HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: fein@acsu.buffalo.edu (L. Fein)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Re: Christmas Mods list...
Date: 9 Oct 92 23:47:51 GMT
Organization: Land Of Faa Bureau of Retirement

In article <1992Oct9.190448.4845@schaefer.math.wisc.edu> duelge@schaefer.UUCP (Jason Duelge) writes:
>In article <1992Oct9.131117.25608@col.hp.com> smithw@col.hp.com (Walter Smith) writes:
>>v069myl2@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Jennifer N Manning) writes:
>>> 4)  Sneak attack (Amendment to Slow_war in Chainsaw)
>>> 	Slow_war is entertaining and all, but I think for a slightly higher
>>> fee, you should be able to either a)attack immediately or b) hide your 
>>> war declaration until you actually attack.
>>

	Slow war is stupid. If you've got half a brain playing Empire
(and in real life) You should know that an attack is coming.. 
Rare is the case someone just sits down, logs in and says "HEY! I'm going 
to attack someone!"



>>Hmm...I think I agree with Jennifer.   Hitler didn't give any 2-update
>>warning to the Poles or French...
>>
>>Walter Smith
>>smithw@cs.itc.hp.com
>>
>The Poles and French had immense warning that war was going to start.  

	They knew, but they didn't believe. The French hasd such a hard
on for the Maginot Line that they didn't worry about it. Too bad no one
ever told that putz of a president they had that airplanes weren't at 
all worried about bunkers and pillboxes. Hell, when the one of the main
French fighters of the time had a frigging *turret*... 

>They didn't know when the FIGHTING would start ... For france it was months
>later, for Poland, perhaps a couple months.  In any case, declaring war
>is just intent.  I think it is incredibly realistic, in that there might
>have been sneaky battles, but no real 'suprise declarations' of war ... with
>accompanied sneak attacks.  

If they'd had half a brain, they'd have attacked Germany when they first 
started their elbow room bullshit. Never would have been a fight back in 38.
Amazing all the trouble the UK and France could have saved the world.
If they had only not been such pussies.

>Pearl Harbor *doesn't* count.

Why?



>
>-- 
> Jason Duelge  'Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?'        
> 141 Lakewood  'You better make your face up in your favorite disguise.' 
>  Gardens ln   'In the bottom of our hearts we felt the final cut.'       
> Madison, WI   '(I) kept my heart in dark ruins.'                          


I thought you went away.. :-)

LOF
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
From: duelge@schaefer.math.wisc.edu (Jason Duelge)
Subject: Re: Chainsaw Update
Reply-To: duelge@schaefer.UUCP (Jason Duelge)
Organization: Univ. of Wisconsin Dept. of Mathematics
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 13:42:49 GMT

Let me add one thing...
Hey Mirkwood!  Why don't you take one of those 'non-viable' countries,
get a little coalition together and give Uruk some trouble!
You owe Guzzer from the last game ...
-- 
 Jason Duelge  'Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?'        
 141 Lakewood  'You better make your face up in your favorite disguise.' 
  Gardens ln   'In the bottom of our hearts we felt the final cut.'       
 Madison, WI   '(I) kept my heart in dark ruins.'
From: duelge@schaefer.math.wisc.edu (Jason Duelge)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Re: Making research meaningful
Date: 7 Oct 92 20:54:04 GMT
Reply-To: duelge@schaefer.UUCP (Jason Duelge)
Organization: Univ. of Wisconsin Dept. of Mathematics

Let me say a few words against the 'new plague'
Plague was bad, but it wasn't so bad that the
Europeans stopped fighting amongst themselves!
Also, empire is a wargame, and a playable one
at that.  How much playability will we lose
from this increased form of plague?  Its bad
enough having people attacking you, and civil
unrest sectors ... now a real nasty plague?
Next thing we'll get civil unrest from consecutive
negative delta updates (can't balance the budget)
etc.
I liked the idea that would tie either civ growth,
or max civs in a sector to the research.
Say that max civs is between 500 and 999 ... and the
max is something like 500 * ( 1 + exp(k-research)) 
k insures that research of 100 or 150 or whatever
gives you 999 civs max, and k-research is less than
or zero, or something.
Or you could do civ growth similarly ... instead of
5 babies per etu per 1000 civs, have something like
c + nthroot(research) for the civ growth, where
c and n are chosen so that the initial growth isn't
too low, and the max isn't too high.
In fact, we could even make it a function of edu
and tech ... where higher edu/higher tech actually
LOWER the birth rate, while higher research increases
it (lower infant mortality rate, etc)
This will make research VERY VALUABLE, without laying
countries low with plague...
And, it will have the effect of forcing people to choose
tech or research ... imagine huge countries with better
research than smaller countries with high tech.  If
the small countries with high tech (but not matching research)
fight wars, and people die, they may not make up the civs ...
ie France ...

Just some thoughts from the retired one ...

Jason -- Temekula
-- 
 Jason Duelge  'Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?'        
 141 Lakewood  'You better make your face up in your favorite disguise.' 
  Gardens ln   'In the bottom of our hearts we felt the final cut.'       
 Madison, WI   '(I) kept my heart in dark ruins.'
From: ccastks@prism.gatech.EDU (Kevin Stallard, esq.)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Re: One more try.
Summary: Oh yeah, I almost forgot
Keywords: New game
Date: 8 Oct 92 13:37:55 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology


Oh yeah, the game will start on Monday at 11:05 AM. (5 minutes after the
update, meaning you will have 23 hours and 55 minutes to break before
the first update) 

<The preceeding excessively long parenthetical comment was brought to you
 by the Democratic National Committee>


Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
From: ranald@athena.mit.edu (Gregory L Yantz)
Subject: Re: Some REALLY SERIOUS gripes about empire
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 03:18:54 GMT

---lots of stuff deleted---
 
>Also, why can't you place bombers on the carriers?? How do they think
>Japan bombed Pearl Harbor??

If you want to nitpick, the Japanese 'bombers' used in the attack on Pearl
would correspond in empire terms to lt bomber 2's. They were light,
single-engined tactical bombers, i.e. dive-bombers and torpedo planes.

>Lastly, you should be told the location of the attacking guns when you're
>being shelled

Why? Do you know what counter-battery fire is? Do you know how pointless it 
is without some very good, very high-tech radars?  

>NW

Please, kill this thread now. At first it was a little something pointing
out some of the amusing unrealism of empire. Light humor. Something to read
other than the moronic Manatoba flamewar. Now it's getting stupid. 

Remember, if you're going to whine you should at least know what you're
talking about. But better yet- let this die now, because soon everyone and
his uncle is going to start spouting his own favorite brand of bullshit.

Greg DAK/Ministry (ret)
From: gt0924a@prism.gatech.EDU (Delgado,Mark March (Metallica, TheDeathAngel))
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Re: Some REALLY SERIOUS gripes about empire
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:04:25 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In article <1992Oct13.154738.3991@schaefer.math.wisc.edu> duelge@schaefer.UUCP (Jason Duelge) writes:
>In article <Bw2E5v.vH@acsu.buffalo.edu> fein@acsu.buffalo.edu (L. Fein) writes:
>>In article <1992Oct13.110224.26310@schaefer.math.wisc.edu> duelge@schaefer.UUCP (Jason Duelge) writes:
>>>In article <Bw1nED.DL1@acsu.buffalo.edu> fein@acsu.buffalo.edu (L. Fein) writes:

(lots of drivel deleted, because I don't want to see it again)

come on folks... either go email with it, or shut up.
just a friendly note from TheDeathAngel that this isn't doing anyone any good

-- 
Mark Delgado   |  "I will not die... Fate I deny   | Andre Marrou...       
TheDeathAngel  |   Outlive, Humanity, Wind & Rain  | Libertarian for President
WREKage host   |   Earth & Sea, Outlive the Galaxy |
WREK 91.1 fm   |   Time itself will deteriorate before me"  - O.L.D.
From: hassink@cs.UAlberta.CA (Hassink Brian John)
Subject: Re: Chainsaw update
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 22:14:13 GMT

[original portion of article deleted for brevity]

>Are any of these guys non-fodderous?  No insult intended on either
>Uruk or his feedbags, but i think calling a game when the 'winner' hasn't
>fought a 'real' fight is pretty sad.
>Oh well, i guess this flu is making me cranky.
>If you had killed someone GOOD like Land_of_Faadar, then i suppose i
>would be a bit happier about it.  :)

>Jason -- Temekula

Come come now... Is it our fault that we were blessed with an
abundant bounty of fodder? :)  Name me a game where the winner
has'nt had his fill of fodder.

In addition, all the remaining viable countries have agreed
to the win - with only one or two spiteful minor nations protesting.

All this aside, we would have had to eat up another 600 fodder 
sectors before meeting any challenging opponent. This would
have become a maintenace nightmare as managing nearly 800 sectors
was already bad enough.

In any case, let me enjoy my day in the spotlight won't you? :)

Brian.
hassink@cs.ualberta.ca
From: ccoprdj@prism.gatech.EDU (Jorge Diaz)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Re: FLAMING FEIN...
Date: 11 Oct 92 02:13:54 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology

In article <1992Oct10.224808.7229@ccu.umanitoba.ca> roholdr@ccu.umanitoba.ca (R Ross Holder Jr) writes:


OK, guys, enough is e-fucking-nough!

This has moved well out of the realm of empire, so take it to email.  Don't
say "Well, just put it in your kill file if you aren't interested."  This
doesn't belong here.  It belongs in alt.flame.war.  Can't post to alt
newsgroups?  Try email.

-- 
Jorge Diaz                       | "I want you to remember, Clark... in all
Georgia Institute of Technology  |  the years to come, in your most private
Office of Information Technology |  moments...my hand at your throat.  I want
ccoprdj@prism.gatech.edu         |  you to remember the one man who beat you."
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
From: reynolds@cs.iastate.edu (Owen Reynolds)
Subject: Some REALLY SERIOUS gripes about empire
Summary: humor
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 18:50:19 GMT

    I don't even want to hear about military not being realistic or
any garbage about garbage. I've got some serious complaints about empire
and no qualms about wasting bandwidth to air them:

FOOD -- I'm from the big cities, but I've been living in Iowa for a while
  and I think I'm starting to understand some of this farming thing. The
  basic idea is you fence off a bunch of high fertility land, put seeds
  and stuff in it, and keep everyone THE HELL OFF!!! I'd guess around 20
  is the right number of people for an agribusiness.

    About catching 999 fish from each bridge; hell, I think that was a
  great idea, but why stop there? Why not let people on highways hunt
  and catch 999 rabbits an update? I don't see why hunting on the
  shoulder of a paved highgway should be any harder than fishing in
  water someone went and built a 5-mile-long bridge in.

STARVING -- There are two kinds of people in starving sectors: people
  who ate three meals a day--eggs for breakfast, a sub and wine for lunch,
  and a potroast for dinner--and people who ate nothing and are dead.
    The latter have a legitimate complaint with the government, and I
  fully understand their work dropping to 0%. The live ones have no real
  grounds for a work slowdown.

PEOPLE IN GENERAL -- There's no one phrase which would be used to describe
  a country or region in which birth-control is virtually unknown and an
  active attempt has been made to shoehorn the greatest number of people
  into the smallest possible area, but none of the ones that spring to
  mind include the word 'superpower.'

MONEY -- So the reason empire countries have even airports and higways
  crammed full of people is so they can pay taxes. Now, I'm the one who
  told them what to do, so I assume I must be the one paying them. Why?
  They get free food, need no shelter since they never complain about
  being moved into 0% wilderness and it never rains anyways, and free
  education and trips to Disneyland. WHY am I paying these people?

    For that matter, what are they going to do with the money? There's
  nothing to spend it on, and if there was, I'd just be forced to make
  it and give it to them for free. I'd probably be changed $10 per point
  of whatever it was, to boot.

EFF -- It's allready been established empire people are stupid, so I
  won't even touch the fact that a big piece of wood sinks at less than
  20%, but you can find a guy to FLY a 10% erector set and bailing wire
  airplane.

    No, my big beef is with repairing damage. It just takes work. No lcms,
  no hcms, just work. So does a 50% battleship just have one really big
  dent in it, or what?
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
From: mcrocker@titan.ucc.umass.edu (MATTHEW S CROCKER)
Subject: bloodbath....
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 22:03:40 GMT

I cannot connect  what are the numbers for the inet address..

I Have 

wlheye.jsei.ucla.edu
port 6913

unknown from my system


-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
- Matthew Crocker
s1949782@titan.ucc.umass.edu <-  Til 1/1/93
mcrocker@titan.ucc.umass.edu <-  Til I Graduate  LOOOOOOOONNG TIME
From: ccastks@prism.gatech.EDU (Kevin Stallard, esq.)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Bloodbath 1 1/2
Date: 14 Oct 92 13:55:27 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology


  Just a reminder, the game will start at 11:10 (or around that time).
Host is wlheye.jsei.ucla.edu
Port is 6913


As for the "country in use" problem.  The system has this nasty
habit of keeping <defunct> jobs around.  I have set up a temporary fix
for the problem which I will describe in the game. (you all should be able
to log in now, but don't bother until break time)

Sorry for the inconvenience.
From: festeve@sdrc.COM (Steve Saunders)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: broken throne source wanted
Date: 16 Oct 92 12:08:31 GMT
Organization: SDRC, Cincinnati
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Tom,

I could not find the source to Broken Throne in comp.sources.games.  Could
you please repost it.

Thanks
Steve

Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
From: ricou@humus.cs.huji.ac.il (Olivier Ricou)
Subject: Re: Plague Ships
Organization: J. Random Misconfigured Site
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 11:06:30 GMT
X-Posted-From: humus.cs.huji.ac.il
NNTP-Posting-Host: sol.ctr.columbia.edu

Dick C. Reichenbach wrote :

>I seem to remember this tactic used with blimps (on games that have
>blimps, of cource).  If a sector gets plague, transport a blimp into
>it, load up, take off (blimps are VTOL and don't risk infecting
>airports), and paradrop plague infected citizens on the enemy.  The
>discussion on r.g.e at the time was if a sick citizens were capable of
>doing a jump.


 Well, I need some explanations : 

1) can the civ beiing dropped ?
2) can the mil have plague ?
3) can planes (or other objects) have plague ??

 To be dropped, means in an ennemy sector. I know civ refuse to move there, more
they don't attack, so I'm surprised to read they may be dropped.

 Last, I don't know what is a "blimp". Maybe it's the explanation.



							Olivier.
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
From: hjpoell@paramount.nikhefk.nikhef.nl (Henk Poell)
Subject: Re: Making research meaningful
Organization: NIKHEFK
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 00:45:14 GMT

Dan Mytelka, aka Langerhans,  mytelka@codon9.berkeley.edu () writes:

)The most reasonable way seems to be just fixing the empire code such that
)research, as it is presently defined, becomes a necessary commodity. The
)obvious way to do this is to make plague a lot more than a minor nuissance.
)I believe that the following modifications would accomplish this.

Why? Aren't your opponents enough nuissance? I mean: the only effect plague
has on the game is to make you waste some time avoiding some moves... It
doesn't effect strategy, it's just a feature waiting to be taken out of the
game.

Research isn't needed for balancing technology. More tech means less cash
means a small army. So you can choose between long term and short term
power. Isn't that good? 

)  <mods deleted, see reference>

If you make plague that bad, the only strategy except a few updates before
the end of the game is to make research and see that every sector has enough
mob/eff to avoid it. What's the fun of that? If distribute spread plague,
you can quit if your dist center got it. Okay. But: what's the fun? You
might as well introduce new concepts like "respect", "health" and "qertpoia".
If you don't produce it something awfull happens so you have to produce all
of them. One strategy. Is that great? No.

Is there anybody here that LIKES the plague/research concept? If so, I have
a great idee: during some next game, we remove plague from the code. Then
the few guys who like plague play some parallel "game" in which they only
have to do *ONE* thing: moving civs around randomly, at least 100 moves a
day. If you move them out of a plague sector you lost... You win when you
are the last player left. Woopie.

There are lots of new features. "Claim" for example, in the UAlberta game.
If we don't get rid of the worst or non-significant ones from time to time,
the game and code will become more and more complex, harder to learn, and
more difficult to hack or improve.

Henk Poell aka Vulgaria.
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
From: kmrobert@nyx.cs.du.edu (K.M.Roberts)
Subject: Re: Christmas Mods list...
X-Disclaimer: Nyx is a public access Unix system run by the University
	of Denver for the Denver community.  The University has neither
	control over nor responsibility for the opinions of users.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix at U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 16:10:06 GMT


	Tom= I personally love slow war... but anyways...
I would say Sneak attack should coast appr. 2 or 3 times regular dec of
war but also appr. 1/2 yer btu's!  This way the attacker CAN attack
w/o warning but still won't be able to get much more than a foothold...
it is VERY hard to attack w/o warning and thus it would NOT be a full
scale attack...  Usually just a tactical strike or a beachhead to get
an advantage...


--
kmr...                                      Fiction is created by writers
kmrobert@nyx.cs.du.edu                      Lies are concocted by liars
"I have engaged the                         Fiction is a string of lies
Theoretical Weasel!"                        I am a liar...
From: jfeldhouse@miavx3.mid.muohio.edu (Jim Feldhouse)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Throwing away troops
Date: 15 Oct 92 19:39:25 GMT
Organization: as little as possible

I don't think scuttling ships should cost in happiness directly.
I think that troops should be made much more expensive to build.
Instead of costing $3 or whatever they should cost much more.

That way when you loose thousands of military in a bullet-fodder
assault you say Ouch, instead of, "Crunch all you want we'll make more".

Military should be 10 times as expensive to build I think.

me
From: wjones@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Wendell E Jones)
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Any one to two update games
Date: 9 Oct 92 16:42:01 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Hello out there in empireland.  I was wondering are there any 
empire games starting up with only 1 to 2 update a day.  I need
to get my empire fix for the season. 

Thanks in advance



-- 
*  wjones@andromeda.rutgers.edu   or   rutgers!andromeda!wjones              *
* "Forty years from now, you'll have the Black Rap Coalition, black guys in  *
*  dreadlocks saying, `Did you know that rap was once black?'"	             *
*" Lesson #1: Never, no never underestimate your own stupidity"              *
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire
Subject: Blitz Game Results
From: Chad Zabel <UD177385@NDSUVM1.BITNET>
Date: Sunday, 11 Oct 1992 23:17:35 CDT
Organization: North Dakota Higher Education Computer Network

Well here are the results of todays Blitz.

Winner:     Warsong
   Warsong had the lead a majority of the game.  Early on he grabbed the
teck lead and pulled away walking over countries perty easily.  He took a
2 or 3 hour break which allowed Oenone to catch up in teck and pass him.
It was perty much a 2 player race from then on.  Warsongs strong economy
allowed him to continuing rite where he left off.  In the final hours
of the game there were only 3 active countries.  Yo, Oenone, and Warsong.

Yo ended up going broke 3 update before the game ended and didn't bounce back.
Oenone had enough teck for a few good nukes, 250kt fission, I believe
but lacked in money, on the last update he went broke.  It appears that
the few nukes that hit Warsong almost reduced his point total on the
power report but as you will soon see he litterally missed it by
a hair.   Warsong had about 42000 points going into the last 2 updates
but managed to hold on.

Thanks for all the players that showed up to play, I hope you
all had fun today.

Until Next time
Rad_Zone


Heres the final power report.





     - = [   Empire Power Report   ] = -
      as of Sun Oct 11 23:00:54 1992

         sects  eff  civ  mil shell gun  pet iron dust food oil  pln ship money
  Warsong 168   86% 115K  10K  11K 442  7.2K  44K 4.0K 9.2K 6.8K  97    5  293K
 36684.70
   Oenone 150   94% 120K 3.0K  18K 594   16K  26K 2.6K 4.7K 4.0K  93   10  -26K
 36047.24
       Yo  66   91%  52K 3.8K  12K 336  7.7K  16K 626  4.1K 3.9K  16    5   12K
 16218.93
   Killer  16   99%  15K 1.6K 199   30  466  1.3K   4    8  974   21    2  149K
  4866.76
    HELLY   9   99% 8.1K 282  185    8  838  4.1K 175   25  1.0K   2    1  2.0K
  2178.20
Strimland   7   99% 7.0K 247   10    0   86  700    1  1.0K   1    6    2   63K
  1869.65
Spitzberg   0    0%   0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0  163K
  1626.62
       13   0    0%   0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0   29K
   291.81
          ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
worldwide 420   91% 316K  19K  42K 1.4K  32K  92K 7.4K  19K  17K 240   30  370K
Newsgroups: rec.games.empire