Empire (1977 video game)

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Empire is a turn-based military game with simple rules and played in a single sitting. It was conceived by Walter Bright based on war movies and various board games. In the game, each player starts with one city in an unexplored world, and uses the city to build armies, aircraft, and various types of ships. Cities take a particular number of turns to produce the various units. As players expand from the first city, they use their units to find and capture additional cities and become able to produce a greater number of unit types. Players explore the world, capturing cities as they are found and using them to build more military units. Early versions were text-based, while later versions of the game added graphics.

This game inspired a great deal of the strategic gaming genre, most clearly including Strategic Conquest, Empire Master, Xconq and Nintendo Wars.

Bright's first version was written around 1977 in the FORTRAN programming language for the PDP-10 computer at Caltech. This version was spread virally to other PDP-10s, which were common timesharing systems at the time. Later, Bright recoded this in assembly language on a Heathkit H-11 and made it available commercially. He sold two copies.

At some point, someone broke through the security systems at Caltech, and took a copy of the source code for the FORTRAN/PDP-10 version of the game. This code was continually modified, being passed around from person to person. Eventually, it was found on a computer in Massachusetts by two people named Jacobs and Mitton. They ported the code to the VAX/VMS operating system and, under the alias of "DeNobili and Paulson" submitted the program to DECUS, a large user's group. DECUS programs were often installed on new DEC computers at the time of delivery, and so Empire propagated further. Eventually, Bright heard of this, and in 1983 contacted DECUS, who subsequently credited Bright in the catalog description of the program and re-added his name to the source code.

In 1984, Bob Norby, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ported the DECUS version from the VAX, producing Empire 5.0, and Empire 5.1 (Color Supported) , which required the ANSI.SYS driver. Mr Norby wrote:

"This program is a war game simulation for video terminals. It is distributed by DECUS on DEC computers. While working for a company with a VAX, I became addicted toe the game. When I left that company, it was nessessary to find another way to continue playing. So I implemented the game on the PC.

It was released as shareware, and found its way into many shareware collections, and was propagated into BBSs in the late 80s and early 90s.

After this, Bright recoded the game in the C programming language on an IBM PC. With low commercial expectations, he submitted an announcement to BYTE Magazine's "New Programs" section, and received a flood of orders. He then licensed the game to a small software company named Interstel, who hired Mark Baldwin to add a graphic user interface. Starting around 1987, Empire: Wargame of the Century on the Atari ST, Amiga and DOS was produced.

In its review of the game, Computer Gaming World noted the improved UI, saying "the playability of an already successful system has been significantly enhanced."^[1]

In the early 1990s, Mark Baldwin and Bob Rakowsky rewrote the game, calling it Empire Deluxe for DOS, Mac OS, and Windows, released in the early 1990s with New World Computing as the publisher. Empire Deluxe sustained the old game play of Interstel Empire in a basic game, while adding a standard and advanced version with new units such as the Bomber and Armor and maps sizes up to 200x200.

Empire Deluxe enjoyed great success, and was noted as one of Gamespy's Greatest Games of All Time. But New World Computing eventually stopped publishing the game. Baldwin and Rakowsky retained the copyrights, but in the latter half of the 1990s it was found on abandonware sites, though it still enjoyed a strong community following on the Internet.

In the Winter of 2001, Mark Kinkead purchased the rights for Empire Deluxe from Mark Baldwin and Bob Rakowsky, and in 2002 produced a new version called Empire Deluxe Internet Edition a.k.a. EDIE for Windows. This was essentially a port of the code Baldwin and Rakowsky produced in 1993. It only slightly increased the map size (255x255), but did not add any new rules.

In Winter 2004, Empire Deluxe Enhanced Edition, a.k.a. EDEE was produced for Windows by Killer Bee Software. Based on the Empire Deluxe Advanced Game, this game added several new units, such as artillery, satellites, missiles, a helicopter, and mines, and increased the map sizes to over 1000x1000 if desired.

Units have very different capabilities, as well as different strengths and weaknesses. Destroyers move fast and are great for exploring, while battleships are very resilient and can also attack land units. The central unit of conquest is transports, which can carry two troop types. Only Infantry and Armor can capture a city, and these two units must cross water in transports. The central unit of conquest has weak defences, so Empire strategy involves exploration in the context of providing safe passage for transports.

Eventually, players expand their known worlds until the players find each other and fight until only one is left. This moment of discovery can happen quickly or not, especially when one allows the game to generate a randomly-populated world made of islands with cities, surrounded by a connected body of water. Units in Empire are aware of enemy who occupy grid squares around them only to a particular distance, and cities also are aware of enemy units adjacent to them. Otherwise, enemy units are not visible unless one moves close enough with one unit to see an enemy.

Units fight by trying to take the grid location occupied by the enemy unit. In most cases, this is a fight to the death, and in most cases, the winner moves in to occupy the grid square after the combat. This combat is based on percentages rating one unit type against the others, so this is calculated, and an animated battle sequence is seen before the losing unit is removed. Empire is a strategy game, so the combat animation is minimal, and allows one to focus on the strategic consequences of the combat.

Many interesting starts get interrupted when one discovers enemy units next to cities which lack defenses. A city loses a percentage of its production capacity when it is captured, and it also loses any units it contains, as well losing the unit under construction. Cities are sometimes fought over repeatedly, until the city itself has little production capacity, and is used simply as a base for aircraft and as a point to fight over. Cities that are not producing anything help a player's production value, and allow other, more efficient cities to produce units. Cities that are not producing will see their production efficiency increase as turns go by. The ability to remain unseen, even in adjacent grid squares, for example, submarines are not visible to battleships aircraft and transports, allows players to scout enemy areas.

Mottled, computer-generated island-worlds are typical, but Empire also has a world-generator, and comes with pre-designed worlds such as Europe and North America. When one plays on the random worlds, the players are placed randomly in one city. There can be very different outcomes when one discovers an enemy city or unit very early compared with later. One is creating an empire, and the existing units in an army cost the player a percentage of overall production capacity. This means large armies (including ships, planes, and land units) can prevent a player from efficiently creating further troops types. Since the game is turn based, players experience this production capacity as a percentage. Units take a given number of turns depending on this percentage, and a low percentage can make certain units practically impossible to order. This is most important in the first part of the game, when one only has a small number of cities.

• Walter Bright's Empire page
• Killer Bee Software
• The Empire series at MobyGames