robison@eosp1.UUCP (11/02/83)
References: Just curious: What would happen in an Empire game without nukes? Is it important to have nukes? The mail I've seen suggests that nukes turn the game into an inevitable race to destruction. - Keremath, care of: Robison decvax!ittvax!eosp1 or: allegra!eosp1
alb@alice.UUCP (11/03/83)
Nukes are a part of the game. In almost every game I have been in (as God and as player), as soon as one country started to use them, everyone got in the act (whether deliberately or out of automatic retaliation), and the worlds were totally gone within about two weeks. They add tension to the game, granted, but they also make it possible to actually end a game instead of dragging a dead one on for months.
zzz@mit-eddie.UUCP (Mike Konopik) (11/03/83)
Nukes are great. Without them the game becomes a slow and inevitable CRAWL to destruction, rather than a "race". You use military invasions and large naval forces instead of blinding blitzkrieg nuke attacks. Also, it's nice to go to sleep at night, comfortable in knowing that if you're nuked, you have arranged to have all yours launched automagically in retaliation to destroy everybody completely. Also, with nukes you can wipe out a country's entire fleet if it's in one concentrated task force only using one 1-megaton nuke. Otherwise, you'd have to scramble all your fleet and fighters to intercept it (lots of stuff to guarantee that they stand up to the attacking forces). What a pain when you can just sit back and casually lob a nuke into the middle of the fleet! (yawn, hand me another Moosehead, Mel ...) -Mike genrad!mit-eddie!zzz (UUCP) ZZZ%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC (ARPA)
eric@aplvax.UUCP (11/04/83)
Our version of empire for a PDP did not have nukes (did have lots of other bugs though). It really didn't seem to make that much difference. In our games, when the first nuke is launched, it almost certainly signals the end. It just turns out to be an easy way to end a game that has gone stale. (Amazing how we can trivialize total nuclear destruction :-) ). -- eric ...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric