Empire (computer game)
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There have been a number of different
computer games called
Empire.
Simple Military Game
One type of Empire is a primarily military game with simple rules and played at a single sitting.
Versions of this include:
- A wargame program written by Walter Bright around 1977 for the PDP-10.
- * It was later ported to VAX/VMS and distributed via DECUS.
- * The DECUS version was ported to DOS in 1981-82.
- * A partial rewrite by Mark Baldwin in 1987 was sold as Empire: Wargame of the Century on the Atari ST, Amiga and other platforms, and in the 1990s released another successor, Empire Deluxe for Windows.
The concept of the Empire Deluxe game is that each player starts with one city in an unexplored world, and uses the city to build armies, aircraft, and various types of ships from transports to battleships. It is turn-based, and the city takes a particular number of turns to produce the various units. As one expands from the first city, players use their units to find and capture additional cities and become able to produce a greater number of unit types. One must explore the world, capturing cities as they are found and using them to build more military units. Units have very different capabilities, as well as different strengths and weaknesses. Destroyers, move fast and are great for exploring, while battleships are very resiliant and can also attack land units. The central unit of conquest is transports, which can carry two troop types. Only Infantry and Armor can capture a city, and these two units must cross water in transports. The central unit of conquest has weak defences, so Empire strategy involves exploration in the context of providing safe passage for transports. Units fight by trying to take the grid location occupied by the enemy unit. In most cases, this is a fight to the death, and in most cases, the winner moves in to occupy the grid square after the combat. This combat is based on percentages rating one unit type against the others, so this is calculated, and an animated battle sequence is seen before the losing unit is removed. Empire is a strategy game, so the combat animation is minimal, and allows one to focus on the strategic consequences of the combat. Eventually, players expand their known worlds until the players find each other and fight until only one is left. This moment of discovery can happen quickly or not, especialy when one allows the game to generate a randomly-populated world made of islands with cities, surrounded by a connected body of water. Units in Empire are aware of enemy who occupy grid squares around them only to a particular distance, and cities also are aware of enemy units ajacent to them. Otherwise, enemy units are not visible unless one moves close enough with one unit to see an enemy. Many interesting starts get interrupted when one discovers enemy units next to cities which lack defences. A city loses a percentage of it's production capacity when it is captured, and it also loses any units it contains, as well losing the unit under construction. Cities are sometimes fought over repeatedly, until the city itself has little production capacity, and is used simply as a base for aircraft and as a point to fight over. Cities that are ot producing anything help a player's production value, and allow other, more efficient cities to produce units. Cities that are not producing will see their production efficiency increase as turns go by. The ability to remain unseen, even in ajacent grid squares, for example, submarines are not visible to battleships aircraft and transports, allows players to scout enemy areas. Mottled, computer-generated island-worlds are typical, but Empire also has a world-generator, and comes with pre-designed worlds such as Europe and North America. When one plays on the random worlds, the players are placed randomly in one city. There can be very different outcomes when one discovers an enemy city or unti very early compared with later. One is creating an empire, and the existing units in an army cost the player a percentage of overll production capacity. This means large armies (including ships, planes, and land units) can prevent a player from efficiently creating further troops types. Since the game is turn based, players experience this production capacity as a percentage. Units take a given number of turns depending on this percentage, and a low percentage can make certain units practically impossible to order. This is most important in the first part of the game, when one only has a small number of cities. Although the rules themselves are simple, the game is notable for its chess-like depth.
This version of Empire inspired a number of other games, including Strategic Conquest, Empire Master, and Xconq.
Complex Military-Economic Game
This more complex Empire game also dates from the 1970s, and was originally designed by Peter S. Langston to be a comprehensive economic simulation with dozens of players participating.
The game is turn-based, with players giving their orders at their convenience, and in some versions then being executed all at once by the game server, at set intervals ranging from a few hours to once/day. The world consists of "sectors" which may be designated as agricultural, industrial, etc, and there are dozens of types of units, requiring a variety of raw and manufactured materials for their creation.
The game source code has been modified and mutated by many hands, and there have been many versions of this game that have been played. Version names have included BSD Empire, PSL Empire, and Wolfpack Empire. The line of Empire development originating with Peter S. Langston is continuous through the modern Wolfpack Empire.
Another game known as Empire is Empire Classic, alternatively known as HP Classic Empire.
PLATO
There is a game called Empire on the various
PLATO system derivatives. Originally this was an economic game, based on exploring and discovering planets, but that was renamed in the early '70s to "conquest" (the name it still has on the NovaNET system).
The name Empire was then reused in 1972 for a space-war game based on Star Trek, which formed part of the inspiration for Netrek. The later version of Empire is still actively played on the Cyber1 and NovaNET systems. This game was one of the very first networked multi-player games ever. It may well have been the first "second-person" (side/top view) networked multiplayer game ever; Maze War was earlier, but is a first person shooter.
This Empire was adapted for the Apple II computer by Robert Woodhead of Wizardry fame as a game called Galactic Attack.
Galactic Bloodshed (GB for short) is a space-themed game of similar character.
External links
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