dudek@utcsrgv.UUCP (Gregory Dudek) (10/17/83)
We are just starting a new empire world here, after a long hiatus. I was just curious as to what sorts of games were currently in progress out there. I would be interested in seeing information of world sizes, number of countries, and total world populations. Around here, one of the first couple of big countries always ends up nuking the rest of the world. Gregory Dudek ..decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!dudek
zzz@mit-eddie.UUCP (Mike Konopik) (10/18/83)
We've run 3 games since the start of the summer. They're almost always marked by somebody getting bored and blowing up the world or somebody manifesting a held-over grudge from a past game and nuking the other country at the first opportunity. There's also always one country that grabs about 1000 sectors to map them out and then never develops them. And usually some real lame wimp that has, say, 30 sectors, 8K civilians (as opposed to the 80K of the 1st place one), is only about 25% efficient, and is proclaiming how "well" he is doing. Ah, humour. Such a country is usually the first one to be invaded, since he tends to leave his capital on the water. Annexation -- what a deal! Keep posted for developments -- someone will get nuked tomorrow... -Mike genrad!mit-eddie!zzz (UUCP) ZZZ%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC (ARPA)
robison@eosp1.UUCP (10/24/83)
Our Empire players are a peaceful crew. We started out with about 7 people on a 64*64 world, 2000 sectors with more than half of it wilderness. Eventually boredom threatened as each of us increased his company to an unmanageably large size. There never seemed to be anything to do other than GROW... One player relieved his boredom by obliterating his entire country when it reached 350 sectors. Perhaps we haven't got the hang of this game yet, but it seems the big challenge is to set it up so that: - countries have a real need to cooperate - countries also have a real need to enter into conflict We have restarted using a 64*64 world in which only about 30% is useable land. There are many continents, and an island chain. No one will be able to acquire more than about 35 to 50 sectors unless he wants a poorly connected, difficult-to-defend country. Most sectors have very poor census assays (below 30 in everything), so trade will be important. Exchange sectors will not be used, so boat trade will be very important. We hope that the tension between the desire to expand and the need for trade will produce a good game. What is the point of eXchange sectors? they seem to make cargo trade by boats almost useless. -- Keremath
gs@mit-eddie.UUCP (Gordon Strong) (10/31/83)
There e is NO need to go into debt at the beginning of the game! That only happens when you try to expand too quickly without adequate preparation. The plan I normally use is (at the very start) to move all my iron and all but 20-30 civilians into one sector and designate it an urban area. You don't need BTU's in the beginning of the game, so don't worry about them. Expand out from your capitol putting one civilian in each sector to define a country (in case you're placed next to someone else). Let the civilians build up in the urban area. Resist the temptation to move them out until there is more than 2000 of them. Pick a minimum level and keep to it (only move out the excess civilians). Designate all the sectors with one civilian in them to be ROADS. This is just temporary and cuts mobility costs by 60% over plain wilderness (this is for 0% efficient road). Doing all this shouldn't cost you much money at all and should take about 3-5 days. When you have sufficient civilians in your urban area, move what the fertility will support into a sector and designate it an agribusiness. By exploring beforehand, you can choose a suitable sector (actually get about 10 good ones). Keep trying to contract the food from those sectors until you get the max of $3.72. One the sectors are above 60% they will produce food like crazy. Stuff them full of people and watch the bucks roll in. When you have reached financial stability (another 3 days or so), then you can expand out into other sector types. This also gives you about a week to looook over your map and census reports and plan out how you want to set up your country. The most important thing is to set up a winning road network so that you can move stuff all over the country easily. You should get an education level (since it helps you produce food faster => more $$). A three sector loop of a m, j, and l will do it. Deliver iron from m to j, light products from j to l, and voila, education. Wait until your education is above 800 or so before you start on technology (education helps produce tech more efficiently). Why tech? To get nukes of course! It is also very important to set up a LOT of manufacturing centers. LCM and HCM are extremely important. A wise idea is to not make gold bars, but to deliver the dust out. Dust is the scarcest commodity (and making nukes uses it up very fast). Make a few PT boats to go scout for choice places to nuke (use them as spotters). It is important to get nukes first. If anyone tries to take you out, you have the best retaliation. Well, sorry this is so long. It developed from rason why you don't need to go into debt into a method for winning the game. Use the information wisely. Oh, by the way, people don't usually like the buildup associated with this method and tend to gang up on you (another reason to get nukes first). Good luck with your countries. -- Gordon Strong genrad!mit-eddie!gs GS%MIT-EECS@MIT-MC
robison@eosp1.UUCP (11/01/83)
Thanks for pointing out that it can be okay to go into debt at the begining of the game. Other than military runing amok, maybe it's not so bad. Actually, you can stay solvent right from the begining by developing agribiusiness first and selling a lot of food, but this approach does slow down your expansion. I would disagree that knowing the world map in advance stifles creativity. You can do a lot of short and long range planning right from the begining of the game, and you have lots and lots of alternatives to consider. We are having some uneasy alliances and skirmishes right at the beginning of the game, and most of the players can foresee the need to jockey quickly for position in an upcoming struggle for naval dominance in key parts of the world. At the moment, I'm wondering about publishing the entire world census in advance. Knowing where all of the world's good natural resources are would further sharpen the struggle for territory, right from the beginning. - Keremath, care of: Robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1 or: allegra!eosp1
hammy@mit-eddie.UUCP (J. Scott Hamilton) (11/01/83)
>Another thing, you can't tell people not to go into debt in >the beginning. There is almost no way around it. In every >game I've played, I've been $10000 in debt for the first two >weeks before picking up. It doesn't bother me, it's normal. I have found that going into debt is very easy to do, but with a little work, you can avoid it. Mainly, my starting strategy is the following: o Designate 2,0 as an urban area, and after my capital has become efficient, move as many civilians as I can into it. o Start up an agribusiness with some food, all my military, and some civilians. When it becomes efficient, contract if for whatever price is offered, and place a deliver route on it to move some food out. After that, I carefully balance how much food is produced to how much is sold. You can do that by moving the food back into the agribusiness, and doing something to kill the mobility in those sectors so that it isn't delivered out again. On the next update, the food gets sold. It seems best to have the food delivered to some type of intermediate storage sector, like your capitol. The following system works pretty well: a > c > + All sectors are assumed to be 100% efficient. A threshold of 9xx is set on the capitol, so that not too much food is produced. If it looks like more food could be used, you move what is in the capitol onto the road, at no mobility cost. If you need more money, you move the food from the capitol (leaving enough to feed the masses) back into the agribusiness, where the next update will sell it. These types of schemes have worked well for me in the past three games, and only in the earlier games did I go broke once or twice, mostly because of neglect. I found that it helps to get about 4 or 5 agribusinesses going as soon as possible, to make enough bucks. Also, my education level is the first thing to work on, since with a high education you start making more food (and thus more money) than you know what to do with. Most of the players here have their first million in about 4 to 6 weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing more tips. -- J. Scott Hamilton !genrad!mit-eddie!hammy
alb@alice.UUCP (11/01/83)
Jes, you're taking all of the fun out of the game! Who wants to know where everything is beforehand?!?! The excitement is FINDING it out for yourself! Hell, you may as well just GIVE all the stuff to everyone.
sm@ariel.UUCP (11/01/83)
I agree with alice!alb. Empire would lose a good portion of its dynamics if the world were known in advance . Let's face it. We live our own lives through bump and discover. If we had a map of our own lives, we could write a program to run it for us. Steve "The Mess" Messina
robison@eosp1.UUCP (11/02/83)
I've been getting mild flames for releasing a map of the Empire world at the start of the game. I'm listening carefully, because we are all inexperienced Empire players here, and the voice of experience is criticizing us. It may be because of our lack of experience that the world map has helped us get off to an exciting start. Therefore, thanks for the critical responses. BUT: Steve and Alb both seem to think that publishing a map means disclosing EVERYTHING. Steve referred to "a map of our lives" as an appropriate simile. Now look: having a map at the beginning of the game is like driving in New Jersey while using, not even a road map, but a map of the forest 300 years before. And the map doesn't tell you what all the PLAYERS are going to do; it only whets your curiosity. We're still playing a game of "bump and discover". We just have a leg up on trying to plan where to bump. A little history: One of us knew about Empire from having played it as a board game in College. (By the way, the board game may have been superior to the computer game. It certainly contained much more variety in every way.) We got our idea of disclosing the map from the board game, which starts with a beautiful map of the world, including census information, available to all players. The board game is a totally open information game; it's still a "bump and discover" game, full of uncertainty and surprises. - Keremath, care of: Robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1 or: allegra!eosp1
gs@mit-eddie.UUCP (Gordon Strong) (11/04/83)
I would like to ask those of you who have set up worlds if you have changed any of the parameters of the game and world. In previous games (ones in which I just played) about 50% of the world was land and 50% water, with about 11% of the land being taken up by mountains. The size of the world was 128 x 128 and there were usually about 5 or 6 people playing. The basic time unit was 30 minutes. I didn't really like the resulting topology of the world, as it led people to grab huge countries and not know what to do with them. I just started up a new game with the following parameters: a 10 minute time unit, 6 countries, 64 x 64 world, 75% water, 23% land, 2% mountains. I also doubled the amount of time one could play from 1.5 to 3 hours. I wanted to get a game where people could develop quickly and be more aggressive (since there is much less land). Some interesting island groups resulted and the average country can't get more than 50 or so sectors without running out of land. This (hopefully) will lead people to go to sea to find some of the island groups. Most of the players are used to 200 to 300 sector countries. I think it should be interesting. One country is on a 6 sector island. The gold content of the world seems to be mostly at sea. Of the 23 sectors with a gold content above 80, 17 of them are under water. Maybe we should have reclaiming of minerals from the sea included in some future game (listening psl?). So I'd like to hear from all you Deities out there about what you have done and what has resulted. I'd like to fine tune it so that we can have an intense one month game over the holiday season (so I'm trying it out now to see). Reply to me personally and I'll post results to the net if there is sufficient interest. As they say, "thanks in advance"... -- Gordon Strong genrad!mit-eddie!gs GS%MIT-EECS@MIT-MC
alb@alice.UUCP (11/04/83)
The most important variable, I think, is the time unit, for it decides how fast the game goes. I have played at 30 and 20 minutes time units. While I liked the pace of the 20 minute game, it simply took too much time, because I had to spend more and more time making sure things kept working and moving. I wouldn't suggest anything less than a 20 minute ETU.
sda@pyuxnn.UUCP (11/04/83)
I feel the need to post the idea that not all computer ads are showing men and boys in them. I'm sure most everyone has scanned an ad in a popular computing magazine showing women in very suggestive poses to draw attention to the add.
ber@gummo.UUCP (11/07/83)
#R:utcsrgv:-251200:gummo:45200002:000:150 gummo!ber Nov 6 17:59:00 1983 The board game? To the best of my knowledge there never was a board game based on psl's empire. Are we talking about the same empire? marvin!ber
robison@eosp1.UUCP (11/08/83)
The board game existed and was played at Reed College in the 70's. I have a copy of the rather long and dense manual, and also a sample map. The board game was quite different! I wish the computer version were closer to it. It had a fantastic variety of raw materials, constructed materials, types of sectors, and types of military personnel and materiel. One of us at this site as one of the participants. - Keremath, care of: Robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1 or: allegra!eosp1
hamilton@uiucuxc.UUCP (11/09/83)
#R:utcsrgv:-251200:uiucuxc:16400008:000:324 uiucuxc!hamilton Nov 8 03:20:00 1983 we've been running with 5 (count 'em!) minute ETUs. we're gonna change that pretty quick... it's just TOO hectic. but it has its advantages: in the time it takes me to write this, my BTUs will recoup from 0 to at least 20 or so. it takes about half a clock-day for an agribusiness with 999 civ to become, say, a 100% mine.
zzz@mit-eddie.UUCP (Mike Konopik) (11/11/83)
By the way, for those interested in these sort of statistics -- we discovered that it will take approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes to transform a 999 civ sector into a 100% effcient whatever (except for urban areas, understandably). This is for the 10-minute game we're running now. It's real neat the way that you can deplete the mobility in a sector and have it all back in less than a day... -- -Mike genrad!mit-eddie!zzz (UUCP) ZZZ%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC (ARPA)