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Introduction: User's Guide to Empire (1991)

tra3 6y ago
Main page has more info: https://www.empire.cx/ https://www.empire.cx/ > Empire is a real time, multiplayer, Internet-based game, featuring military, diplomatic, and economic goals. Why link to a wall of text? Am I missing something? Has anyone played it?
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  The textfile reflects the history better. HTML didn't exist yet when the text was initial written.
john-tells-all 6y ago
I played Empire! I loved it! Or, I tried to love it, it was way too complex for me to understand. I poked around, tried to build some things, then left. Nowadays I watch Youtubers play Rimworld, a spiritual descendant of Empire. :)
kjhughes 6y ago
If you enjoy playing Factorio, Age of Empires, 0 A.D, Clash of Clans, or other such modern RTS games, you probably would have loved Empire. Think Age of Empires via a command line over the Internet (pre-web) in open source. Empire was the context for one of my favorite, earliest programming hacks. Games went on for weeks, sometimes months, in real-time, 24/7. After meticulously expanding and building and tuning a country's economy, the stakes were high to run the country efficiently and be able to persevere when inevitable conflicts arise. Intense battles, driven by leaders via command line interfaces at any time of day or night, were common. Ve (Visual Empire) was an offline, visual map based on curses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)) that was helpful strategically but of minimum use tactically in the heat of battle. To gain a tactical advantage, JustUs adapted it to be a command center. While opponent leaders were rushing to type individual military and economic commands, re-issue map display commands, re-issue status commands, etc to see the results of an attack or economic tweak, JustUs could coolly issue "super commands" that aggregated the basic commands to achieve higher level goals, immediately updating the state of the world in two dimensions rather than one. A single super command typically would expand to dozens of primitive commands, all issuing in fractions of a second rather than many minutes, yielding significant advantages in battle and economic management. One ally with whom I shared Veo (Visual Empire Online), Keith Graham, aka Dreamlands, contributed some pathfinding code that found least cost routing between two points on the map -- very useful in super commands that could resupply entire regions of the economy or battlefield rather than the sector-to-sector primitive commands that came with the game's stock client. Nowadays, many multiplayer games prohibit programmatic access for understandable fairness reasons -- not everyone can code. However, back then, it was a lot of fun, and I'm not sure whether I enjoyed the game or the hacking more. Broken links note: Some of the links that are broken on the empire.cx site, including the original Empire Hall of Fame posting (http://www.wolfpackempire.com/firstempirehalloffame.txt http://www.wolfpackempire.com/firstempirehalloffame.txt), are operational when viewed from http://www.wolfpackempire.com/ http://www.wolfpackempire.com/ instead.
- evgen 6y ago
  Wow, what a blast from the past. Playing Empire was a favorite obsession in my undergrad years (Batak was my preferred country name back in the day.) I loved the explore and expand part of the game, building countries and setting up a productive economic engine. The fighting? Not so much. I was a tasty little hors d'oeuvre for someone better at conquest in the later stages of the game. The luckiest someone like that could get would be to have me on their border to set up a well run, but ineptly defended country. Good times.
  - kjhughes 6y ago
    Hey Batak! You're being way too modest, but agreed, good times! The opening @evgen mentioned would involve exploring out to unowned, undeveloped sectors known as "wilderness", which would have various natural resources that could be developed once occupied and populated. Wiring up a balanced economy that could support continued expansion quickly was a fun challenge.
glouwbug 6y ago
Didn’t Walter Bright write empire? He frequents HN a lot
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  Walter Bright's Empire was very influential, but it wasn't the only one. This is the description of the BSD Empire, which was under independent development and popular in the Unix world (originally from the game written by Peter S. Langston). Both games had common themes (explore and conquer) and gameplay (turn-based, grid map), and historically there was much controversy and confusion. Nowadays both sides seemed to agree that they are independent and has no connection. Walter Bright said [0], > There is another Empire game that was originally developed by Peter Langston. Langston Empire and my Empire were conceived and developed independently in the 1970's, each of us had no knowledge of the other. Several websites assume that one is based on the other, these statements are simply not true. [0] https://www.classicempire.com/history.html https://www.classicempire.com/history.html
erik_seaberg 6y ago
I wonder how many college careers were derailed by a complex strategy game that you must go to the computer lab and play every six hours, like some kind of mashup of Tamagotchi with Axis & Allies. I narrowly avoided this in favor of Nethack and later Xtrek, which at least let me sleep.
- evgen 6y ago
  Empire was my gateway drug into Nethack and then Xtrek (Hell's Bagels forever! :) Waiting around for the update kept this legal history major in the lab at odd hours reading K&R manuals that had been laying around instead of case notes, and led to a better career so I have to admit the detour ended up being worth it...
armbru 6y ago
Empire is one of the oldest computer games that are still being played today. College careers have been derailed. At least one marriage, too. It gets intense. More on Empire's history: http://www.wolfpackempire.com/history.html http://www.wolfpackempire.com/history.html

tra3 6y ago

Main page has more info: https://www.empire.cx/ https://www.empire.cx/ > Empire is a real time, multiplayer, Internet-based game, featuring military, diplomatic, and economic goals. Why link to a wall of text? Am I missing something? Has anyone played it?

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
The textfile reflects the history better. HTML didn't exist yet when the text was initial written.

john-tells-all 6y ago

I played Empire! I loved it! Or, I tried to love it, it was way too complex for me to understand. I poked around, tried to build some things, then left. Nowadays I watch Youtubers play Rimworld, a spiritual descendant of Empire. :)

kjhughes 6y ago

If you enjoy playing Factorio, Age of Empires, 0 A.D, Clash of Clans, or other such modern RTS games, you probably would have loved Empire. Think Age of Empires via a command line over the Internet (pre-web) in open source. Empire was the context for one of my favorite, earliest programming hacks. Games went on for weeks, sometimes months, in real-time, 24/7. After meticulously expanding and building and tuning a country's economy, the stakes were high to run the country efficiently and be able to persevere when inevitable conflicts arise. Intense battles, driven by leaders via command line interfaces at any time of day or night, were common. Ve (Visual Empire) was an offline, visual map based on curses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curses_(programming_library)) that was helpful strategically but of minimum use tactically in the heat of battle. To gain a tactical advantage, JustUs adapted it to be a command center. While opponent leaders were rushing to type individual military and economic commands, re-issue map display commands, re-issue status commands, etc to see the results of an attack or economic tweak, JustUs could coolly issue "super commands" that aggregated the basic commands to achieve higher level goals, immediately updating the state of the world in two dimensions rather than one. A single super command typically would expand to dozens of primitive commands, all issuing in fractions of a second rather than many minutes, yielding significant advantages in battle and economic management. One ally with whom I shared Veo (Visual Empire Online), Keith Graham, aka Dreamlands, contributed some pathfinding code that found least cost routing between two points on the map -- very useful in super commands that could resupply entire regions of the economy or battlefield rather than the sector-to-sector primitive commands that came with the game's stock client. Nowadays, many multiplayer games prohibit programmatic access for understandable fairness reasons -- not everyone can code. However, back then, it was a lot of fun, and I'm not sure whether I enjoyed the game or the hacking more. Broken links note: Some of the links that are broken on the empire.cx site, including the original Empire Hall of Fame posting (http://www.wolfpackempire.com/firstempirehalloffame.txt http://www.wolfpackempire.com/firstempirehalloffame.txt), are operational when viewed from http://www.wolfpackempire.com/ http://www.wolfpackempire.com/ instead.

evgen 6y ago
Wow, what a blast from the past. Playing Empire was a favorite obsession in my undergrad years (Batak was my preferred country name back in the day.) I loved the explore and expand part of the game, building countries and setting up a productive economic engine. The fighting? Not so much. I was a tasty little hors d'oeuvre for someone better at conquest in the later stages of the game. The luckiest someone like that could get would be to have me on their border to set up a well run, but ineptly defended country. Good times.
- kjhughes 6y ago
  Hey Batak! You're being way too modest, but agreed, good times! The opening @evgen mentioned would involve exploring out to unowned, undeveloped sectors known as "wilderness", which would have various natural resources that could be developed once occupied and populated. Wiring up a balanced economy that could support continued expansion quickly was a fun challenge.

glouwbug 6y ago

Didn’t Walter Bright write empire? He frequents HN a lot

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
Walter Bright's Empire was very influential, but it wasn't the only one. This is the description of the BSD Empire, which was under independent development and popular in the Unix world (originally from the game written by Peter S. Langston). Both games had common themes (explore and conquer) and gameplay (turn-based, grid map), and historically there was much controversy and confusion. Nowadays both sides seemed to agree that they are independent and has no connection. Walter Bright said [0], > There is another Empire game that was originally developed by Peter Langston. Langston Empire and my Empire were conceived and developed independently in the 1970's, each of us had no knowledge of the other. Several websites assume that one is based on the other, these statements are simply not true. [0] https://www.classicempire.com/history.html https://www.classicempire.com/history.html

erik_seaberg 6y ago

I wonder how many college careers were derailed by a complex strategy game that you must go to the computer lab and play every six hours, like some kind of mashup of Tamagotchi with Axis & Allies. I narrowly avoided this in favor of Nethack and later Xtrek, which at least let me sleep.

evgen 6y ago
Empire was my gateway drug into Nethack and then Xtrek (Hell's Bagels forever! :) Waiting around for the update kept this legal history major in the lab at odd hours reading K&R manuals that had been laying around instead of case notes, and led to a better career so I have to admit the detour ended up being worth it...

armbru 6y ago

Empire is one of the oldest computer games that are still being played today. College careers have been derailed. At least one marriage, too. It gets intense. More on Empire's history: http://www.wolfpackempire.com/history.html http://www.wolfpackempire.com/history.html