ftp from hpcvxbf.cv.hp.com, |
    | you might obtain it as follows:                                    |
    |                                                                    |
    | % mkdir empclient              Make a directory to put it in       |
    | % cd empclient                 Go to that directory                |
    | % ftp hpcvxbf.cv.hp.com        FTP to the host system              |
    | Name: ftp                        'ftp' is an anonymous login       |
    | Password: ftp                    Any password (it won't echo)      |
    | ftp> bin                         Select binary mode                |
    | ftp> cd tmp                      Go to dir where client lives      |
    | ftp> get empclient.tar           Get it                            |
    | ftp> quit                        Get out of FTP                    |
    | % tar xvf empclient.tar        Unpack the client tar file          |
    | % ls                           You should see files like these:    |
    |                                                                    |
    | GNUdepend     empire.6      hpux.c        queue.c                  |
    | GNUmakefile   expect.c      ioqueue.c     queue.h                  |
    | Makefile      fnlist.h      ioqueue.h     saveargv.c               |
    | RCS/          globals.c     login.c       servercmd.c              |
    | bit.c         handle.c      main.c        serverio.c               |
    | bit.h         host.c        misc.h        termio.c                 |
    | dtable.c      hpux/         proto.h       termlib.c                |
    |                                                                    |
    | % make                         Build the client                    |
    |                                                                    |
    | If all goes well, you should end up with a program called `empire' |
    | in this same directory.  If anything goes wrong, you'll either     |
    | have to modify the Makefile and/or one or more .c files to remedy  |
    | the problem, or find a different client source.                    |
    |____________________________________________________________________|


  Once you have the client, you should set two environment variables,
  EMPIREHOST and EMPIREPORT.  These inform the client where to find the
  game.  For example,
  
    EMPIREHOST=hpcvxbf.cv.hp.com
    EMPIREPORT=1617

  The game's "diety" (the person running the game) should provide you
  with a country name and password.  Use these to log into the game.
  For example, if you have been assigned country "Brazil" and
  password "joe", you would invoke the game by typing:

    empire Brazil joe

  If you just type `empire' and hit return, that's fine too.  You will
  be prompted to enter your country name and password.  If you get in,
  you should be rewarded with an Empire prompt:

            -=O=-

    [23:255] Command :


OKAY, NOW WHAT DO I DO?

  If it's your first time on as a new country, you initially have only
  two sectors -- sanctuaries.  These are safe sectors that cannot be
  attacked, but do nothing more than insure that you have a reservation
  in the game.  Before you can actually begin doing meaningful things,
  you must now "break" sanctuary.  Try the following commands:


    map #                 The `#' symbol indicates "realm 0".  A realm is
                          nothing more than a range of sector, and every
                          player can define several for him or herself.
                          `#' is the same as `#0'; other realms would be
                          things like `#1' through `#9'.  Initially, all
                          of your realms are preset to be the small area
                          surrounding your sanctuaries.  This map command
                          will show a small map, on which you should
                          see two (s) sectors.  These are your sanctuaries.

    break                 Breaks sanctuary.

    map #                 You should see the same map, but the sanctuaries
                          have been replaced with (c) capitols.

    realm 0 -10:10,-4:4   Redefines realm 0 to be a slightly larger region.


  Once your sanctuaries have been broken, you are officially in the
  game.  To see who else is in the game, and how they are doing, type:

    power new

  You will see a fresh power report.  Your country should be on it,
  along with everybody else who has broken sanctuary.

  Notice that you have TWO capitols.  Since you only really need one,
  let's redesignate one of them to be something else:

    capitol 2,0           Make 2,0 be the real active capitol.
    desig 0,0 w           Redesignate 0,0 to be a warehouse.

  These commands move your real capitol from 0,0 (the default) to 2,0,
  and redesignate sector 0,0 to be a warehouse.  You can check the census 
  of your sectors by typing:

    census 0:2,0

  You should see something like this:

    CENSUS               del dst
      sect        eff mob uf uf *  civ  mil   uw food work avail bunker
       0,0    cw 100% 100 .. ..   1000   10    0 1000 100%    0      0
       2,0    c  100% 100 .. ..    100  100  100  100 100%    0      0
        2 sectors

  (The syntax "0:2,0" means "sectors 0,0 through 2,0", and is a syntax
  that you will use often.)  Note that you still have two 100% efficient
  capitols, but that the one at 0,0 has a (w) next to the (c).  This
  indicates that, starting with the next update, the capitol at 0,0 will
  begin dismantling (its efficiency will begin to drop), and when it 
  reaches 0% efficient, ths designation will change to (w) and efficiency
  will begin to ramp up again.  We redesignated 0,0 rather than 2,0 because
  highly populated sectors build efficiency (and hence "flip" designation) 
  faster than sectors containing only a few people, and 0,0 already has 
  1000 civilians and a large supply of food.
  
  Maybe you feel that you don't need to have any military just yet.
  You can convert them into civilians (who work more efficiently) by
  typing:

    demob 0:2,0           Demobilize military.  Respond to the prompts
                          with "100", the number of military to demobilize,
                          and "yes", you want to put them in the active
                          reserve, enabling you to re-enlist them on a
                          moment's notice.  (You could bypass the prompts
                          by simply typing "demob 0:2,0 100 y".)

  You might next choose to set up a food distribution path between the 
  capitol and the warehouse.  You could do this by typing:

    dist 2,0 gh           Sector 2,0 distribution path is "gh", meaning
                          one sector to the left, then stop.

    thresh f 2,0 100      Set sector 2,0 food threshold to 100.  At each
                          update, if 2,0 contains more than 100 food, the
                          excess will be sent to the warehouse; if it has
                          less than 100, the warehouse will supply the
                          difference.

  The next logical step would be to use `explore' to move civilians and/or 
  military out into adjacent wilderness (-) and claim new land.  (Once you've
  acquired territory, you can use 'move' to shuffle people and/or commodities
  among your own sectors.)

  Use the `info' command to learn about the other commands you have 
  available.  Particularly useful commands are:

    map            - show an up-to-date map of land
    bmap           - "big" map, an archive map of sectors you've seen
    nation         - report your nation's status
    power          - show how the rest of the world is doing
    resources      - report mineral resources
    census         - report census levels
    commodities    - report commodity levels
    level          - show distribution paths and thresholds
    explore        - takeover new territory
    move           - move people/commodities
    autodistribute - an automatic "distribute" command
    build          - construct ships, bridges, etc
    load/unload    - load/unload ships

  You should probably set up at least one farm.  These are "ag" sectors,
  designated by the letter (a), and produce food.  You should also
  probably set up at least one warehouse (w), which is useful as a 
  distribution and storage center for food and other commodities.

  See `info distribute' and `info level' for details on creating
  commodity distribution paths.

  Set up a simple mining and manufacturing center.  This requires
  an iron mine (m), and a perhaps a Light Manufacturing Center (j).
  Insure that you place your iron mine in an iron-rich sector by 
  using the `resources' command to survey the mineral content of 
  the sector; 0 means there is no iron to be found; 100 means the 
  sector is iron-rich.  Iron produced by the mine should be fed into 
  the light products plant, which in turn will produce LCMs (light 
  construction materials).  Remember that all sectors need only 
  two things to subsist: people and food.
  
OKAY, I DID ALL THE ABOVE -- WHY ISN'T ANYTHING HAPPENING?
  
  Production takes time -- a couple of updates to get started in the 
  case of a sector with 999 civilians in it, possibly a couple of weeks 
  in the case of a sector with only 10 or 20 civilians in it (the 
  population will grow).  Don't expect things to take off rapidly.
  Updates happen at regular intervals of, usually, several hours.
  Use the `update' command to find out when the next update will occur.

WHAT IF I DON'T LIKE MY COUNTRY NAME?

  Use the `change' command to change your country name and/or password.
  NOTE: `change' may cost a lot of BTU's, so don't be surprised if
  you won't be able to play for a while after this.

TOOLS TO HELP PLAY:

  `ve', or visual empire helps examine your country.
  Note: `ve' is not easy to use, and if you have time paper 
  is as good or possibly better. `ve' should be avail from the 
  same place you got your empire client.

  `xemp' is an X-windows interface to empire, which performs
  many of the same functions of `ve', plus many others.

  `geet' is a GNU Emacs Empire Tool.

  There are undoubtedly other tools in existance, and many players
  get so wrapped up in the game that they find themselves writing
  their own tools and scripts to assist in playing.  Of course,
  you don't really need any tools to play; they simply exist to
  make life easier.

  BE AWARE THAT, depending on what version of Empire you are playing,
  existing tools may or may not work.  Most tools are very sensitive
  to the formats of the various reports generated by Empire commands.
  In a game where commands have been modified, the messages they
  generate may not match what a particular tool is expecting to see,
  and hence the tool may not work properly.
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