Knowledge FAQ

What is Empire? It is a strategy wargame played by a number of people (usually between 4 and 100) on the internet connected to an Empire Server. If you've ever seen the game "Civilization", Empire is a lot like it, except it is more detailed, and of course multi-player. As the leader of a nation which consists of certain sectors on a large hexagonal grid, you decide (based on resources) what each sector's "designation" should be. This way, you obtain food, iron, gold, oil, uranium. You distribute these raw materials to factories to convert them into more useful things. You manage a civilian and slave populace for producing goods, and a military populace for defence and conquest. You also have the tricky job of balancing a budget. As the technology level of your country increases, you are able to build more and more advanced units: for example, in a typical game, at tech 0 you can build fishing boats and frigates, at tech 50 you can build planes, cruisers, and infantry, and by tech 300 you can build satellites, jet planes, and nuclear weapons. NOTE: rec.games.empire has nothing at all to do with the commercial PC games called "Empire Deluxe", "Ages of Empire", and "Empire Earth", nor the PC version of an old VAX classic called "Empire: Wargame of the Century" which came out in the 80's. The newsgroups microsoft.public.agesofempire alt.games.empire-deluxe and comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic concern themselves with games like these. However, people who enjoy those single-user games would certainly enjoy the multi-user kind of empire we play here even more! back to top Do I need direct internet access ("telnet") to be able to play? Yes. It is a "real-time" game. You can not play by mail. back to top What kinds of machines can I play from? You can play from a Unix, VMS, VM/CMS, Macintosh, or PC (MS Windows or OS/2) machine that is directly connected to the internet (via LAN, SLIP, or PPP). back to top Are there "turns" in this game? Most aspects of the game are "real-time" (i.e. it isn't like risk or diplomacy where there are turns), for example you sail ships, march armies, and fly planes in real-time--so if you type fast, then you will have an advantage. The aspect of the game that has turns is economic: goods are produced, population grows, and arms are constructed only at a specific time (called "updates"). back to top How long does a typical game last? This depends on how often updates occur. There are two types of games: A "blitz" has updates every ten minutes. They last about 24 hours. A "long term" game usually has one update every day or every few days. They last 2-6 months. To learn the basics of empire, it is highly recommended that you first try "blitzing" a few times. back to top Where can I find out more about the game? The main clearinghouse for empire information is the Wolfpack Empire Page (http://www.wolfpackempire.com/). Here you will find all current client and server software, information texts and links to other sites. back to top Sounds neat! How do I play? Well, you can play right now if you want! All you need to do is get a client program onto your computer, and then connect to a game.