EMPIRE(6)

📦
version 1.18 · 5 versions
, in debian trixie, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 EMPIRE(6) — the wargame of the century 💖

okay bestie, buckle UP — this is the manual page for empire, from the Games section of the manual. It's giving main character energy and it's about to eat. 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

empire — the wargame of the century 👑

🌈 SYNOPSIS 🌈

empire [-w water] [-s smooth] [-d delay] [-S save-interval]
       [-f savefile]

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Okay so. Empire is a whole simulation of a full-scale war between two emperors: the computer, and you. And like… obviously there's only room for one of you on this map, so the entire point of the game is to destroy the other one. Periodt. 💅

The computer plays by the exact same rules you do — no cheating, no secret buffs, it's a fair fight fr fr.

  • -wwater — this one controls how much water is on the map. You give it as the percentage of the map that should be water. Default is 70% water. And water has to be an integer between 10 and 90 inclusive — no going outside that range, bestie, it will simply not vibe.
  • -ssmooth — this controls how smooth the map is. A low value gives you a highly chaotic map with lots of little islands and lakes. A high value gives you a map with just a few scattered continents. But be forewarned, okay? A high value will make the program take a long time to start up. 😭 The default value is 5.
  • -ddelay — controls how long the computer waits after printing informational messages at the top of the screen. delay is in milliseconds. Default is 2000, which gives you two whole seconds to read a message. So generous of it honestly.

🦋 EXAMPLES 🦋

empire -w90 -s2

This one produces a map with many islands. island girl summer 🏝️

empire -w50 -s0

This produces a really strange map. These values are not recommended for the faint at heart. ⚠️ like genuinely, it's giving chaos.

empire -w10

This produces a map with lots of land and a few lakes. The computer will have a hard time on this sort of map, because it'll try and produce lots of troop transports, which are fairly useless. 💀 not the computer self-sabotaging.

There are two other option.

  • -Sinterval — sets the save interval for the game (default is 10). Once per interval turns, the game state gets automatically saved after your move. It'll be saved in any case when you change modes or do various special things from command mode, like M or N. ✨
  • -fsavefile — sets the save file name (normally empsave.dat). 📁

🌸 INTRODUCTION 🌸

Empire is a war game played between you and the computer. The world the game takes place in is a square rectangle containing cities, land, and water. Cities are what you use to build armies, planes, and ships — and those pieces can move across the world destroying enemy pieces, exploring, and capturing more cities. The objective of the game is to destroy all the enemy pieces and capture all the cities. 🎯

The world is a rectangle 60 by 100 squares on a side. And the world is made up of:

  • sea (.)
  • land (+)
  • uncontrolled cities (*)
  • computer-controlled cities (X)
  • cities that you control (O) 💖

The world is displayed on the player's screen during movement. (On terminals with small screens, only a portion of the world is shown at any one time.) Each piece is represented by a unique character on the map. With a few exceptions, you can only have one piece on a given location. On the map, you're only shown the 8 squares adjacent to your units. This info gets updated before and during each of your moves. The map displays the most recent information known. 🗺️

The game starts by assigning you one city and the computer one city. Cities can produce new pieces. Every city that you own produces more pieces for you, according to the cost of the desired piece. The typical play of the game is to issue the Automove command until you decide to do something special. During movement in each round, the player is prompted to move each piece that doesn't otherwise have an assigned function.

Map coordinates are 4-digit numbers. The first two digits are the row, the second two digits are the column. So like, iykyk. 🧚

🎀 PIECES 🎀

okay bestie, here's the roster — the whole girl squad of little ASCII boats and planes you get to boss around 💅 the pieces are as follows:

┌────────────┬─────┬───────┬───────┬──────┬─────┬────────┐
│ Piece      │ You │ Enemy │ Moves │ Hits │ Str │  Cost  │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Army       │  A  │   a   │     1 │    1 │   1 │  5(6)  │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Fighter    │  F  │   f   │     8 │    1 │   1 │ 10(12) │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Patrol     │  P  │   p   │     4 │    1 │   1 │ 15(18) │
│ Boat       │     │       │       │      │     │        │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Destroyer  │  D  │   d   │     2 │    3 │   1 │ 20(24) │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Submarine  │  S  │   s   │     2 │    2 │   3 │ 20(24) │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Troop      │  T  │   t   │     2 │    1 │   1 │ 30(36) │
│ Transport  │     │       │       │      │     │        │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Aircraft   │  C  │   c   │     2 │    8 │   1 │ 30(36) │
│ Carrier    │     │       │       │      │     │        │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Battleship │  B  │   b   │     2 │   10 │   2 │ 40(48) │
├────────────┼─────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────┼────────┤
│ Satellite  │  Z  │   z   │    10 │   -- │  -- │ 50(60) │
└────────────┴─────┴───────┴───────┴──────┴─────┴────────┘

okay so let's decode this thing column by column, because it's giving spreadsheet but make it slay:

  • The second column is literally just the map representation for your units. that's you. that's your girl. ✨
  • The third column is what the enemy units look like on the map. lowercase = not yours, beware bestie 😭
  • Moves = how many squares the unit can move in a single round. lowkey the mobility stat.
  • Hits = how much damage a unit can take before it is destroyed. it's the HP, fr fr.
  • Strength = how much damage a unit can inflict upon an enemy during each round of an attack. the damage output, periodt.
  • Cost = the number of rounds needed for a city to produce the piece.
  • and the number in parenthesis? that's the cost for a city to produce the first unit. yes, the first one costs extra. it's a whole thing. 🫶

Every single piece has certain advantages associated with it that can make it useful, and honestly one of the primary strategic aspects of this game is deciding which pieces will be produced and in what quantities. like, that IS the game. choose your lineup wisely bestie 👑

🦋 the pieces, one by one 🦋

Armies can only move on land, and are the only piece that can move on land. Only armies can capture cities. Which means — say it with me — you must produce armies in order to win the game. no armies, no win, no cap. Armies have a 50% chance of capturing a city when they attack.

(Attacking one's own city results in the army's destruction. Armies that move onto the sea will drown. Armies can attack objects at sea, but even if they win, they will drown.) 💀

Armies can be carried by troop transports. If an army is moved onto a troop transport, then whenever the transport is moved, the army will be moved with the transport. You cannot attack any piece at sea while on a transport.

Fighters move over both land and sea, and they move 8 squares per round. Their high speed and great mobility make fighters ideal for exploring. However, fighters must periodically land at user-owned cities for refueling. A fighter can travel 32 squares without refueling. Fighters are also shot down if they attempt to fly over a city which is not owned by the user. 🙈

Patrol boats are fast but lightly armored. Therefore they are useful for patrolling ocean waters and exploring. In an attack against a stronger boat, however, patrol boats will suffer heavy casualties. it's giving glass cannon but make it nautical 😭

Destroyers are fairly heavily armored and reasonably quick to produce. Thus they are useful for destroying enemy transports which may be trying to spread the enemy across the face of the world.

Submarines — okay this is the iconic one. When a submarine scores a hit, 3 hits are exacted instead of 1. Thus submarines can inflict heavy damage in a fight against heavily armored boats. Notice that healthy submarines will typically defeat healthy destroyers two-thirds of the time. However, a submarine will defeat a fighter about two-thirds of the time, while a destroyer will defeat a fighter three-fourths of the time. math girlies rise 🌸

Troop transports are the only pieces that can carry armies. A maximum of six armies can be carried by a transport. On any world containing a reasonable amount of water, transports will be a critical resource in winning the game. Notice that the weakness of transports implies they need protection from stronger ships. protect her at all costs 🥺

Aircraft carriers are the only ships that can carry fighters. Carriers carry a maximum of the number of hits left of fighters. Fighters are refueled when they land on a carrier.

Battleships are similar to destroyers except that they are much stronger. that's it. that's the whole pitch. main character energy 💅

Satellites are only useful for reconnaissance. They can not be attacked. They are launched in a random diagonal orbit, and stay up for 50 turns. They can see one square farther than other objects. little spy bestie in the sky 🛰️✨

🌊 ships, docks, and the repair arc 🌊

All ships can move only on the sea. Ships can also dock in a user-owned city. Docked ships have damage repaired at the rate of 1 hit per turn. Ships which have suffered a lot of damage will move more slowly.

Because of their ability to be repaired, ships with lots of hits such as Carriers and Battleships have an additional advantage. After suffering minor damage while destroying enemy shipping, these ships can sail back to port and be quickly repaired before the enemy has time to replenish her destroyed shipping. it's the glow-up-and-return arc, we love to see it 🌈

⭐ the odds table ⭐

The following table gives the probability that the piece listed on the side will defeat the piece listed at the top in a battle. (The table assumes that both pieces are undamaged.)

┌──────┬───────┬───────┬───────┬─────────┬──────────┐
│      │ AFPT  │   D   │   S   │    C    │    B     │
├──────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┤
│ AFPT │ 50.0% │ 12.5% │ 25.0% │ 00.391% │ 00.0977% │
├──────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┤
│ D    │ 87.5% │ 50.0% │ 25.0% │ 05.47%  │ 00.537%  │
├──────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┤
│ S    │ 75.0% │ 75.0% │ 50.0% │  31.3%  │  06.25%  │
├──────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┤
│ C    │ 99.6% │ 94.5% │ 68.7% │  50.0%  │  04.61%  │
├──────┼───────┼───────┼───────┼─────────┼──────────┤
│ B    │ 99.9% │ 99.5% │ 93.8% │  95.4%  │  50.0%   │
└──────┴───────┴───────┴───────┴─────────┴──────────┘

Notice, however, that when a ship has been damaged, the odds of being defeated can go up quite a bit. For example, a healthy submarine has a 25% chance of defeating a battleship that has had one hit of damage done to it, and a healthy submarine has a 50% chance of defeating a carrier which has suffered two hits of damage. so like… chip damage is real and it matters. don't sleep on a wounded enemy 🫶

💖 MOVEMENT FUNCTIONS 💖

okay bestie, so there are a variety of movement functions, and they are literally the vibe of how your pieces behave. ✨ You can set these in user mode and edit mode. Cities can have movement functions set for each type of piece. When a movement function for a type of pieces is set for a city, then every time that type of piece appears in the city, the piece will acquire that movement function. Be forewarned that moving loaded transports or loaded carriers into a city can have undesirable side effects. 😬

Normally, when a movement function has been specified, the piece will continue moving according to that function until one of the following happen:

  • An enemy piece or unowned city appears next to the piece. In this case the piece will be completely awoken, unless its movement function has been set to a specific destination. Armies on ships and pieces inside cities will not be awoken if the enemy piece is gone by the time it is their turn to move.
  • You explicitly awaken the piece.
  • The piece can no longer move in accordance with its programmed function. In this case, the piece will awaken temporarily. You will be asked to move the piece at which time you may awaken it.
  • The piece is a fighter which has just enough fuel (plus a small reserve) to get to the nearest city. In this case, the piece will awaken completely, unless its movement function has been set to a specific destination, or its movement function has been set to land.

The rationale behind this complexity is that fighters must be awoken completely before they are out of range of a city to prevent one from accidentally forgetting to waken the fighter and then watching it fly off to its doom. 😭 However, it is presumed that when a path is set for the fighter, the fighter is not in danger of running out of fuel.

Pieces do not completely awaken when their function has been set to a destination because it is slightly time consuming to reset the destination, but very simple (one keystroke) to wake the piece.

The movement functions are:

Attack

This function applies only to armies. When this function is set, the army will move toward the nearest enemy city, unowned city, or enemy army. This is useful when fighting off an invading enemy or taking over a new continent. When an army is set to this mode, it will also explore nearby territory. This tends to make the "grope" movement mode pretty useless. 💀

Awake

When pieces are awake, you will be asked for the direction in which the piece should move on each turn.

Fill

This function applies to carriers and transports. When this function is specified, these ships sleep until they have been filled with fighters or armies respectively.

Grope

This function causes a piece to explore. The piece heads toward the nearest unseen square of the map on each of its moves. Some attempt is made to explore in an optimal fashion.

Land

This function applies to fighters and causes the fighter to head toward the nearest transport or carrier.

Random

This movement function causes a piece to move at random to an adjacent empty square.

Sentry

This movement function puts a piece to sleep. The function of a city cannot be set to 'sleep'.

Transport

This movement function only works on armies. The army sleeps until an unfull transport passes by, at which point the army wakes up and boards the transport.

Upgrade

This movement function only works with ships. The ship will move to the nearest owned city and remain there until it is repaired.

<dir>

Pieces can be set to move in a specified direction.

<dest>

Pieces can be set to move toward a specified square. In this movement mode, pieces take a shortest path toward the destination. Pieces moving in accordance with this function prefer diagonal moves that explore territory. Because of this, the movement of the piece may be non-intuitive.

As examples of how to use these movement functions, typically when I have a new city on a continent, I set the Army function of the city to attack. Whenever an army is produced, it merrily goes off on its way exploring the continent and moving towards unowned cities or enemy armies or cities.

I frequently set the ship functions for cities that are far from the front to automatically move ships towards the front.

When I have armies on a continent, but there is nothing to explore or attack, I move the army to the shore and use the transport function to have that army hop aboard the first passing transport.

🌈 COMMANDS 🌈

There are three command modes. The first of these is "command mode". In this mode, you give commands that affect the game as a whole. In the second mode, "move mode", you give commands to move your pieces. The third mode is "edit mode", and in this mode you can edit the functions of your pieces and examine various portions of the map.

All commands are one character long. The full mnemonic names are listed below as a memorization aid. The mnemonics are somewhat contrived because there are so few characters in the English language. Too bad this program isn't written in Japanese, neh?

In all command modes, typing H will print out a screen of help information, and typing <ctrl-L> will redraw the screen.

🎀 COMMAND MODE 🎀

In command mode, the computer will prompt you for your orders. The following commands can be given at this time:

  • Automove — Enter automove mode. This command begins a new round of movement. You will remain in move mode after each of the computer's turns. (In move mode, the O command will return you to command mode after the computer finishes its next turn.
  • City — Give the computer a random unowned city. This command is useful if you find that the computer is getting too easy to beat.
  • Date — The current round is displayed.
  • Examine — Examine the enemy's map. This command is only valid after the computer has resigned.
  • File — Print a copy of the map to the specified file.
  • Give — This command gives the computer a free move.
  • J — Enter edit mode where you can examine and change the functions associated with your pieces and cities.
  • Move — Enter move mode for a single round.
  • N — Give the computer the number of free moves you specify.
  • Print — Display a sector on the screen.
  • Quit — Quit the game.
  • Restore — Restore the game from empsave.dat.
  • Save — Save the game in empsave.dat.
  • Trace — This command toggles a flag. When the flag is set, after each move, either yours or the computer's, a picture of the world is written out to the file 'empmovie.dat'. Watch out! This command produces lots of output.
  • Watch — This command allows you to watch a saved movie. The movie is displayed in a condensed version so that it will fit on a single screen, so the output may be a little confusing. This command is only legal if the computer resigns. If you lose the game, you cannot replay a movie to learn the secrets of how the computer beat you. Nor can you replay a movie to find out the current positions of the computer's pieces. When replaying a movie, it is recommended that you use the -d option to set the delay to around 2000 milliseconds or so. Otherwise the screen will be updated too quickly for you to really grasp what is going on.
  • Zoom — Display a condensed version of the map on the screen. The user map is divided into small rectangles. Each rectangle is displayed as one square on the screen. If there is a city in a rectangle, then it is displayed. Otherwise enemy pieces are displayed, then user pieces, then land, then water, and then unexplored territory. When pieces are displayed, ships are preferred to fighters and armies.

🦋 MOVE MODE 🦋

In move mode, the cursor will appear on the screen at the position of each piece that needs to be moved. You can then give commands to move the piece. Directions to move are specified by the following keys:

QWE
A D
ZXC

The arrow and keypad keys on your terminal, if any, should also work.

These keys move in the direction of the key from S. The characters are not echoed and only 1 character is accepted, so there is no need for a <Return>. Hit the <Space> bar if you want the piece to stay put.

Other commands are:

  • Build — Change the production of a city.
  • Fill — Set the function of a troop transport or aircraft carrier to fill.
  • Grope — Set the function of a piece to grope.
  • Idir — Set the direction for a piece to move.
  • J — Enter edit mode.
  • Kill — Wake up the piece. If the piece is a transport or carrier, pieces on board will not be awoken.
  • Land — Set a fighter's function to land.
  • Out — Cancel automove mode. At the end of the round, you will be placed in command mode.
  • Print — Redraw the screen.
  • Random — Set a piece's function to random.
  • Sentry — Set a piece's function to sentry.
  • Transport — Set an army's function to transport.
  • Upgrade — Set a ship's function to upgrade.
  • Vpiece func — Set the city movement function for the specified piece to the specified function. For example, typing "VAY" would set the city movement function for armies to attack. Whenever an army is produced in the city (or whenever a loaded transport enters the city), the army's movement function would be set to attack.
  • Y — Set an army's function to attack.
  • ? — Display information about the piece. The function, hits left, range, and number of items on board are displayed.

Attacking something is accomplished by moving onto the square of the unit you wish to attack. Hits are traded off at 50% probability of a hit landing on one or the other units until one unit is totally destroyed. There is only 1 possible winner.

You are "allowed" to do fatal things like attack your own cities or other pieces. If you try to make a fatal move, the computer will warn you and give you a chance to change your mind.

You cannot move onto the edge of the world.

✨ EDIT MODE ✨

Okay bestie, edit mode is where you get to be the literal god of this world 💅 You can wander around, peek at pieces, and hand them brand-new functions. To scoot the cursor around, just use the standard direction keys. Everything else? Right here:

  • Build — changes the production of whatever city the cursor is chilling on. The program will ask you for the new production, and you answer with the key that matches the letter of the piece you want it to produce. Easy.
  • Fill — sets a transport's or a carrier's function to fill.
  • Grope — sets a piece's function to grope. (Yes, that's the name. We don't make the rules 🫶)
  • Idir — sets the function of a piece (or a city) to the direction you specify.
  • Jdir — toggles whether the production of all the cities is displayed.
  • Kill — wakes up every piece at the current location. And if that location happens to be a city, the fighter path gets canceled too.
  • Mark — selects the piece or city at the current location. This one is the partner-in-crime of the N command.
  • N — sets the destination of the piece you previously picked with the M command to the current square.
  • Out — exits edit mode. Bye bestie 👋
  • Printsector — shows you a fresh sector of the map. The map is split into ten sectors, each one sized 20 by 70. Sector zero is up in the upper-left corner. Sector four is in the lower-left corner. Sector five lives in the upper-right corner, and sector nine is down in the lower-right corner.
  • Random — sets a piece to move randomly.
  • Sentry — puts a piece to sleep 😴
  • Transport — sets an army's function to transport.
  • Upgrade — sets a ship's function to upgrade.
  • Vpiece func — sets the city movement function for a piece.
  • Y — sets an army's function to attack.
  • ? — shows you the info about a piece or a city. For a city, you get the production, the time of completion of the next piece, the movement functions, and the number of fighters and ships hanging out in the city.
Heads up though: you cannot directly affect anything inside a city with the editor. The editor does not go there. Periodt.

🌸 HINTS 🌸

So like, once you've played this game for a while, you'll probably figure out that the computer is immensely easy to beat. No shade, it's just facts 😭 Here are some ideas to try that might make things more interesting:

  • Give the computer one or more extra cities before you start the game. Let it cook.
  • Try playing with a low smoothness value — go for the -s2 option, or even -s0 if you're feeling spicy.
  • When you start the game, the program asks what difficulty level you want. And here's the thing: "difficulty level" is a straight-up misnomer. To compute a difficulty level, the program looks at each continent and counts how many cities are on them. A high "difficulty level" hands the computer a big continent with tons of cities, while the user gets a small continent with barely any. A low "difficulty level" does the exact opposite. But plot twist: it may actually be that the computer plays better when the "difficulty level" is low. Why? Because it's forced to move armies to multiple continents early in the game. Character development, honestly. 👑

📜 HISTORY 📜

According to A Brief History of Empire[1], the ancestral game was written by Walter Bright sometime in the early 1970s, back when he was a student at Caltech. A copy leaked out of Caltech and got ported to DEC's VAX/VMS from the TOPS-10/20 FORTRAN sources that were available sometime around fall 1979. Then Craig Leres found the source code on a DECUS tape in 1983 and added support for different terminal types. Iconic behavior.

Ed James got hold of the sources at Berkeley and converted portions of the code to C, mostly so he could use curses for the screen handling. He published his modified sources on the net in December 1986. And because this game ran on VMS machines for so long, it's been known as VMS Empire ever since.

In 1987, Chuck Simmons at Amdahl reverse-engineered the program and wrote a version completely in C. While doing that, he modified the computer strategy, the commands, the piece types, many of the piece attributes, and the algorithm for creating maps. A whole glow-up fr fr.

The various versions of this game were ancestral to later and better-known 4X (expand/explore/exploit/exterminate) games, including Civilization (1990) and Master of Orion (1993). Yeah, this is the blueprint. 😤

In 1994, Eric Raymond colorized the game. Slay. 🌈

📁 FILES 📁

  • empsave.dat — holds a backup of the game. Whenever empire is run, it will reload any game in this file.
  • empmovie.dat — holds a history of the game so that the game can be replayed as a "movie". Cinema. 🎬

💀 BUGS 💀

No doubt numerous. 😭

The savefile format changed incompatibly after version 1.13.

Satellites are not completely implemented. You should be able to move to a square that contains a satellite, but the program won't let you. And enemy satellites should not cause your pieces to awaken.

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Original game by Walter Bright. Support for different terminal types added by Craig Leres. Curses support added by Ed James. C/Unix version written by Chuck Simmons. Colorization by Eric S. Raymond. Probability table corrected by Michael Self.

🫶 COPYLEFT 🫶

Copyright (C) 1987, 1988 Chuck Simmons

See the file COPYING, distributed with empire, for restriction and warranty information.

🎀 NOTES 🎀

  1. A Brief History of Empire http://www.classicempire.com/history.html

And that's the whole page, bestie — literally every last crumb of it 💖 This was empire (that's the source/version right there), dated 02/11/2024, and you just read all of EMPIRE(6). Go forth and conquer, you absolute main character 🦋✨

📦 where this page comes from