survey of worlds
Gregory Dudek
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
Mike Konopik
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)
rob...@eosp1.uucp
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
Mike Konopik
One word of warning to those setting up games: Avoid having a competitive game
(one in which there is an expressed desire to conquer other countries) in
which one of the players is a superuser. The opportunity to arbitrarily go in
and "fixup" stuff leads to an unpleasantly tense air to the game (especially
when you think about attacking such a country and ponder that they'll get
pissed off and lob a gigaton nuke into your front yard ...)
Also, be careful to get a deity (if the person's playing, too) that is not
overcome by the same temptation to cheat. I did in the first game, and the last
two games were scrod by cheating, too. Sure, it's fun making all your ships and
sectors 100% efficient with 127 mobility -- but it really sucks when you
stop and realize that you didn't really play the game. I saw this after I
made liberal use of empfix in the first and second games, and now I request
to never be allowed to be the deity anymore, since such behaviour just
spoils it for the other players. And it's ultimately more fun to look at a
successfully-planned country and know it was legit. Oh well.
Just thought I'd toss it out for consideration of new empirers.
-Mike
ps: and now we have a deity that *never* cheats -- not even while being
nuked to glowing blue.
genrad!mit-eddie!zzz (UUCP) ZZZ%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC (ARPA)
j...@rabbit.uucp
I have a better way.
The deity should never, NEVER, play an active country at the same
time. That way, the deity doesn't have any reason to cheat,
unless he/she/it wants to do some Machiavalian manuvering.
Trantor forever!
--
O o From the pyrolagnic keyboard of
~ rabbit!jj
-v-v-
\^_^/ (pyrolagnic- from pyro<=>fire and lagnic<=>eating.)
T.J.Teixeira
to get the deity to do this or that for you (the deity can *never* have
too many icons).
On the other hand, you should make sure that the deity cheats "within
the rules of the game". This works best if you can find a
disinterested third-party to be the deity. We did this in one of our
games and it worked quite well, up until the deity granted a favor that
was deemed by one of the combatants to be against the spirit of the
game (in this case it was divine intervention to support further
aggression rather than defense). This prompted a "takeover" of the
deity (Yes! God is dead! Long live God!) by the disgruntled party.
I don't remember if this was done using super-user privileges (which
virtually all the participants had anyway), or a more classic password
cracking approach.
In any case, the new deity did *not* cheat, but controlled more than
half the world anyway, so why bother?
--
Tom Teixeira, Massachusetts Computer Corporation. Littleton MA
...!{harpo,decvax,ucbcad,tektronix}!masscomp!tjt (617) 486-9581
Erik E. Fair
efficiently? I find that when my countries get above 50-100 sectors, it
takes a phenomenal effort to maintain the various necessary levels of food
for u, iron for k & l, light & heavy for h, g, i, etc. I think you get
the idea. Now, does anyone have a workable solution (automated country
manager?)? I would rather play the game from a strategic level, than a
logistical one. Moving stuff around all day is *boring*.
Erik E. Fair {ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation
er...@aplvax.uucp
In the games here, I have played the Diety. I did have a
country, but it was understood that my country was strictly for me
to try and play with the logistics of the game. I created the country
as an island, with only one entrance, and was pretty much left alone.
Of course, the 3 war canoes might have had something to do with it.
The game lasted a fairly long time, until the players grew bored with
it and nuked me, setting off a rather elaborate chain reaction. No
new games have been since started, the general feeling being that it
took too much time and effort. I am waiting to see the next version.
One plea to psl, please make the god interface a little friendlier.
It should at least have the same power as the normal interface.
Empfix is particularly burdonsome if one wants to do a little
modification to the world before starting the game.
--
eric
...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric
J. Scott Hamilton
might say I started to "research" the delivery system. A system of
deliver routes to shuttle your goods around, plus careful forethought as
to the placement of your sectors, can be a godsend. At one time I had
the following completely automated:
shell plant gun plant harbor warehouse urban area
requisite mines requisite agribusinesses
library radar station weather station (food supply)
several forts
The urban area was supplied with iron, and all other industries were
well stocked. The object of the experiment was not to have goods pile
up from lack of mobility. I found that this is possible with the single
exception of food. This is okay, because when the delivery route maxes
out, you contract the agribusiness, and since it delivers all the food
it can before it sells the rest to the deity, this system wins. The
guns and shells were sent to a warehouse, where I later hand distributed
them to the harbor for arming the ships, and to the forts for defense.
The only other thing I moved around was civilians from the urban area,
to other lands to develop. Eventually, because of the food deliver
route, almost all the sectors maxed out on civilians, and the regeon
really cranked out the goods. Occasionally I had to tweak the
thresholds to get everything moving smoothly. I am now working on
developing a country from the ground up with this philosophy in mind.
If anyone is interested, I can reply or post some of the tricks that I
have learned.
--
J. Scott Hamilton
!genrad!mit-eddie!hammy
Gregory Dudek
My approach has been to rely on a conbination of deliveries, and
one or two execute files. What the deliveries don't handle, the
command files can take care of. Of course, setting the whole mess
up is tricky, and manual tweaking is still necessary. To top it
off, if your country is that big, a little inefficiency of starvation
if "backwoods" area doesn't seem to matter too much.
Greg Dudek.
Gregory Dudek
too. I have run several game as diety & played as well, and have
had no real conflict of interest problems.
This may have been partly due to the fact that I have played a
very passive diety. Of course, one still has to resist temptation,
but cheating as diety would take away the glory of
victory. (The small of napalm.. ).
Re. starting up, I've found that it helps to place a bunch
of LONG (20-30 sectors) random rivers on the globe (without looking
where eg. des 0:30,5:7 . ?des=- ) to slow down the rate
of encounter and expansion of countries. Otherwise the
borders turn out to be too big too fast, and people end up
getting creamed by surprise. (ie. Their neighbors have to much
opportunity to sneak up.)
Greg Dudek
..decvax!utzoo!utcsrgv!dudek
J. Scott Hamilton
>country (note: I am used to playing 300 sector countries and
>up) is a highway, completely encircling the country.
I agree, and this strategy is also fundamental to my development. I
found that with strategically placed roads, I could set up well
developed delivery routes that saved on the mobility of my industries.
The classic is to deliver raw materials into a sector via a road, and
then deliver finished goods out onto the road, and then down the road to
a warehouse. Thus, industries aren't wasting mobility by pushing around
what they produce (or what their neighbors produce). Usually, the
industries push around food to each other. Also, for sectors that max
out on people because they are part of a food delivery route, I have
them deliver civilians onto the road with a threshold of about 900. The
road is responsible for delivering execess civilians to an urban area,
where I can later move them to somewhere useful.
Also, as far as delivery routes were concerned, I found that my logging
in once a day was not smooth enough for the delivery routes. Therefore,
I set up a self queueing batch system (using 'at') to log in about four
times a day to do an update. This is especially useful for sectors with
999 civilians, since they max out on work in less than seven hours.
Gordon Strong
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
rob...@eosp1.uucp
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
J. Scott Hamilton
>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.
a...@alice.uucp
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.
Mike Konopik
it's okay to go into early-game debt. Surely you don't mean EVERY country
can go into debt? Somebody has to stick around to bail out the others, eh?
I went into debt in the first game and looked to see if there was any method
of self-help -- I couldn't get the contracted sectors to do the work to sell
the goods. So unless the diety is going to give you money, I wouldn't condone
debt at all. There are enough painless ways to avoid it.
Mike Konopik
or two of fixing in the new version: When a country is a visitor or after
dissolving (both have VISITOR status), suppress the "You lost your capital..."
message typed out after EVERY command. Also, for the out-of-time commands,
it would seem correct to allow any command that doesn't move stuff (directly),
like UPDATE, CENSUS, MAP, COMMODITIES, and some others (WEATHER, FORECAST...).
Also, READ and TELEGRAM don't seem to have any effect in either of the releases
of the latest version we got.
One interesting idea stemming from the thought that the best part of the game
is discovering the world would be to remove the country listings and the
power reports, leaving that for intrepid explorers and probing newsmen to find
out. You could introduce one or two new country characteristics: covertness
and nosiness. With a highly organized propaganda system, you could foil the
other countries' reporters. And you could have news-gathering sectors whose
work goes to probing other countries and sending you recent developments in
the countries that the reporters can "find". Very rough idea, I'll admit. But
I think you could come up with something equally interesting (and it would
add a new challenge to the game.) I know I'll make it a point to make that
a part of mine when (if) I finish it.
Enough flaming for now. If anybody wants to send me their ideas for extensions
to the current game style, I'm looking for neat things to put into the version
I've started to write for PDP-10s. (including things like neglected areas of
a country seceding and requiring invasion to retrieve, and tank warfare, and
other stuff like that.) Speak up, I'm listening.
er...@aplvax.uucp
I also find well developed highways essential. But they do
lead to one problem, and maybe a suggestion for the next version.
How about letting delivery routes for a given commodity and given
sector include percentages. Thus, on a highway sector, 10% of the
{food,people,etc} could leave the road, and the rest advance on down.
The alternative are some very fragile delivery routes that are very
inefficient.
--
eric
...!seismo!umcp-cs!aplvax!eric
rob...@eosp1.uucp
a sector, so tha delivery routes can be more rational.
While we are on the subject of highways, I would like Empire to
give me some roguelike assitance while moving along a highway.
For example, in addition to typing "ea"yugjbnhv to move, I'd like to
type "YUGJBN", meaning:
Start moving in that direction on a highway square, and
continue on highway squares until the road forks.
I'd also like to type "+", meaning move to
The one adjacent highway sector,
not including any highway sector that I have been on during this Move
command. Empire would respond by moving if there is only one highway
sector next to the current sector which this move has not already
covered.
s...@pyuxnn.uucp
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.