Slashdot Mirror

Walter Bright's version is but a pale shadow of the real "Empire". For more information, you can go to the source

Empire was the best. and still is.

I fondly remember Empire. I haven't played it in about fifteen years. Perhaps that's because it caused me to almost flunk two classes.

It was similar in look to the classic Unix empire game, but for multiple players, with economics, military, diplomacy, etc. Pretty complex. It has balanced so that being constantly logged in had no advantage.

Mr. Frog was the diety, and every morning I would go print out the reports, stats, messages, etc. Then I would pore over them during lunch. Moves were made during dinner. And at night I would log in and make my moves.

One of these days I'll play again. I have a lot of vacation time acrued...

Empire, www.empire.cx, rec.games.empire, has been around forever.

It is great multiplayer game focusing on strategy and not appearance. It is said that it's easier to develop a program that will be the best chess player in the world (it's been done actually) than to create a bot that will win in Empire.

The depth of the game and military genius of the famous players are amazing. Modert online RTS's are way more primitive.

A great strategy based game is Empire. Turn based, some games go on for three months (production only happens once a day). There are also one-day 'blitz' games. Text mode, very intricate.

I, too, have spent many hours playing VAX Empire. For addictive, though, it's tough to beat BSD Empire"

Or Empire (the Online Unix game, not the PC or Spectrum version)

Or any of 10,000 MUD's.

Quake / Doom / &c. were the first time you had 3-D (or 3-D'ish) versions of the old "shoot anything that moves" games (asteroids, space invaders, &c.) They had better graphics than most of their progeniters. But the ideas were all done before.

Quake and the like are perfect for the "I've spent 25% of my life watching TV and am proud of it" generation. As for me, I got bored after the first hour.

Personally, I'd rather fire up the old Atari 800 and play M.U.L.E. any day. Crappy graphics with awesome gameplay will always win out over simple gameplay with incredible graphics...

I've spent a lot of time wondering why and I think the core problem is that the games are so awfully repititious. In RTS games, they all seem to boil down to build a base and then go wipe the enemy of the map. After about 100 times of this, is it any wonder that building next base isn'nt fun? FPS games like Quake and Doom seem even worse, all you do is run around and blow things up.

Probably the game that has managed to hold my attention the best was Alpha Centauri because of the great depth of the game. But even that gets old real quick; all you seem to do is spend your time nudging units across the map and working your way up the tech tree in order to get an edge over your enemies.

No matter what game in what genre I try, they all quickly become repititious. I keep feeling like some little cog wheel stuck going round and round inside the "game engine".

It's interesting that this article came along when it did. For some months now I've been wondering if someone was going to abandon all this 3D/voxel/blah blah blah approach and focus on game play for a change. Eyecandy doesn't last very long; what keeps player's interest are other factors. I've been thinking of trying Empire, but am scared by the addiction warnings posted on the website. Can you imagine playing games that go on for as long as 2 years? Yeoww!