Thinker@gate.oxy.edu (04/15/91)
I have had a week now to play the new version (1.8) of Empire Builder,
and I must say I pity those people who payed 30+ dollars for Strategic
Conquest. I must say that the new version, with all the options fully
functional (I have paid for the full version), is superior to what I know about
StratCon, from playing 2.0 and reading about it here. Rather than go into lots
of details, which would take more time than I have on a Sunday night, I am
attaching a copy of the demo manual, now distributed in MacWrite format. If
anybody is interested, I have submitted the demo to both sumex-aim and to the
Umich FTP sites. If anybody is not satisfied by this documentation, I guess I
could be persuaded to describe this in more detail. Anyway, eat your hearts
out.
-The Mad Thinker
Empire Builder Documentation (V1.8)
This documentation corresponds with Empire Builder 1.8.
Quick start: Just copy the file Empire Builder 1.8 Demo onto your hard disk
double click and run!
Existing users: Change notes are at the end. An upgrade order form may be
printed from the File menu or from About Empire Builder.
1. Introduction
Empire Builder Documentation
Empire Builder is a computerized war game for the Macintosh. It is based upon
a similar game called EMPIRE which was implemented for Vax computers. A demo
version of Empire Builder is distributed freely, but the registered version is
only available by mail. The Print Order Form command in the File menu will
generate an order form that you can use. It also prints bug reports and
upgrade forms. The demo version does not include any of the rule editing
facilities, the map parameters (size and density) can only be varied among
tight limits and saved games cannot be read back in. A game saved by the demo
version can be read by the unrestricted version. Since a single game can take
a number of hours to play this is a useful feature. To register please send
$25.00 to:
Christopher Eliot
P.O. Box 371
Leeds Massachusetts, 01053
An order form can be printed from Empire Builder with the Print Order Form
under the file menu. Massachusetts residents should add sales tax (5%).
(Full time students can register for $15.00 with proof of status.) When you
register I will send you a disk containing the latest release of the program
and a printed copy of the documentation. The documentation describes each of
the commands and includes pictures to explain everything. The disk will also
contain the latest demo version which you can give away to anyone. Please let
me know how you found out about Empire Builder and which version you have seen.
If enough people register I will produce enhanced versions. When you register
be sure and include your address so I can send you the updated and registered
version.
Empire Builder has been tested on most Macs including the Mac 512K, SE, II,
IIfx, Plus and portable. It works with or without multifinder. It does require
quite a bit of memory to play a game with a large map. A 512K mac user should
not use switcher, multifinder or memory consuming RinitsS and should not play
with maps larger than 100 by 100, preferably smaller. To play a full size 255
by 255 map requires two to four megabytes of memory, especially late in the
game. Low memory situations are now handled much better than in some earlier
versions.
Bug Reports should be sent to the same address. I try to ensure that the game
is bug free, but with as large a program as this there are likely to be some
problems. The Print Order Form command will also print a bug report form. If
you donUt (or canUt) print a bug report form, please describe the computer you
are using (type, memory size, system version etc.)
The point of this game is to conquer the world and wipe out the machine's
military. The cities you control will produce more units for you. When the
game starts you will have only one city (unless you have selected more using
the Fairness command under the Edit menu). The key to the game is to capture
as many cities as possible quickly. Initially you must explore the territory
around your home city. Once you have conquered all of the cities on your home
island you will have to cross the sea to invade another island. A transport is
required to carry armies across the sea. Air units can quickly map the area
near your cities, but their range is limited by the amount of fuel they can
carry.
Eventually your units will meet with enemy units controlled by the computer.
While you have been expanding your territory the computer has also been busy
and may have a considerable amount of strength. Perhaps you will choose to
attack the enemy immediately. Perhaps it is better to keep exploring and find
neutral cities that are easy to capture. But eventually the enemy will invade
your territory and the stronger side will capture the world.
2. Overview
1. Playing the Game
This is a very complex game. Both sides can have hundreds of units. Every
unit can move during each turn. In order to make the game playable there are a
large number of ways to program your units to move automatically. Once you
have mastered the automatic movement commands you will find that the game is
quite playable. While you are in complete control of your pieces you do not
need to worry about most of them. Instead you will focus only on the few
pieces that are involved in crucial or tricky maneuvers.
2. Terrain of the map.
There are four basic types of terrain: land, sea, lake and city. Furthermore,
cities can be neutral or owned by the machine or the player. The difference
between a lake and a sea is that a lake only touches one island. Generally
there will be one sea and there may be a number of small lakes.
There are eight types of units and up to eight more could be defined. The
currently defined units are armies, fighters, bombers, destroyers, transports,
submarines, carriers and battleships. Armies move only on land or on
transports. Fighters and bombers can move anywhere within range of fuel.
Destroyers, transports, submarines, carriers and battleships can only move on
sea squares or into port cities.
The picture shows a section of the map as it may appear early in the game.
White squares are land, gray squares are sea and black squares are unexplored.
The player's home city is near the middle surrounded by three armies and there
are two neutral cities visible. The player's fighter has just discovered one
of the neutral cities, and it is flashing to indicate that it is time to move
the fighter. No enemy units or cities are visible.
Features on the map are identified by small pictures as shown here:
These pictures can be edited using a built in fat-bits style editor. The
pictures of units change completely when using different display scales. This
means there are 120 different icons to design and I have (clearly) been lazy
about some of them.
3. Future Releases and Upgrades.
Future releases can only be guaranteed if users continue to support the game!
Please distribute the demo version as widely as possible.
Already at least five versions of the game have been distributed. Sometimes
the difference is minor and sometimes substantial. For now the upgrade policy
is given by the Upgrade Form option in the Print Order Form FILE menu item.
Currently the charge for upgrades only pays for copying and mailing expenses.
The prices in that form will be honored through the date indicated.
The major changes planned for Empire Builder affect the strategy and the option
of playing against another person. Support for modems, networks and play by
mail has been designed and should be included in a future version and the
machine strategy will be improved as much as possible also.
4. Commands
The basic movement commands are given from the keyboard or with the mouse. The
keypad commands are based upon the keypad layout.
The numbers 1 - 9 indicate directions, except 5 which commands the unit not to
move this turn. For example a "6" would command the fighter above to move over
the neutral city. Think of it as if the unit were sitting on top of the "5"
key. (The keypad is not treated specially: you may use the number keys on the
main keyboard interchangeably.)
Some modifiers provide shortcuts. The Shift key makes commands apply to every
unit of the same type in the square. The shift modifier applies whenever it
makes sense. The S (sleep), 1-9 (Keypad) and mouse click commands all support
the shift modifier. This makes it very easy to move a whole stack of units.
The Option modifier does different things to different commands. For mouse
movement commands the option modifier makes the unit sleep when it gets to its
destination. For the 1-9 (Keypad) commands the option modifier makes the unit
keep going in the specified direction until something happens. (You may always
use the W (wake) command to a previous order.) For example, a land unit will
move unit it reaches the sea, or an enemy unit. A sea unit will move until it
reaches the edge of the board, land or the enemy. The L (Load) command with
the option modifier will order a transport to load armies as long as there are
some immediately available. The Option Load command will never cause a
transport to wait if no armies are present.
Clicking the mouse on any square adjacent to the current unit will also move it
to that square. Clicking on the unit itself and dragging to another square
will move the unit to that square, even if this requires more than one turn.
Further commands can be given using the Commands menu or from the keyboard.
5. Command Summary
Mouse Command Summary
Double-Click
On Friendly City Set City Production
On Friendly Unit Describe Unit(s)
On visible enemy unit or city Describe visible unit(s)
Single-Click
Adjacent to flashing unit Go There
On other Friendly unit Move that unit now
Click and Drag
On Unit Set destination for unit
With Shift Also set destination for city and units of
the same type in this square
With Option Also sleep at destination
Keyboard Command Summary
C Set City Destination
D Duplicate Destination
E Explore
F Fuel or Fix
G Gather
H Come Here
L Load Transport
Option-L Available Units Only
P Patrol
Q Quit
R Random
S Sleep
Shift-S Sleep All
W Wake
1-9 Movement
Shift-1-9 Other Units Too
Option-1-9 Go as far as possible
(Option-Shift-1-9 combines)
5 Don't move
[Space] Move later this turn
? Help
6. Version 1.7 changes and comments.
by Clay Prestia, Empire Builder coPauthor.
% Color and Multiple Screens. Using the Color menu item under the Map menu one
can choose the colors to be used to display the various map feature (and,
indeed, choose whether to use color at all). Additionally, if one has multiple
monitors, one can choose which monitor to display the various windows on. (For
now, window position within the monitor is predefined and fixed, and only the
main map window is resizable.) Although color looks nice, experienced users
will find that size is more critical. For example, I have 3 screens, including
a standard size Mac II monitor, but I place the main map on my Sigma Designs
LP*View in 96dpi mode (which is, effectively, like a 25 inch monitor at the
normal 72 dpi resolution.) Users with large color monitors without acceleration
hardware may find that color is just too slow, and also opt for black and white
(setting the screen to black and white in the Monitors CDEV). We have just
about completely rebuilt the screen draw portions of Empire Builder in this
release, primarily to speed up this function, but even given our success here,
Macs short of the IIfx probably just donUt have the horsepower to drive color
tubes as rapidly as the game requires.
% EB Settings file. Earlier versions of Empire Builder RrememberedS things like
rule and option setting from run to run by changing bits of the application
file. Because this can have some bad side effects, we have opted to save this
info in a separate EB Settings file. Empire Builder will look for this file
either in the folder where the application file is, or in the System Folder. If
it canUt find the file, it will create a new one (set with some initial,
slightly funky values) and tell you that it did so. (No, we wonUt look for a
RPreferencesS subPfolder, but I promise, next releaseI)
% Sounds. Empire Builder can now play a user specified sound on the occasion of
certain events during the play of the game. This is controlled by the Sound
item under the map menu. The dialog presented by selecting that item allows one
to choose from all sounds available in the system file (or through utilities
such as Suitcase II). Additionally, Empire Builder will look for sound
resources in a file named REB SoundsS (without the quotes) in the same folder
as the application. That file is not required to run the program or make the
sound feature operational. It is only distributed with the full version of
Empire Builder sent to registered users. (If you choose, you can construct your
own using ResEdit or SoundMover. Empire Builder looks for ordinary SND
resources.)
% Rule Sets. The full version of Empire Builder allows one to edit (change) the
characteristics of the military units used in the game. Their relative
strengths, speeds, production costs, move timing, name, mobility, and many
other aspects can be changed to vary the nature of the game. These capabilities
are disabled in the demo, but we supply two different rule sets to illustrate
some of the differences.
These rules sets are in the files RClay's EB RulesS and RChris' EB RulesS
included in the demo release set.
There are three major differences between the rules sets, each of which
illustrates a new feature in EB 1.7.
% Missiles. Each rule set defines a type of unit called an ICBM. (This is
actually a misnomer Q the behavior of the unit is much more analogous to a
cruise missile). These missiles are nuclear Q they destroy everything (friend
and foe) within the radius of their blast. (Cities are reverted to neutral
status.) In ChrisU rules, the blast has a radius of 2, so 25 squares are
affected by the blast; in ClayUs rules, the radius is only one. They are
launched either by selecting a flight direction or (more typically) by
selecting a destination using the normal click and drag method. They will be
detonated by any enemy unit encountered along their path. Units may attack and
destroy them if they can reach them and initiate an attack, so there are
defenses against them, but you must be skillful with your pieces. BE CAREFUL
with them. Once launched (moved) they canUt be withdrawn, and they will blow up
friendly units and cities if caught in the blast. (They are normally
transported to a battle area using Bombers or Submarines, the two unit types
equipped to carry them.)
% Counterattacks. In ClayUs rules, the Fighters and Submarine have
counterattack capability. This means they will automatically attack any unit
which moves adjacent to them which they have a decent probability of defeating.
(In practice, this means fighters will counterattack missiles, bombers and,
maybe, fighters. Submarines will counterattack destroyers, transports, crippled
capital ships, and, maybe, other submarines.) In this rule set, your main
defense against missiles is to position fighters over potential targets so they
will automatically counterattack the approaching missile.
% Mines. The game supports this type of unit now, but the machine strategy
doesnUt (it simply wouldnUt use them). Consequently neither of the rule sets
include them.
% Empire Builder, in earlier versions, allowed one to place (RstackS) an
unlimited number of armies and air units on any square, but limited each sea
square to occupation by just one unit. In V1.7, all units may be stacked on a
given square, subject to editable Rstacking limitsS. In ClayUs rules, the
limits are set to infinity. In ChrisU rules, the limits are 10, 2, and 5 pieces
per square for land, sea and air units, respectively. 15, 5 and 10 are allowed
to be within a city.
% Machine strategy. We have significantly improved the quality of the game
played by the machine. We believe this is the first ever implementation of
Empire which, without giving the computer opponent any handicap, will give an
experienced human player a game that is not easy to win. Indeed, it will win
many games itself.
In addition, the program RlearnsS how to play better, both during the game and
from game to game. (The latter is not enabled in the demo version.) The
program, given a couple games to gather some experience, will be able to adapt
to radically different rule sets.
% More on Memory. Empire Builder requires a lot of it. The demo set, which is
limited to a board size no larger than 100 x 100 requires at least a megabyte.
I play fully expanded games (255 x 255 with lots of cities) with the
MultiFinder partion size set to over 3 megabytes. (EB works well under
ConnectixU Virtual.) To play the demo under MultiFinder will require at least 2
megabytes of memory; to play on a 1Mb machine will require that MultiFInder not
be used, and that you have a minimum number of memory hungry Inits and use a
small (if any) RAM cache.
We did a lot of work in this release to make EB use memory more conservatively
and to react more gracefully to memory low conditions. Unfortunately, the new
machine logic, flight graphing, and other new features consumed much of our
savings.
But, then, you were looking for an excuse to buy more memory. Now you have it!
% Speed. We also continued our efforts to speed the game up. It is now to the
point where we have begun to favor memory savings over compute savings when the
choice presents itself. If you have used an older version, we think you will
appreciate the results.
One note. We made some major RapparentS speed savings by moving doing some of
the computational chores needed to maintain status in the background while
waiting for a user action, and during other Rdead timeS conditions, such as the
time spent doing the flickering animation when a piece engages in battle.
Consequently, EB may sometimes appear a bit sluggish responding to a mouse
click or other command. We felt this was a small price to pay to avoid having
to wait for 5 to 15 seconds every time a city is conquered or for half a minute
or more at the start of each turn for certain calculations to be performed.
% Patrol Mode. The RPS command for patrol now simply has a piece patrol areas.
The areas chosen are those squares which have been moved into least recently.
The old RPatrolS mode (describing a triangle for the piece to traverse
endlessly) can be requested by the Triangle command on the file menu or by
typing a RTS.
This is the first step toward making available to the human player some of the
higher level logic used by the machineUs playing strategy. Our intent is to
allow the user to use the machineUs automation logic in the area of transport
army gathering and other loading in the future.
% Other New Features. Look around, there are many more of them. Menu layouts
have changed a bit. Try waking pieces you have previously set for (and want to
RundoS) no more moves this turn, either by RsleepingS it or using a R5S
command. Try a Rknown worldS game. Most importantly, when playing in
simultaneous mode, and near enemy units, use the space command (Rmove laterS)
liberally. The machine logic will. (The name of the game is RchickenS.)
%Bugs. We squashed a bunch. Then we rustled up a whole pile of new ones. Then
we squashed those. And then squashed a few that thought they had got away. Then
we played the game a bunch, and let some others do it too, and fixed a few
more. We think itUs in pretty good shape. But then, weUve been wrong about this
before (and, thankfully, right on other occasions.) In any case, if you find
Tem, please let us know. ThereUs a bug report form which will print from the
file menu and can be sent to Chris, or you can reach me (Clay Prestia):
America Online: ClaytonP
CompuServe: 72510,535
AppleLink: D5904
FAX: 1-412-366-6519
Voice: 1-412-366-6515
Mail:
Clayton Prestia
Pacific Forecasting Systems, Inc
9645 Kummer Rd.
Allison Park, PA 15101 U.S.A.
% The Future. Our Rto doS lists seem to get longer rather than shorter with
each new release. Seems that each new idea spawns three more beyond, and adding
to the pile are the excellent suggestions we have received from users. (keep
those cards and letters coming, folks.)
7. Version 1.8 Changes and comments
by Christopher Eliot
The big change in version 1.8 is a total redesign of the internal rules format.
The rule editor is now a separate application from the game. The primary
reason for this change is to make type definitions independent from each other.
Eventually we will build up a library of unit types and it will be possible to
construct new rule sets just by selecting unit types from the library and
starting it up.
A second and more immediately visible change is the addition of supplies and
technology levels. Supplies are consumed during production, and technology
levels must be raised to certain levels before units can be produced.
Multiple maps are another major new feature. You can now open up to eight map
windows, each showing a different part of the world. The windows can be
scrolled, moved and resized independently. Each window is fully functional
allowing you to select a unit in one window and give it a destination in
another window. Using large and small scale views of the same map it is
possible to understand what is happening much more easily than ever before.
Bugs: Last time we didnUt get all of them. This time we did. Honestly.
Really. I hope.
/--------------------------------------------------------------------/
The Mad Thinker says:
"SMELL MY .SIG"
Thinker@gate.oxy.edu
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