From: reich@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (A Minor Diety)
Subject: Empire Explained -- monthly posting - FAQ
Organization: The Ohio State University - Academic Computing Services
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 01:46:46 GMT

                   e m p i r e   e x p l a i n e d

From the manual pages that accompanies the client.

DESCRIPTION
	BSD Empire is a global  economic/political/military  simula-
	tion  game  wherein  players,  representing national govern-
	ments, make "real-time" decisions concerning resource  allo-
	cation,  national  goals,  international diplomatic efforts,
	etc.  Extensive records are kept for all players.

	WARNING -- This game is not only addictive but  often  peels
	back  the  thin veneer of civilization that hides the maniac
	within.

	This description is a pretty brief summary of what happens in
an empire game.  Including the maniac stages that eventually show up
in all people that play the game.

	This document will only discuss BSD Empire.  There is another
document posted to this newsgroup (Versions of Empire - Monthly
posting) that describes the other versions.  BSD Empire is the version
of empire that rec.games.empire was created to discuss.

	This document will also only discuss the theory of empire and
the basics of how the game works.  For details on empire, there is a
file available by anonymous FTP on empire.bbn.com in
/pub/Emp/EmpireDocs/Users.Guide.Z.  This file will give you many, many
helpful hints on playing empire.  The author is Geoff Cashman.  This
FAQ document will also not discuss specific commands or even tools.
For information on those, see the above document or the online
information pages.  Also, documents discussing anonymous FTP are
floating around all over.  See the newsgroup news.newusers.questions.

	Basicly, in Empire, you are the dictator of a small country.
All of your decisions are made to further the goals of your country.
The goals of your country can be widely varied.  Maybe your goal is to
conquer the world, or to have the best technology, or to have the
biggest country, or to be on the winning team, or just to stay alive.

	A game of empire usually lasts from 1 day of continuless
playing (blitz game) to 5 months of light, but continuless playing
(Oakland University game).  Time is a big consideration in playing
empire.  As somebody's signature says;
Surgeon General's Warning:
Playing empire can lower your GPA by 2.00 points.

More on the types of games later.

	Next.  Empire is InterNET based.  In order to play empire, you
must have access to a computer that is directly connected to the
InterNET.  Many educational institutions have this feature (note the
.edu in my address).  Some businesses are big or rich or crafty enough
to have a direct connection, and you can play empire from these
organizations, too.

	Empire comes in 2 parts.  The first part is the empire client.
Clients come in many shapes and sizes.  First, there is the standard
client.  It works on pretty much any UNIX computer that exists (as far
as I know).  It is compatible with pretty much any terminal, including
dumb terminals.  The standard client simply prints the information on
the screen one line at a time.  Used in conjunction with redirection
to files and piping to standard UNIX utilities like more and grep, the
standard client can serve you well for a long time. The other 3 types
of clients that I know of are eif (Empire InterFace), the X terminal
version, and the VMS version.  Eif is a more modern standard client.
Because it is brand new, it has it's share of bugs to be worked out.
On the Sun that I use, eif is only 25% larger in size than the
standard client (108Kb vs 75Kb).  I have gotten the X terminal version
to work correctly on a Sun SPARCstation SLC running X11R3.  I do not
use it because of disk quotas.  The X version is over 800Kb of
executable binary plus data files versus about 75Kb of executable for
the standard version.  I have never used VMS empire client, but in a
letter from one of the authors he writes:

| From: "KIENENBERGER MIKE L" <fxmlk@acad3.alaska.edu> 
| Subject: Re: Empire question 
| 
| I'm one of the people who wrote a VMS client.  I will be keeping the
| most current version of it on anonymous ftp at
| paranoia.uafcs.alaska.edu.  My address is
| FXMLK%alaska.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu.  Also, the VMS client I wrote
| works almost identically like the unix version.  Setup is the only
| difference since Unix and Vax/vms don't work the same.

	The second part of empire is the empire server.  Most people
will never have access to an empire server.  Empire servers are set up
and run by people we call deities (deity is another name for a god, by
definition; it is probably appropriate that the people that set
servers up are called that).  The server is basicly a large database
and software to drive it.  The client uses the internet to access the
computer on the other end that is running the server.  The computer
that the server is running from can be across the room or across the
world.  The server then verifies who you are by using a password,
mistakenly called a "representative name" by the documentation.  The
empire client is then allowed to alter your section of the database
according to your wishes.  Moving people around is a common enough
action to do.  The server monitors this and can update the database
itself.  Example.  Moving people takes mobility, a price to pay for
telling a person to get up and get his/her
feet/horse/cart/wagon/automobile moving and go to another location.
The server recognizes this action and immediately lowers your mobility
left in that sector.

	Your country is a series of sectors laid out in a hexagonal
fashion inside of a computer/deity generated "world".  Most worlds are
from 32 by 32 sectors to large 256 by 256 sector "worlds".  You can
build on land sectors and sail ships on sea sectors.  Planes can fly
anywhere as long as they can land somewhere (airports and carriers).
Missiles are the highest tech way of moving things.  The only problem
is that missiles only move satellites or nuclear bombs.  Back to
building on land sectors.  There is only 1 type of sector that you
must have, and that is a capital.  A capital is where you are (in
theory) when you run the country.  If you do not have a capital, you
must pick one.  Other types of sectors include iron mines, gold mines,
roads, gun and ammunition plants, schools and universities, hospitals,
radar facilities, harbors, and other sector-types that can be found in
the on-line documentation.  The documentation also explains what each
of these do.

	This is nice, but the most important thing a server does is
called the update.  The frequency that a server does the update is
complely up to the deity and the type of game that the deity wishes to
run.  Every once in a while, the update occurs and thing actually get
done in your country.  Babies are born, food is grown or fished, iron
is turned into steel, steel is made into guns or ammunition, steel,
oil, and gold can be combined to make technology, and a host of other
things are done at the update.  The server uses information from the
database to control the update.  If you havn't changed the database
since the last update, the game just uses the old information and goes
on without you.  ETU's (Empire time units) are the amount of work that
goes on between an update.  The more etu's, the more babies are born,
the more iron is mined, etc.  Blitz games have high etu's (60+) and
can update every 10 minutes.  Average games have medium etu's (16-32)
and update every 3-8 hours.  The Oakland University game has high
etu's and updates 1 time per day (giving it about the same speed as an
average game).

	Remember: THE EMPIRE CLIENT IS COMPLETELY USELESS WITHOUT THE
EMPIRE SERVER.  So look for empire games that are starting.  Most will
be posted on rec.games.empire.  Blitz games are also announced on a
mailing list.  To get on this mailing list, send a letter to
blitz-list-request@bbn.com.  The article will give you more
information about that particular game and its specifics.  If the game
posted is for you, send in your desired country name and password to
the deity.  If you get in the game, then get your client from an
anonymous ftp site.  ucbvax.berkeley.edu has all 4 clients.  The
directory is /pub/games/empire/bsd.

	Good luck playing empire.  Remember, see the file
/pub/Emp/EmpireDocs/Users.Guide.Z available on empire.bbn.com.  Also
see news.newusers.questions for info on anonymous FTP and
uncompressing stored archives.

Please send corrections and additions to reich@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
Thanks,
-Dick
-- 
  DDDDDD             k      | reich@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
  D     D  `   cccc  k  kk  | Dick C. Reichenbach
  D     D  i  c      kkk    | "We're just like the Waltons, we're praying for
  DDDDDD   i   cccc  k  kk  | an end to the depresson, too." - Bart Simpson